This is not Fluffy.

This is not kindergarten; this is not a fluffy movie about middle school.
When faced with a semi-full cafeteria and no one to eat with, upon spotting a small group or an individual sitting alone, it would seem like the natural thing to go up and ask,
"Can I sit here?"
This is not ok.
You will be faced with seconds full of stony silence, before a hesitant smile breaks across their faces and they go, "Um, sure."
Um, sure. Does that sound inviting to you? Not at all my friends, not at all.
It's not that fraternizing and meeting new people is openly discouraged, it's that outside of the first few weeks people find it weird. Everyone develops a rag-tag group, so when some random comes over to sit with you, your first thought it going to be, "Where are your friends?" followed by, "Oh god, they must be a weirdie."
And now, a short anecdote about a friend of mine.
GD was sitting all by her lonesome waiting for the rest of us to join her and this semi-attractive kind-of-awkard Islander comes over and asks to sit with her. GD being particularly articulate said, "Um, sure." And he sat, we met him and awkward conversation ensued. After a short while he began talking to the people sitting behind us, in a friendly manner. Why would someone sit down when they had a perfectly good group of friends already? Because they're a weirdie. Someone totally non-Conformist and sociable. But, of course, that thought is really not all that neighborly. As such, that was the last most of us heard from him. Except the Nicknamer, who just tends to run into people I've termed "weirdies" all over the place. Conclusion: he became entranced by GD's baby blues and convinced himself he had to meet her.
Which throws him slightly out of the category of "weirdie". But only slightly.
I'm going to try and invent a point to all this now...
As weird as it is, people aren't nearly as sociable as you'd think on campus, and they're even more set in their patterns.
Case in point: My particular group (there are A LOT of us) has a designated location you can always find at least some of us at at any meal time. It's like a very easy Where's Waldo.
It's Where's the Cliques.

In the case of...

In the case of Friendcest please apply anti-itch powder three times a day and find yourself a new group of friends, because everything is about to blow up in your face.
There's a very legitimate reason that I don't believe in love at first sight, and that reason is something that I've come to call "Friendcest". While the treatment is still in the works, the diagnosis is set in stone. It goes a little like this: a group of people come together and form a bond known as friendship, they spend increasingly more time together, suddenly one member of the group develops romantic feelings for another member, and then another begins to display the same romantic feelings for another person (or maybe the same one, and that's just really complicated). In the end, though, everyone in the group has a thing for someone else in the group, and some of them inevitably start dating until you're coupled off. It is a natural progression and wholly unavoidable. Further, it disproves the notion that there is "love at first sight" when it obviously takes people getting to know each other, becomming closer, and then falling for each other.
But that is actually besides the point. Friendcest is generally problematic because it involves multiple friends developing feelings for the same friend, and then complicated human emotions come into play. As of now, this has happened with two completely different groups of friends I've had over the years. Two. The exact same occurance. Twice. I can make charts of the occurances... in fact, I have.
And no, I am not the original guilty party. I am the guilty party in that I encourage romantic attachment, because it's always nice to see friends happy. And then they get together, form a relationship, and they are happy. For a while.
Then everything changes, and friendships are ripped limb from limb like a Grendal v. Beowulf throwdown. Emotions, alliances, broken hearts, stoney silences - it's everywhere. Sometimes, the group dynamic, or part of it, can be salvaged, and people can get over themselves, but most times, they can't.
Human nature is to become emotionally linked with someone, and it's also human nature to get bored, or tired, or become emotionally involved with someone else. So of course friends fall for friends and people fight and break up - my Psychology textbook tells me humans are volatile creatures. And for once I think it's right.
If you read this and think it's complete BS, then, well, at least you're reading my blog. But if you take one thing away from this, even just one moral lesson, let it be this:
Friendcest is a reality - it could even be happening to you.

The Meanest Pie Chart Ever.

Isn't life just better when you AREN'T politically correct?
Life is just funnier when you're not worrying about all the different groups you could be offending.
And this is something that I have actually learned from a university course, and university textbook to be more precise. It came through the revelation of the Meanest Pie Chart Ever. Which turned out to also be the Most Hilarious Pie Chart Ever. I would be a terrible person to use this pie chart as an inside group among my friends. I just felt I should say that so I had acknowledged the fact that I was a terrible person. That pie chart is funny, funny material - I couldn't pass that up.
Posting it on the internet, however, would probably upset large groups of people because it is "offensive", i.e. not politically correct. Let's just say it broke up a certain minority group into categories. Hilarious categories. Categories that were not even trying to be politically correct.
And from that we're back at the fact that life is simply funnier when you are not concerned about who you may be offending, and that apparently includes the writers of textbooks.
The greatest example of being unconcerned with the feelings of others is a man who is renowned, beloved, and hated for being the complete opposite of politically correct. I think the most frequent term used to described him is "royal asshole". I love this man. I bought his book. I read his blog (www.tuckermax.com). I think he is the new definition of genius. That is, he is not intelligent in the traditional sense, but he is smart enough to have tapped into that guilty pleasure that is ingrained within every human being and totally exploited it. Not just anyone will admit to loving this man - leas tof all women. Which should give you an idea of exactly who the main target of his escapades is. What I truly love about Tucker, though, is not just his complete lack of concern for human dignity or sensitivity, it's that he is able to fully admit what he does, and yet is modest and honest enough about it that he doesn't seem malicious. He is simply living his life within the bounds of hilarity. However, at the end of the day, as much as I relish in those inside jokes that have a complete disregard for offensiveness, or the love I have of a man who has a complete lack of humanity and who, if raised differently, may have become a sociopath, I can't be him, and I can't always disregard the feelings of others.
Few people can.
It's ingrained into us by society that we should care for others, for their feelings and differences, and so, as hilarious as the Meanest Pie Chart Ever is, it's still a very cruel pie chart.

Leaving on a Jet-Plane

University students everywhere are the new jet-setters of the world. And, apparently, the only ones who know how to cross through security effectively.
To answer a few questions I have observed today: Yes, you must baggie-up your liquids. Yes, your lap-top needs it's own container. No, you may not wear your incredibly tacky wallet chain through, sir.
On top of being incredibly infuriating, airports are so unnaturally gross. I can shower half an hour before getting to one, and still feel like I need a shower immediately upon setting foot into one. And it's weird, because you get warned about everything else about airports - getting tazered for example - but not the disturbing level of ick that they bring on.
I would just like to point out here that airports are not nearly as glamorous as they are made out to be in songs/movies/TV and so on and so forth. And it's not the vast amounts of people, or the lines, or the waiting for super delayed flights that make airports so grunge chic. It's that they make you take your shoes off at security.
It wasn't always like this. I remember the days when me and my clunky boots could waltz our way through the annoying beep-y thing (I'm not up-to-date on the airport lingo... obviously.). And now I have to yank off the boots, and walk on the kinda-really-gross floor. I realize that I could have a knife shoved in the heel of a boot, ready to shank the pilots and steal their plane for varying terrorist activities (free flight to Hawaii anyone?). Or maybe not. I don't know, but if I was by some off chance a terrorist I would do things with a little more style than that, and I certainly wouldn't be caught dead walking through the beeping thing without shoes on.
And I would probably know the technical term for the beeping thing. That would be handy.