#Facebook Languages: 70s jive, FTW!

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @SaintPepsi

On Facebook you get asked a lot of questions in the profile area so that others can learn just a little more about you -if they take the time that is. So it's understandable that languages would be a part of that. Easily, what ever language you speak will commonly be placed first. After that you put in any other languages you have taken the time to learn.  I for a while had Japanese; as I had studied that for a few years. Since learning it, I have sadly forgotten most of it and in shame removed it from my facebook account. Yet as far as languages go there are an insane amount of them that you can show yourself knowing. I myself had my facebook set to Pirate for a good 3 years, only taking it down when I attempted to create a party and had no idea what all the translated versions of the party details were. Languages ranging from the native tongues of countries to imaginary dialects delivered through dead drama's drawn out by day dreaming deviants, such as Klingon. Apparently, one of the fastest growing languages next to Elven. Yes each of those are languages you can claim to be fluent in over in the facebook universe.

Generally, facebook is the place to show just who you are. The real you. I mean you have myspace for the fake you that's got a ripped photoshopped body, is a talented musician, and artist. For the most part facebook has always been the place to put yourself on display. So it's with some hesitance that I would put languages like Pig Latin or 1337 speak in there. I would like to be honest about who I am so I would need to know those languages fluently to post them there. I'm sure others may front like they know Gaelic, but that's just not true to me. I can say with confidence I speak fluent Pirate, English, English with a heavy British Mumble, and Thick Irish Accent English - so I could put any of those up there.

See the brilliant part of this is that there are people that are very fluent in some of these obscure languages. Geeks that know exactly what Klingons are saying in the Trekverse without the captions; nerds that have read all of Tolkien's works in Elvish. (There are girls that are very good at communicating using only subtle eye movements and facial ticks .... evil) So I think you will find the languages people to post about are actually something they take pride in knowing. Having worked to secure that knowledge even if it seems ridiculous to others. Personally, I think 1337 speak is just about the dumbest things ever created. Still there was a significant amount of teens that used that as their secret code to get away with seeking solace from a parent's watchful eye.

Each of these languages, no matter how ridiculous has evolved from someone's idea. Like many idea's languages have sprung up and fallen like world powers. Since the birth of the many tongues at the tower of babel; which was at the time used to confuse and disorient the people of that era.  They have now brought people together in common language interests on facebook, with an ability to see just how many other people speak the languages you have practiced in secret; they have acted as a bonding glue for the fringe linguists.  You can finally meet up for coffee at your local brewery and freak out the tables near you with your collective rhyming through your tables fine tuned 70's Jive. For anyone over the age of 21 of course; the ease we can all speak and understand each other in IHOP at 3 in the morning speaking Drunk and Gibberish.

So if you can speak it, claim it. Own that part of you that you would have been ashamed to admit in high school. Be proud of who you are and what you have spent a part of this short life learning. You may just find that you're not the only one who has been allotting time to learn a new language skill. So go out and find your nerdy brotherhood with your secret languages and talk in whatever form you would then be comfortable talking in.  Life's too short to spend it talking in your hum drum native language.  Hell, if you want make up a new language and teach it to your soon to be cult like following.

#nerdsunite

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#NoRegrets: When to play the "I love you card"

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @SaintPepsi

Many of us hold the words, “I love you” in high regard; higher than almost any phrase we have in our language or any any language for that matter. Recently, Ashleigh and I have been working on an article about the phrase, “I love you.” So, that has left me thinking a lot about love ... how people interpret it, and when it happens. From what I have seen we tend to hold on to those words till we absolutely know we can say them and receive them in return. There is without a doubt a level of fear when it comes to playing the "I love you card." Does this mean you aren't in love with someone before you say it? The heart wants what the heart wants. We can't control it's desires any more than we can a caged rabid pit-bull. Love isn't a choice we make. It's not something we can decide to do at our own discretion; love happens and we have to deal with it. We have to press those feelings down or let them explode out of our mouths like word vomit.  Deciding when to let them loose is the real game.

So lets say I've been dating a girl for about a month now and we are really clicking.  I know I'm fond of her but do I love her? It's not about whether you do or don't, if you start a relationship then isn't it your intention is to love that person? It's not to hold your heart back just in case this isn't the one. They are all the one. If you go into any relationship holding back on wanting to be with someone for fear they won't love you back you will never find love. Still we bait our time and wait to say it. It's nice to be sure you love someone. What you are really waiting for is when you are sure they are in love with you too. If you are really romantically invested in someone you love them. End of story. You have given them a piece of your heart. You want to share parts of yourself with them to bridge the trust gap. So you can let them see the person inside you, that you want so desperately to be loved. In fact we should start our counting of anniversary months; as often young relationships do based around when you both agree you are in love with each other. Not when the relationship starts. Lets face it holding on to dates is really confirming that you are in love with the other person. So start it around something that matters. The first time you both agreed to love each other verbally. Not when you decided to try each other on to see if you fit right.

There may be soul mates; but to say you can only fall in love once is the biggest pile of steaming cow shit I have ever heard. You fall in love over and over again through out your life. Generally, it isn't convenient. Sometimes you will fall for a person in a relationship, a person with drama, a person with baggage, and or crazy tendencies. Worse still are people you haven't even met, the beauty and curse of social media is it establishes amazing connections that are based only on communication and inherent trust that this person is who they say they are. Thank you skype for your ease at confirmation of self. Still you meet people that are so perfect for you yet live so far away. The fantasy is of the possibility that this relationship becomes a reality and tangible. This can easily be filed under love as well. We can't help it, it's not our choice who we fall in love with. We only get to choose how and when to tell them about it. If you are my friend and we have talked for hours over the weirdest range of topics I will tell you right now, I love you! If you are a girl that I like and that I am actively perusing chances are my heart fell for you already I'm just waiting for my mind to catch up and make the verbal call.

It's the oldest form of wall building. Stopping yourself from saying you love someone. Fear of being hurt is as powerful as acceptance of love. Building up walls to keep your stoic demeanor. Giving that flash of being ok when you know you're not with the person you want to be with. Laying on one side of a bed wondering what it would be like to have someone close enough to touch.  That connection, that desire we all hold on to. That's the end game.  The life you lead should have one regret, that you didn't say you loved someone when you did. Truly, this is the one thing you can always look back on and recall as something you should have done. Lost chances, lost passions, and lost time spent pining. Everything else in your life, bad decisions, missteps, and wrong turns. Sure you can call them regrets but they all fashioned you into who you are right now, but they are lessons in life. Not telling someone you loved them when you did though. That can be lost forever. That moment when you both look into each others eyes, knowing that you both want to say it and you see the wheels in your heads turning and telling you not to- to protect yourself, and then later leaving and kicking yourself for not acting on that moment. That is always regrettable. Take your moments and live them with out regrets. Tell that person you love them and if they don't respond. Oh well! They know it now. It's their turn to address their own walls. No regrets, no lost chances. Love life! Live life. 

#NOREGRETS

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Inside the #Nerdy Noggin: Understanding the Spank Bank

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @SaintPepsi

It's time again for another jump into just what makes us guys tick ... a man's secret revealed. Dun Dun DUN!!!! Ok, it's not a big secret. Hell most of you have probably heard of it or joked about it. The Spank Bank. As one would assume it's a reservoir of images and memories we boys call upon when porn isn't available. I'm sure girls have something like this as well, but I'm not a girl so I'm not going to talk for them. The true misconception comes from what actually goes into a spank bank.  Some might assume it's images of porn you saw at some point ... not so much. 

Porn is on a different level of arousal. You use porn to facilitate an immediate reaction to stimulation - you want to cum.  You look at whatever gets you off and visually as most guys are programmed we reach our climax.

The spank bank comes from reality though. Real experiences that we directly took part in. When I grew up porn wasn't easily accessible. Well, not the way it is today. You had to buy magazines, wait till midnight on Cinemax for the “Red Shoe Diaries”, or continually hit rewind on “Basic Instinct.” What you could find online at the time was pictures that took half a day to load. Yes I started jerking it before the internet hit it's porn hay day - so, I relied mostly on the spank bank. These were instances where I was sexually involved with another girl, or saw girls in less than full attire, and even brief brushes with a boob. (Who knows it was high school.) If you weren't part of the in crowd sex wasn't exactly easy to come by. So you create this partition in your mind where you kept in amazing clarity a mix of all of what you felt in that moment. Drawing from that, you were able to turn yourself on and act on it in the privacy of your own room.

When I got to college though the ability to see girls in all their beauty with all their mysteries revealed became much easier. It was that whole notion that partying and drunken debauchery was what us young folks had to do as a right of passage. Suddenly, a spank bank that was littered with a few images and encounters that filled up faster than a pirates chest of gold. This is when you start the great deletion. You access that partition and start to toss events like a boob brush, or a panty shot in room 104 science class. They were no longer necessary. You had a rich collection and the size of it surpassed your once assumed particular partition. Especially, once you actually had sex.  After sex everything else was just nonessential. Each partner got wrapped up into one folder in the brain and cropped and spliced together into the perfect sexual experience. For example if you had sex with a girl some 15 times you took the best moments from each of those experiences and put them into one seamless reel of triumph.

This is what the spank bank is. It's that mental pool of memories you keep crystal clear so you have a place to go on those stormy nights when the power goes out. Personally, I think men should use the spank bank more often because it keeps the old brain functioning at a higher level. The whole masturbation process comes from inside and the same feelings, thoughts, and emotions come racing back through you like some beautiful drug.  You access the part of you that responds to sexuality in the proper way instead of merely getting your rocks off by looking at dirty pictures. The imagination can take you back with astounding results. Now I'm not a man whore. I don't have years of bed post notches to my credit.  Still the experiences I have had, have been with girls I connected with and loved.  So the pleasure I get comes directly from a pure source of sexuality and I feel it is more intense. I'm still under the assumption that having sex without a connection is just the same as an extended form of masturbation. Using a girl as a plaything to reach your ends... I mean you really could have achieved on your own. It's that connection that makes sex blow your mind. So it's that connection, that power from true sexual interactions that make the spank bank so much more than a means to an ends.

So as far as the spank bank is concerned, it's a powerful fuel to a fire you created. It will keep your mind working at a level it should and encourages new exploration in your imagination and in the bedroom. Best of all you don't have to worry about anyone finding it when they are on your computer. You don't have to worry about friends chastising you for your taste in fetishes. It's all in your head and so far in the safest lock box you have. Well at least until those guys from inception dream steal it.

#nerdsunite

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#NerdsUnite: How Bout Some Uncomfortable Laughter??

 #TalkNerdyToMeLover's @SaintPepsi

As some of you out there may or may not know, I participate in poetry slams at a local dive bar Auntie Mae's. A nationally recognized slam poetry competitor, Michael Mlekodaj, who also hosts the “poetry nights” at Maes. He is connected with and has invited several great poets and writers to Manhattan, KS. Naturally, I was pleased to find a traveling group of slam poets called “Uncomfortable Laughter”, stepping up on stage to present us with their memorized and well delivered words of wisdom.

Allow me to begin with Kait Rokowski. Although she appears mousy and cute, her words bit hard at current social doctrine. The poem, “Bridalplasty”, delivered deep cutting and well aimed piercing points, slicing through the typical obsession that idealized perfection has brought us to. Girls with self-image problems take everything society gives them at birth and churn out another plastic doll, unrecognizable to the men that found them beautiful before they cut away their family’s given gifts. She was a delight to listen to and I was sad when she wasn't able to come back for her last two poems due to her apple allergy --some moron in the bar brought an apple. Really, dude! He could have bought a Woodchuck Apple Cider and called it good. I bought her book because she didn't have a CD available for purchase.

Next up, the powerful Wil “One L” Gibson. This is a man who has lived a few lives. He has loved, lost, and loved again. He has more stories to tell than most can make up. Living on the streets for a few years gave him a very interesting perspective on life. His experiences taught him how things can truly get you down and what things we take for granted. Rising above that life, he has become a powerful slam poet with verses so potent you'll think you just took a shot of 151. One of the poems he did was called “When You Get Older”. The poem describes the loss of his mom and the attempts his father made to compensate with a bottle in hand. The poem pulls at your heart-strings and shows what a community is willing to do to help. Saying he's hard is only something he has earned with his life. Saying he's soft is only essential for the heart that beats behind his powerful stoic demeanor.

Beau Williams is a wordsmith if ever I saw one. He spins together words like hand sewn garments of an entire wardrobe. His words create images so vividly that Tolkien would have stopped to analyze the way he described things. I have never heard love described so passionately and with such surprising and yet truthful illustrations. I felt like I was hit on the head and instead of colors spinning before my eyes were the images of perfect parallels he had drawn so masterfully. I recommend any of his poems. They cut through the mundane like a scalpel through skin. Favorite line, “When she speaks, my legs become semicolons. I forget how to use them.” That line stayed with me a week after hearing him speak it. In this world of 30 second commercials and viral video clips, for one line to stay with you says a lot about the person who wrote it.

Lastly, Ryan McLellan became my favorite poet that night because I related to him the most. His English teaching background and punk rock roots cut clear paths for his surprisingly whimsical and yet poignant dialog. He tells tales like a troubadour and sweeps your assumptions about poetry out the door. He recited a poem that presents the idea that “till death do us part” isn't always the end. Finding himself in a relationship with a dead girl. My favorite line from his poem, “I drag your love around town in a coffin.” Later, he smiled at me for recognizing that his tattoo of a three eyed fish was from the “Simpsons” and not “Futurama” as most of today's youth would have guessed. His stories dance across my mind and I smile to hear them told live or on CD. I am inspired to write because of single lines in his verse and needless to say, the poem in it's entirety. He is clever (oh so very clever) and he strikes a cord with anyone that went to punk shows, loved till they lost, and who demanded but were always denied a voice in the state funded schools.

All together this group of rag tag, road weary warriors for spoken word were amazing to behold. Generally, I enjoy listening to any readings. These performers, however, were so well rehearsed that they were an inspiration. So thanks to you, “Uncomfortable Laughter”, and your free verse ways of making me wish to be a better open-mic poet. Maybe I'll see you on stage again in a slam poetry setting, dueling words like six shooters and we can go grab a beer and a smoke after wards. I'd like that. As for you, Internet, stalk these four poets. They will surely impress you!

Check out their tumblr over yonder! and click here to follow Jordan on Twitter!

#nerdsunite

Hi, my name is @SaintPepsi ... and I am a #Christian

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @SaintPepsi

I was born and raised a Christian.  I've believed in God all my life.  I still do.  I know... I know I'm not enlightened or whatever.  Christianity is what I believe in and I know why I believe in it, which is more than I can say for most of the faithless flock that are guilt ridden with issues that have been misinterpreted by trusted leaders. In this current political climate, however, I have never been so ashamed of the word Christian. I know many Christians who are good people and don't swing out into the crazy zone. However, it seems like the people with the microphones, the people who are spear heading the agenda of God (seeing as they love the word agenda so much), are the individuals who have turned the religion I once gained peace from into one of the greatest war engines for hate I have ever seen.  I realize that the major factions of God fearing individuals:  Christians, Muslims, Jews, all have blood on their hands for mass amounts of wars in the past.  Don't jump down my throat on this one, its history. Hell, it's now!  I studied this, I went to college to come be a minister (totally serious on that one) for a religion that seeks to spread the love of God.  All I hear now is hate, hate, and more hate.  Hate is passed off as loving the sinner, but not the sin.  This is bullshit!  I can smell it as soon as their mouth opens.  These people actually rationalize hatred with the assumed judgment of God, a being they so easily speak for yet always seem to misquote.  These miscreants steal single lines from entire books and use them as ammunition against anything they believe is against God. Bearing the cross as if they, themselves, bore the weight of the world’s sins, a weight worth 30 silver coins.

Homosexuality?  Well, of course that's bad.  People shouldn’t love each other! That kind of love involves “dirty” sex... but, so does heterosexual love.  No way, though!  Gays have an agenda to upend the church and all its teachings.  I have never seen any of my gay friends try to shove their sexuality in anyone’s face.  I have never on any occasion seen a gay person openly face someone and say, "I think you should be gay because it's natural and you won't burn in hell."  Darker still, are the examples of certain “sins” that these advocates for hate are perpetuating.  If all sin is sinful in the eyes of God, why are they always so focused on so-called sexual deviancy?  Violence seems to have become just a way of life and more importantly, violence is an answer to God's intentions.  Its all gotten so backwards it makes me sick to my stomach.  I recently went with some gay friends of mine to a church-sponsored meeting for an amendment that will allow gays to obtain protected status in Kansas, so that homosexuals would have the same privileges as heterosexuals under the same rights as race, gender, and age.  If anything, I could best describe the scenario as watching a KKK meeting where no one cared about wearing their hoods.  It's practical and even morally accepted to hate homosexuality in the church.  Taking the homosexual hatred out of the mix you still have a populous that seems to hang on the words of FOX news  -the only “moral” news organization, the mouth piece for rationalization, the news room that turns hate and fear into money and bares the name of God down like a gavel of power.

Gandhi once said, "I like your Christ, but not your Christians," easily an applicable quote in these times.  This is no longer the mad ranting of the Westboro Baptist Church.  Sadder still, I live 45 minutes away from that damned (no pun intended) place.  I asked a close Christian friend of mine how he feels about the direction the church is going and he said, "It's difficult.  As soon as you say the word Christian people tune you out."  The reality of all this is Christian churches have buried their heads so far into the sand, standing on hate and screaming, "LA, LA, LA!  I can't hear you," that the people in the church whom are caring, trying to do good, and love others, cannot associate with the political brand name of Christ or God.  A brand name used over and over again in politics.  Currently, I think the big three religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, have become so pro-war that none of them will ever come back from it.  Currently, there is no love between the children of Abraham and their future seems bleak.   Why would anyone want their names connected to the mass atrocities perpetuated in the names of these houses under one God. . I'm tired of it all.  From the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Israel, to the attacks on political figures, the beating of homosexuals, and the bombings on abortion clinics, all acts are rationalized by fear and intolerance and much like Anne Rice who found God and discovered that His followers are nuts. 

I happen to believe in a god.  I believe that there must be a starting point and that something contributed in putting all that exists together.  Chastise me all you like, but believing in the brand name Christianity, Judaism, or Islam is just something I fear I cannot do anymore.  It's true, I think that if Jesus comes back today and sees where his followers have taken his words through incorrect interpretation, he'd turn around and go home knowing no one had really listened to him, but instead just used his teachings as a means to an end.  What was the greatest commandment again? Oh right!  Love your neighbor as you would love yourself.  Well, people, start loving and stop hating and maybe there will be something to salvage when the end of it all comes. Whenever that happens.

A very clever atheist and wonderfully clear commentator on things, based on his ability to say what he thinks without caring about the political correctness, posted this video.  If you really want to know how the world sees the followers of God who rant and rave and spill hate with every vile word, this man shows it clearly and concisely:

Follow him @patcondell

If you like, call me a bad Christian, call me a faithless, blasphemer that will go to hell.  I'll tell you this much, in a world that believes that silence equals acceptance. That judges others based on their sexual orientation, ethnicity, nationality, and gender, and deems only a selection of people worthy to judge others, as if God, himself, is speaking through them... well is that a brand of religion you would wear with pride?

#nerdsunite