I find lately in conversation, whether it be casual or professional, my worst habit is that I always, in my mind, try to anticipate where someone is going in a conversation and then interject before they end their statement.  Not only is this just incredibly rude, but who wants to talk to someone like this!?  I usually try to temper my speech so that I do wait, but I find myself more and more impatient as people spit out their points.  But it makes me wonder why I’ve developed this habit?

I think to start with, a lot of my communication comes from either instant messages or forums.  Generally it comes in a readable response format where you have back and forth and even if you interrupt someone they can generally continue their train of thought.  It’s a less disruptive form since you’re afforded the ability to ignore someone temporarily and then respond.

My second medium of choice in the verbal warfare comes from ventrillo which is real time voice chat software.  So in real life, you’re confronted with people where you can see literally when they’re awaiting a response or if they’re pausing, you can see why.  For instance, someone saying something, then takes a drink or eats, this is a fairly appropriate time to interject.  However, it’s not perfect, and one usually akwardly interrupts often.  It’s a difficult medium when you remove the human element but still try to maintain the back and forth.  Eliminating faces and expression makes it hard.  I imagine it’s like a conference call gone bad sometimes with everyone yelling over each other and it becomes a battle of sheer willpower to not stop what you’re saying and attempt to be the alpha voice among all others.

Ok so translating those into real life makes me somewhat of a nuisance.  Where I can sort of jot down an idea, see if it’s palatable to the the conversation and then if it is, hit the enter key doesn’t work well in real life conversations.  I did this the other night where this sort of malformed idea came out, but then I had to spend several minutes backtracking it out loud to everyone to see if I could justify my pointless point.  Had it been via IM/text, I would have simply not hit enter and it would have never boiled over into some sort of rediculous topic.  Coupled with the fact that people are trying to disprove my notion before I finish with my counterpoints interrupting them before they finish where they’re going, it was sort of a mess.

I wonder though if I’m not alone though in a sort of transitory period of life where we migrate a lot of our interactions through text/web 2.0/etc..  I feel like the business sharks of the world will hold mastery over conversation while the masses will be dumbed down to text message styles of speech with “lol”‘s and “u r”‘s all over the place.  It’s interesting to me that American English is so far developed differently from British English over the span of roughly 200+ years that I wonder what our next evolutionary jump will be.

So I woke up two days ago thinking this exact thing: “You know what, I could go for a bowl of Oreo-O’s.” Knowing it had been a long time since I had purchased said cereal, I jotted it down on my list of to buy items.  Yesterday when I realized I had nothing to eat anywhere in my apartment, I made my trip out to the old Wal-Mart and went up to the cereal aisle first thing.  I went up it once.  Then I went up it again.  Then I decided I lost the ability to read.  I double checked by trying to read my list of goods.

Oreo-O’s

Ok I can still read.  So I did a triple take.  But on this triple take, I decided to scan the price tags to see if I was just really unlucky and someone else had the same craving and stocked up.  To my dismay, said product was completely gone.  So I came home and did what anyone would do in the Internet age.  I wikied it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oreo_O%27s

According to an email from consumer relations, this product was discontinued in 2007.

So now, a part of my late teenage years is gone.  My most beloved and probably unhealthy breakfast ritual is gone and has been gone for over a year!!!!  I’ve idiotically replaced it with OATMEAL!  A sign of old man-ism.  Actually you know what else I added was toasted english muffins to breakfast.  Anyway, goodbye Oreo-O’s.  You were my favorite sin.  I ended my shopping trip with double stuff oreos though in consolation.

The Cab – Bounce
Metallica – The Unforgiven III
Metallica – The Day That Never Comes
Mute Math – Typical
Coheed & Cambria – No World For Tomorrow
Coheed & Cambria – Gravemakers & Gunslingers
Coheed & Cambria – Once Upon Your Dead Body
Fall Out Boy – The Take Over The Breaks Over
Yellowcard – Lights And Sounds
Fall Out Boy – Fame Infamy
Tonic – Jump Jimmy
Sixto Sounds, Zircon – Lunatic Moon
Bang Camaro – Night Lies
Orange Range – Thank You
TiA – Ryuusei
Gorillaz – 19-2000

Ok to start off with, I didn’t vote.  I have one incredibly stupid reason for not voting that I don’t want to tell you about, and one important reason I didn’t vote.  The important reason I didn’t vote was that I don’t live in a swing state, so the vote I would have cast would have fallen in line with how my state voted anyway.  While my friends already chastised me about it, I refer them to my incredibly stupid and secretive reason for not voting.

Ok so now we have Obama as president.  I will admit that yes, this is historic.  But the degree to which we emphasize that we will have an African-American as a president is sickening.  I’m definately part of a new generation where I look beyond race, however maybe my Dad’s generation sees this as a sort of “Oh wow” kinda moment, but not me.  I feel like if there were such as a thing that is the opposite of racist, if there were some word for it, that’s what I’m feeling too much of right now reading through my feeds.  Also if you voted for him solely because of race, shame on you for not being more informed.  If it turns out his agenda matches though with yours then whatever.

Democrats, as far as this election goes, the one person you have to thank for this victory is George Bush.  He did so terribly these last few years, that in my mind, you could have had a horse on the democratic platform and he would have won.  The fickle nature of America is predictable enough to see that when you’re unhappy with the current party, you’re probably going to go to the other for a bit.

Republicans, what the hell were you thinking?  My news sources are crazy biased for Democrats and from what I’m reading, I feel like your whole campaign was set up to attack Obama as opposed to distance yourself from Bush.  However, there is something to be said for how relatively close the election turned out to be.  Last I looked McCain lost the popular vote by 7 million or so out of 110ish million votes.  For an election where I feel was going to be an easy win for the Democrats you still made it fairly narrow, but again, I think the people in charge went with a poor strategy.  In 4 years I hope campaigning moves away from attacking the other guy and focusing more on issues.  The “landslide” could have been much much worse and even I was thinking it could have been something like 70/30.

The election process in general seems really horrible.  We vote on a Tuesday unless you vote early which is weird.  It should be a national holiday so people in lines aren’t pressured to get back to work.  It should really potentially be on a weekend where you have lots of time and availability to go vote.  And the process should be refined anyway to be a quick in and out affair.  I threw this idea out and a few guildies said it was too prone to fraud, but I don’t think it’s an unsolvable problem.  It would be sweet if you could register to vote.  Then vote online which then has the government send you a paper scantron doodad.  This would take you to the regular voting thing on election day where you just drop it off and it gets scanned and matched with your online vote.  In the age of technology, why we do things so archaically makes no sense to me.  Clearly I know that few people trust voting machines, I’d agree that they shouldn’t be closed source and they should be opened up for inspection. However, please note, that I didn’t vote so I don’t know the process or improvements made over previous years.  Reading about how it happens for other people seems really dumb though to me.

Anyway, now that I think about it, this is probably my first and one of very few political rants.  Unlike all the reddit dudes who claimed doom and gloom if McCain got elected, I’ll be staying in the nation unlike a petulant child.  I think Elizabeth Hasselbeck’s recent statements are taken out of context.  She’s not changing sides all of a sudden but clearly saying that despite differences between parties, the most important thing we do as a nation is galvanize so we don’t look like a bickering married couple.  If anything, the most irritating thing is how divided we are in the terms of if my side is right, then your side is wrong.  Though I know one person who reads this will say I just read reddit too much.  Anyway, I’m done.  I don’t like talking about politics and the next time you see anything like this will probably be in 2012.