I found out the other day about the existence of an app called Lulu. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this app (congratu-fucking-lations, by the way), I’ll explain it in a little more detail. Basically, anybody who is your Facebook friend or a friend of one of your Facebook friends can rate you. Ratings are scaled from 1-10; however, instead of asking the participant for a numerical grade in each of these categories, the women have to answer a series of whimsical questions; based on their answers, points are assigned for each category. The categories are: Appearance, Humor, Manners, Sex, First Kiss, Ambition and Commitment. In addition, a reviewer can put hashtags describing in further detail your best and worst qualities. Those ratings are averaged out, giving you an aggregate score which can then be seen by anyone with whom you’re Facebook friends, as well as their friends.

Full disclosure: I was rated on this site, which is how I was made aware of its existence. I debated whether or not I should share my review, since the whole thing is absurd and meaningless, BUT in the spirit of journalistic integrity (I guess?), I’ll share them. My comments on the ratings are below.

Needless to say, I wasn’t exactly thrilled with this review.

Appearance: 4.0

Well, that’s just mean.

Humor: 8.0

Hey, thanks!

Manners: 8.0

I…I guess?

Sex: 6.5

Actually, that’s probably accurate.

First Kiss: 6.5

MY LIPS ARE LIKE PILLOWS FILLED WITH LOTION AND YOU NEED TO LEARN TO APPRECIATE A GOOD MOUTH WHEN YOU SEE IT.

Ambition: 10.0

I rent cars for a living.

Commitment: 4.0

I’m gonna guess things didn’t end so smoothly with this reviewer.

All told, an aggregate score of 6.7; in other words, I’m a D+ as a man. And then there are the hashtags: “#JekyllandHyde,” “#HitItAndQuitIt,” “#50ShadesOfF**kedUp,” “#ThatGuy”. However, I’m also “#Mysterious” and “#UnchartedTerritory,” so I guess it’s a wash.

Let me be completely clear: I could care less about my rating on this thing. I am aware that writing about how stupid this app is (and it is stupid) makes it look like a case of sour grapes on my part because I didn’t get a high rating, but believe me, it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. (That being said, though, what does it say about the reviewer that I’m a 4.0 appearance-wise, yet she still had sex with me?)

First of all, some of those criteria are absurd. “Manners”? What is this, an Emily Brontë novel? And only someone who’s seen “Hitch” 56 times (alone, natch) would think to make “First Kiss” a category. What’s wrong with just “Kissing”? As for “Commitment,” well, you can’t rate someone if you’re in a relationship with them, so the results are guaranteed to be skewed (if a guy breaks it off with a girl, she probably won’t give him very high marks, right?), so I really don’t see the point of this category. (Side note: I saw one guy’s ratings, which were given to him by a girl whose dealings with him were limited to “A Crush,” and she gave him a 10 in “Commitment.” HOW THE FUCK WOULD YOU KNOW?! YOU AREN’T DATING HIM!) “Ambition” is kinda murky, I think- a guy could say he wants to do all sorts of cool things with his life and get a 10, while another guy could just not share his ambitions and get a 0. I don’t get it. And “Humor” is fairly subjective, too, if you think about it- there are people who don’t think Jerry Seinfeld is funny (I’m one of them), so I don’t think Humor can be easily quantified.

This leaves us with “Sex” and “Appearance” which, quite frankly, are what this app (and the countless others like it) are for. It’s the female equivalent of HotOrNot, which is another awful idea brought to life. Apps like those are a way for women and men to anonymously rate the opposite sex with a total lack of accountability, which is pretty unfair. Not only that, but since the person being reviewed has no way of knowing who’s writing this shit about them, there’s no way to find out what they did wrong to avoid making those mistakes with another person. It’s just an excuse to take out your frustration on someone for their real or perceived misdeeds. The problem arises when other people (either your friends or friends of friends) see those reviews and think “Wow, so-and-so is a fucking asshole! GOODBYE, FRIENDSHIP WITH HIM.” That’s a totally plausible scenario, and it’s kind of a shitty thing to do to someone, don’t you think?

I hesitate to make this next point, because I don’t want it to be misconstrued as misogynistic. But given the outcry from women about sites like HotOrNot or other places for meatheaded shitsacks to rate women based solely on physical appearance, isn’t it extremely hypocritical to do pretty much the same to guys? I know that some women will say “BUT THIS IS HOW I CAN WARN WOMEN ABOUT THIS GUY WHO DIDN’T WANT TO DATE ME GRRRRRRLPOWER!,” which may be true, but there are plenty of girls who will cast aspersions on a guy just because he wasn’t interested, the same way that guys will call a girl a slut for not wanting to sleep with them. It’s a shitty thing to do. Plus, with an app like this, you’re deprived of the satisfaction (as it were) of knowing who’s saying shitty things about you, which could help determine if their criticisms are valid or if they’re just being vindictive.

I swear to God, I’m not bitter. That score I received? That could probably be applied to Seth Rogen, and he seems to be doing okay for himself. So THE JOKE IS ON YOU, ANONYMOUS CRITIC.

Here’s your song of the day:

In case it wasn’t painfully obvious by now, I write. (“He’s writing about writing? OMG SO META!”) I write screenplays mostly, but also this blog and the beginnings of books that I find too frustrating to finish. And to be honest, I kind of hate doing it sometimes.

Allow me to elaborate (like you have a choice.)

There are very few feelings better than creating a character or an entire world using nothing other than my imagination; conversely, there are few worse feelings than when I can’t seem to write a single sentence that feels right. (Kind of like this one. Seriously, that took five tries.) There are moments when I’ll be writing and all that runs through my head is: “You’re a shitty writer. You’re not interesting, this topic sucks, you can’t come up with anything good on your own, and you’re never going to find even a modicum of success with this. Just give it up. I’m not saying this to be mean, but you’re just awful.” And then I have to walk away from the computer before I throw it out a window. I’m very easily frustrated, I’m afraid.

I think that has something to do with the fact that I have an absurd case of ADD- I always have this gnawing feeling that I only have a limited window in which to write my stuff before I get distracted by thoughts of vacuuming or chocolate or whatever the fuck, and if I can’t get what I want to write out quickly enough, I start to worry that I’ll forget what I wanted to say and the whole thing will be ruined. And then nobody will love me and I’ll die alone. DON’T LEAVE ME, READERS. I could, of course, counteract this by taking Adderall, but that’s a whole slog and I’m lazy. Plus, Adderall gives me pretty heavy mood swings, not to mention I don’t want to be a 45 year-old man who has to take a drug that college kids routinely snort just to put some words on paper.

The question, then, is simple: Why do I write? I’ve thought about it more than is probably reasonable, and I still haven’t come up with a suitable answer. On one hand, I guess I write so that I might have a record of my frame of mind at a particular point in my life. That’s probably too charitable an assessment, though; I probably write because, like many members of my generation, I’m possessed by the notion that every thought that creeps into my skull absolutely must have an audience, despite the fact that the vast majority of what I think is of zero consequence to anybody.

Then again, maybe I write because it’s a form of communication that is utilized at an alarmingly declining rate. There is value in taking the time to gather your thoughts and commit them to paper (so to speak)- it’s almost a form of meditation. (Technically speaking, that’s an impossibly stupid comparison, since meditation is focusing the front of the mind on a mundane task so the back of the mind can think about other things, and though writing can be tiresome at times, it is hardly mundane. That’s why I said “almost,” so LAY OFF.) Even writing that last theory didn’t sound right, though- I’m not the only person who writes, and I’m certainly not the best writer (feel free to dispute that in the comments), so I’m not exactly Sir Gallahad striding to the rescue of the written word.

Truth be told, I don’t really know why I write. At it’s core, writing makes me happy, and that’s really all the reason I need. I’m sure there are various motivations behind my writing, but I don’t think I’m perceptive enough to figure out the root of my desire to write. I just know how to write, to put it simply, and I think it would be a shame to let my abilities fall by the wayside. There’s more to it than just that, I’m sure, but for now I’m content to accept the fact that I don’t know why I write; not only that, it’s okay not to know why I write. For an overly analytical person like me, it’s best not to dig too deeply into this stuff.

So those are my thoughts on writing in a nutshell. And I hated every last one of them.

When I got my shitty replacement phone, I told myself I could manage for a few months, because I’m a warrior striding valiantly onward in the face of adversity. I was wrong- I’m actually a tremendous coward whose tolerance for things being anything less than perfect is so minuscule as to be nonexistent. So I broke down, ordered a new phone, and it came today. And HOLY SHIT WHY DID I EVER THINK I COULD MANAGE WITHOUT A PROPER PHONE I MISSED YOU SO MUCH [endless kissing noises].

I did notice some differences in my phone usage, though, and they weren’t necessarily all bad things. For one, I found myself spending less time staring mindlessly at my phone (largely because I hated it so much that my eyes couldn’t bear to look at that stupid thing.) This, of course, led to a drastic uptick in productivity, and I’m happy to report that those days are OVER. I’m back to being a mediocre employee and someone who is largely disinterested in their surroundings mere hours after receiving my replacement phone. So that’s good. I also had absolutely no desire to write or post anything from my phone, because the autocorrect was so atrocious that I would spend an hour on what amounted to maybe 250 words. Plus, every time I texted, I was filled with a sudden, overwhelming urge to commit mass murder. That may have been from all the PCP I’ve been using, though. I love PCP.

They sent me an iPhone 5C as a replacement, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t incredibly disappointed at first. Which, when you think about it, is absolute fucking lunacy- who gets upset by getting an upgraded phone because it’s “not quite as nice as my old phone”? The answer is me. I get upset. Now that I have it, though…well, put it this way: if someone offered me a swap of this phone for my old iPhone, I’d slap them on their cheeks for making such a foolish proposal. Even an inferior version of an upgrade is still an upgrade.

I went to the AT&T store to get my phone activated, and the guy who activated it could not have been less interested in doing a good job. He didn’t import any of my contacts, he muttered maybe twenty words total for the whole 15 minutes I was in there, and when I asked if the screen protector I was buying was any good, his response was “I dunno. It’s a screen protector.” What kind of asshole response is that? STEP UP YOUR SALESMANSHIP/CONVERSATIONAL GAME, TIM. Now I have to go back to the AT&T store to get my phone properly set up. And if you think I’m going back to that dickhole, you’ve drastically underestimated how much of a passive-aggressive pussy I can be. Old Timmy boy’s getting a shitty review when I go to the other store, though. I WILL NOT LET THIS STAND.

Now that my old phone is no longer in use, I’ve kinda been considering having a good old-fashioned smash fest with that thing, preferably with a baseball bat. But given my luck, I’ll probably break this phone 20 minutes after ruining that one, so maybe I should hold off.

/stares at old phone angrily as if it’s shitty on purpose

So anyway, this is my way of saying I AM BACK. Until I get robbed again. Enjoy the music.

For my Christmas vacation (“You serious, Clark?”), I went to Florida to visit my parents in their new house. Before you get all “OMG UR PARENTS MOVED TO FLORIDA THAT’S SO KEWL!” on me, I should inform you that they just moved like ten minutes away from their old house. Also, I don’t understand why people get so excited by the idea of Florida, like it’s some mysterious tropical paradise that only the most fortunate of folks will ever see. Florida is largely populated with trashy cokeheads who drive lifted pickup trucks, claim to be MMA fighters (because they watch a lot of UFC) and have never left the state because “WHY WOULD I, BRO? WE’VE GOT IT ALL HERE!” These are the kinds of people who, as adults, actually think Disney World is the most magical place on earth. Picture the trashiest people from your hometown, give them tanned, leathery skin, and presto: Floridians. It’s always muggy there, but with the looming threat of an apocalyptic thunderstorm lurking on the horizon. And I swear I never have any idea where in Florida I am, because everything looks exactly the same. It’s as if  whoever settled the state was like “Most of the people living here either won’t have the mental capacity to realize that they’re living in the real-life equivalent of a poorly-designed video game with recurring buildings and characters, or they’ll be too old to care.” Whenever I go to Florida, my thought process goes something like this:

0:01-0:05: “It’s nice to get out of the city for a little bit.”

0:05-24:00: “Fuck, it’s hot.”

24:01-48:00: “Finally used to the temperature. This isn’t so bad.”

48:01-Departure: “JESUS CHRIST THIS PLACE IS AWFUL.”

I think we all need to stop fetishizing Florida. It’s not El Dorado. You know why we didn’t settle Florida first, even though Ponce de León discovered it in the 1500s? Because, even with his limited knowledge of America, he probably went “Ugh, I’m sure we can do better. This can’t be the best part of this new land.” And you know what, friends? He was right. Florida is awful.

So anyway, I was down in Florida for Christmas, and since my parents had to move all my stuff from one house to the other, my mom asked me to go through some old boxes to decide what I wanted to throw out. As I went through the boxes, I found a stack of notes, letters, birthday cards, etc., and though I thoroughly enjoyed reading every last one of them, I was struck with a very uncomfortable realization:

I’m a pretty shitty friend.

There were birthday cards from people who, at one point or another, were people I’d call close friends; with the exception of one or two names, though, I haven’t talked to these people in years. It’s not like we had a falling-out or anything, I just kinda stopped putting in the effort to keep in touch. The more I thought about that, the more I realized that these weren’t isolated incidents; I do this with more frequency than I would care to admit. At first I don’t talk to one of my friends in a while and I think “Oh man, I gotta call them.” Then more time passes, I still haven’t called, and before I know it, it’s been years since I’ve spoken to them, and at that point, the relationship has pretty much faded completely. And then I’ll think “I can’t call them now, they’ll think I’m in trouble!” I’m fucking awkward like that.

On the other hand, phones work both ways, right? Am I completely to blame for the friendship falling apart, or can I take solace in the fact that maybe the friendship had just run its course? I don’t know. I guess I should probably get used to it happening, because as I  get older, a lot of the people with whom I once had strong friendships are going to vanish from my life completely. Instead of lamenting the loss of these friendships, maybe I should just accept them for what they were: great at that point in time, but probably destined to come to an end at one point or another. It’s a sad reality, but a reality nonetheless.

With that in mind, I’d like to amend my previous statement: I’m not a bad friend, I’m just bad at keeping in touch. So if you’re reading this and going “That asshole never calls me!”, feel free to reach out. I’ll be happy to hear from you.
Or don’t. I NEVER LIKED YOU ANYWAY.