Spelling is overrated

Yesterday on Facebook, I was trying to say in my status update that I was feeling highly distractible. Except that when I typed "distractible," it was underlined by those little red dots that indicate a misspelled word. So then I tried "distractable." No dice. I was too lazy to investigate further and came to the conclusion that it must not be a real word.

WRONG. Apparently, both spellings are acceptable. HA! Take that, Facebook.

This leads me to the conclusion that spelling is dumb. I know my 12-year-old brother agrees with me; he once famously put up a sign on the door to his bedroom that said "Ples Knok." Which sounds kind of like a Klingon greeting. Ples knok, earthling!

I was in a spelling bee once. In 7th grade. The word that got me out: "extraterrestrial." I was pissed when the kid next to me got "raspberry."

My friend Zach Sherwin, who is an up and coming comedian (and rapper under the name MC Mr. Napkins), feels my pain. Check out his awesome rap video about the word that robbed him of spelling bee glory:

Spelling Bee

Pick Your Top Five!

When Facebook's Scrabulous application vanished due to Hasbro's lawsuit, it created a vacuum. A vacuum of...productivity, since we could no longer waste time playing online Scrabble. But thankfully, that void has been filled by an even more pointless time-wasting enterprise: the Top 5 surveys. You can create Top 5 lists of all sorts: Top 5 Movies of All Time, Top 5 Beers, Top 5 Vacation Spots. Because obviously, how you and your friends compare on Top 5 surveys is a clear indication of compatibility.

Here are the Top 5 "Top 5" Surveys that you are unlikely to ever see (and my answers)

Top 5 Celebrities I Don't Look Like:
1) Mickey Rourke
2) Pamela Anderson
3) Shrek
4) Queen Latifah
5) Derek Jeter


Top 5 Cities Where I've Vomited:
1) St. Louis, MO
2) New Haven, CT
3) New York, NY
4) Dublin, Ireland
5) Lindau, Germany


Top 5 Books I've Lied About Reading:
1) Gravity's Rainbow
2) Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
3) Maus
4) Speak, Memory
5) The Da Vinci Code


Top 5 Winners of Top Chef:
1) Harold Dieterle
2) Ilan Hall
3) Hung Hunynh
4) Stephanie Izard
5) Hosea Rosenberg


Top 5 Places I Hope I Never Go:
1) Prison
2) Cancun during Spring Break
3) Fat camp
4) Jesus camp
5) Hell

The worst part about being on Facebook

Clearly, there are many annoying things about Facebook, everyone's favorite time-wasting blessing-and-curse, but this has got to be the worst:

I recently went through a break-up and was torn about changing my Facebook status, out of fear of receiving questions and frowny-face emoticons from my 700+ friends. For about a week, my ex and I just didn't change anything. Then I discovered a privacy setting that allows you to change your relationship status without blasting it on your feed. So I erased my status altogether so I was not listed as single or in a relationship or, my personal favorite, "It's complicated with..." (isn't it always?)

However, my discretion proved to be moot yesterday, when my ex changed his status to single and allowed it to go out on his feed. Which of course invoked an onslaught of sympathy and encouragements on his wall to get out there and "pet the pussy" as soon as possible. Classy.

It's not so much that I'm annoyed with my ex -- after all, anything you can do to hasten the getting-over-someone process is a good thing -- I'm annoyed that we live in a world where you have to think about these things at all. I'm annoyed that as we were making the heartbreakingly personal and difficult decision to stop seeing each other, we actually had to discuss The Changing of the Facebook Status.

I've learned my lesson -- I'm never touching that shit again. No one on Facebook will ever know whether I'm single, in a relationship, engaged, married, divorced, cheating, rebounding, prostituting myself etc. If you want to know my "status," you're just going to have to ASK ME. Just like in olden times.