Texting Determines Your Self Worth and How to Dress

Well after a long 72 hour vacation I'm back on the blogging scence and ready to get loose. My drive back to Betriot was far more calm then the trek into St. Louis, maybe because I had just watched Tiger Woods crumble on the 17th hole of Augusta or maybe because I had slipped Ceej Chokum a low grade beaver tranquilizer which helped reign him in a little. Anyways for those thinking my last post was too long, think about this...Earnest Hemmingway wrote 400 page novels that are considered classics. Hemmingway got drunk everday, was good personal friends with a Mr. Fidel Castro, hated capitalism and the American way of life, and shot himself with a gun made by Abercrombie and Fitch (concidenly he was also wearing a strapping pair of Abercrombie cargo shots and a delicious Abercrombie polo). Yet this man and his thousands of pages of novels are read by all and considered genius...but I write 6 paragraphs that take 5 minutes to read, while loving America and wearing Nike sweatpants, and I'm the bad guy? Come on America.

How Cool are You? Only one way to find out
As I was sitting in Rich Krajewski's room one fine spring afternoon (the temperature got up into the mid-40's...that's what I call paradise) and I noticed one sound ringing in my ears every 2 seconds...beeping. This beeping was the news of Rich or the room's other occupant, Derrick Lovgren, receiving a text message. These guys phones were going off like Red Foreman's heart monitor when he's around Bob Pinciotti. Don't get me wrong, these are two of America's finest young men, but the amount of texts they were getting were absolutely ridiculous. Rich is the ace of the Beloit College pitching staff, a left-handed junkballer whose insane movement on his curve reminds you of a young Eddie Harris (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBFUxhcbSMU), and might only be popular because his off-speed nature lulls hits into a false sense of security. Then sense of security is then smashed in the next game by Jordan DeGeorge, whose scruff exterior, 101 mph and world leading strike outs per inning make comparasions between him and Rick Vaughn (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZLGjPnhsLY) very valid.

My main priorty in text messages had always been to have a favorable balance between my inbox and sent messages (meaning I have significantly received messages then sent), but this incident made my reconsider. I was sitting there, textless, when we decided to compare text messages numbers. Up to that point both Rick and D-Love had over 5,000 sent/received messages, while I was sitting below 900. I don't think I need to tell you how that made me feel, but I will anyway...I felt like the biggest loser of all time, or at least since Thomas Dewey in the 1948 presidential election (Dewey happened to lose to future GC, Harry S. Truman). Anyways this made it very clear to me, I needed a new texting stratedgy. I mean I can't be sitting in a room full of people texting their girlfriends, family, buddies, teammates, fraternity brothers, hook-ups or even Tyler Isham, while I'm just sitting there re-watching season 1 of the OC crying as Seth Cohen sails away from Summer, Ryan and everything he's ever known (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMGyl-l3qqc).

Rich suggested I starting texting people more, so they would in turn respond, and me and my new texting partners could start a text message correspondence as real and full of love as Tom Hanks' and Meg Ryan's emails in You've Got Mail. However, this strategic manuever did not have the desired effect. People used a couple of strategies to wiggle their ways out of a text message relationship with me. First they tried to avoiding me like the plague, but they should have known that wouldn't have worked. In 5th grade Adam Long tried avoiding me for 2 weeks so he wouldn't be forced to invite me to his birthday party at the Swing Around Fun Town. However, I camped outside his house 24/7 so he would be have to run into me and offer me an awkward invitation to a Saturday afternoon filled with go-carts, mini golf and endless amounts of corn dogs. What I didn't realize was Adam had a firescape on his house, which he climbed 6 stories everytime he left just to keep me away from those delicious breaded hot dogs on a stick. Finally I hid in my backpack in the coat closet of our 5th grade class room and caught Adam alone. While the rest of our classmates thought we were playing a very homo-erotic game of 7 minutes in heaven, all I was doing was ensuring my trip to the party of the century. What's the lesson in this? You can't avoid me...I'll find you, and enjoy a delicious corn dog while I force you to interact with me in a social situation.


Next people tried to bore me to death with their text messages. As you can probably tell with this blog, I tend to be very sarcastic and fairly long winded, and that does not change when I text. My texts tend to be 2-3 pages in length (footnoted of course), and they are filled with witty banter, run on sentences, and sarcastic put downs. When people found out they couldn't avoid me, they tried to break my spirit instead. They would reply to my long and extremely well thought out texts with 1 line of a crappy texting expression like k (is it really so hard to type the "O" in there, I mean OK is so much more uplifting then k, which is just lazy). This was literally like texting a brick wall...actually it was worse then texting a brick wall. A brick wall has feelings and emotions, not to mention a sense of humor, even if it can't be expressed. A brick wall would love my texts and its chance to respond with a little personality. My texting partners on the other hand have the ability to use their emotions and sense of humor, but chose not to, which is just a waste of God given ability. Anyways, this strategy had no effect, I have been ignored my entire life. There was a period in my life when I would follow people around, asking them important questions about the life and the way the world works. People got so pissed at my non-stop questioning that all the would respond with is "I Don't Know" then mutter something about me being dropped on my head as an infant under my breath. I'm pretty sure "I Don't Know" were the only words I heard between the ages of 7-10, so if you thing a text response of k is going to stop me, you are out of your mind.

So finally I created a game to gauge your text popularity, and decide if you truly are the most popular m'fer who can afford a cell phone with an unlimited text messaging plan. It's simple, everytime you receive a text you add a point to your score. If you send a text that isn't responded to, subtract a point. If you receive a text from a female, add 2 points. If you receive a "textual" (a "textual" is a text message with a sexual connotation...nice) add 3 points. Texts from girlfriends obviously don't count...come on man, you need to branch out. Finally, you must delete your inbox and sent box at the same time, and when you do you add a point for every additional message in the inbox (for example 5 in inbox, 4 in sent, add a point).

I decided to play this game starting Thursday, ending when I recieved a message from a female. Between Thursday and Monday afternoon I received 29 text messages, all from dudes. Some highlights included Matt Davis confessing to me he can neither read nor write while writing a paper on the American Civil War, and Matthew Kees lying to me about the possibility of a scantly clothed co-ed in my room. I was so sick of not getting any texts from a chick that I almost texted a girl from my phonebook, knowing that she would of course reply and I would achieve victory. However, after looking through my contact list I realized that out of my 73 contacts, a mere 7 were of the female variety...that's right, instead of 50% I was sitting at about 10%. While that made my self-esteem skyrocket to near record levels (it's a newer phone...so lay off me). Finally on Monday afternoon my good friend Nicole Oddo, whose cousin is Lamar Odom (she changed her name from Odom to Oddo for fear of living in Lamar's shadow) texted me, although it was to berate me for my choice of seating in the college's cafeteria. Game over. Final score...+48 (final ratio, 99 inbox, 81 sent...way to go Joey Schlafly for not responding to a text, making me look like a serious douche). I am officially the GOAT (Greatest of All Time).

Back soon with the Profiles and Big Ups I Promised

In Hoc,
Sachary L. Poelker
"Jack of All Trades"