Really. I mean for this to help you. Just smile. You look fantastic when you smile.

I don’t quite know how the kissy face originated, but it seems to happen most often when women take group photos. Suddenly you’re all rock star models!

It’s one of those things like Ugg Boots or puffy North Face coats: When you’re all doing the same thing together, you think you look great doing so. Unfortunately, everyone just ends up looking silly.

There should be an Flickr app for replacing kissy faces with smiles. It would salvage millions of unfortunate photos.

I think the general concept of making unfortunate faces at the camera goes well beyond the kissy face, but it seems to me that most silly faces get discontinued after a while. For example, for most of middle and high school, I decided it would be better to make the following face at the camera instead of smiling. It was my trademark look, but really, it was a defense mechanism because I had braces. I ruined hundreds of photos with this face. Fortunately I stopped doing it after I got my braces off.

Why should you care about how I think you look in photos? You shouldn’t. Rather, think ahead 60 years to when you look back in your photo album to relive the good ole days. You’ll smile fondly at the photos and remember how young and naive and unwrinkly you were. You’ll turn page after page of the album and see the kissy face, time after time. And I’d bet anything that you’ll think, “I really wish I had smiled instead of making that ridiculous face.”

Also, somewhat related to photos, I’ve started a Tumblr. There’s no need to follow it if you already follow this blog, as it will merely contain a small snippet embedded in a photo every day to link to the full blog entry here, but if it’s easier for you to follow me there, it’s there for you. Just like this guy will always be there for you on a rainy day:

I’m very aware of the latter–I truly don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable or offend anyone. Every once in a while I encounter a conversationalist who will seem to intentionally push people’s buttons, not for the sake of deeper or more fun conversation, but just for the sake of getting a reaction out of people. That’s not cool.

Then there’s the opposite end of the spectrum–people who cut a conversation short by saying “TMI” (Too Much Information). I most often see this in online conversations, but it happens in real life too.

I get the feeling that 9 out of 10 times when someone says TMI, it’s not that they’re uncomfortable, it’s that they want to be the one to take the “higher ground” in the conversation. It’s a power play–not a big one, but a subtle one. Because really, especially in Facebook or blog comments, if you truly feel like people are oversharing, you’d just walk away from the conversation. You wouldn’t say anything.

If you’re a person who says “TMI,” think about why you say it. Are you trying to make the conversation better? If not, don’t say it.

I wish people said “TLI” more often (or ever). Too Little Information. It says, “Yes, I know this is a little weird that we’re talking about belly button lint, but since we’re here, let’s do this topic justice. Anything goes. Tell me more.”

Are a TMI or a TLI person?

Last year, a young woman in the Marines asked Justin Timberlake to the Marine Corps Ball. He accepted.

Soon afterward, another Marine asked Mila Kunis to another Marine Corps Ball. She also accepted.

Then, just a few days ago, a cancer-stricken high schooler asked Taylor Swift to the prom. She declined, but she instead invited him to attend an awards show as her date.

Here’s the thing: Kudos for having the guts to ask. Even asking a fellow high schooler takes guts, much less a famous person. Also, kudos to Timberlake, Kunis, and Swift for accepting. Good publicity, sure, but also very cool.

But please, people, stop doing this.

Okay, fine, so maybe there's ONE celebrity that I wouldn't mind going on a date with. That makes me just as creepy as these other people.

Part of it is that you’re putting celebrities in an incredibly uncomfortable position. If they say no, they look bad. If they say yes, they just agreed to go to the dance with a perfect stranger (more on that in a second).

Another part is that for every video that goes viral enough that a celebrity’s PR rep hears about it, there are thousands of videos that have about 3 views on YouTube. Just because you’re good at getting people to watch your video doesn’t mean you’re any more “worthy” to have a celebrity date. (Not that celebrities are any better than us common folk. It’s just that their job is making movies or albums, not going on dates with strangers.)

That brings me to my final point: It’s creepy.

Think about it. These people are asking total strangers to be their date to the dance. Think back to when you watched Friends every Thursday. Those people kind of felt like your friends, right? You knew their likes and dislikes, their quirks, their dating history.

Newsflash: You don’t know those people. On top of that, the people you think you know are actually just characters on a TV show. We don’t know what Timberlake or Kunis or Swift are like as people. We simply know their characters and their personalities.

Imagine tomorrow if you got on YouTube and watched an 18 year old go on and on about how much he wants to go to the prom with you. You’d be creeped out, wouldn’t you? Because it’s creepy.

What do you think? Would you ever ask out a celebrity on YouTube? Who?

Also, today marks the 6th anniversary of Twins Day, a day at my old job that was even creepier than people asking out celebrities on the Internet.

I’ve heard the phrase “everything happens for a reason” thousands of times. From strangers on Match.com to friends and family, it’s a very common phrase, and I don’t doubt that people believe it. We’re human. We want to feel like our lives have meaning, that we are part of something bigger than themselves.

I personally believe that we most certainly are part of something much bigger than ourselves–something so much bigger, in fact, that everything in our lives does not actually happen for a reason. Good things, bad things, little things, big things. Things happen, and we give them reason.

I don’t think this is a black and white rule–in fact, it’s mostly a fuzzy gray area. I think some things do actually happen for a reason. But we have absolutely no idea what those things are.

Why is this important for me to share? For that matter, why is it a pet peeve of mine? Because I think there are times when it’s a hurtful, dishonest thing to say or think, and there are other times, some of them life-defining moments, when personal responsibility is extremely important. Some examples of the two:

1. When a child falls down and scrapes his knee, did that happen for a reason? When a child gets cancer, is that for a reason? What about an adult? When you’re playing a videogame and you achieve a high score, is that for a greater reason? What about reading this blog entry? Is there a reason for that? My point is that “everything” is a huge, all-encompassing word. Think about it on a cellular or molecular level. Think about how many “things” happen every second, every millisecond. Do you truly believe that every one of those things happens for a reason? I believe in God, and I believe in reason, but I don’t believe that every single little thing happens for a reason. I believe that when a child scrapes his knee, God didn’t push him down to teach him a lesson. Maybe it’s just me, but I believe in a God that’s much bigger than a schoolyard bully.
2. When you succeed at something, does that just “happen” out of thin air, or was the reason that you worked hard at it and you persevered and you deserve it? And when you fail at something, does that just “happen,” or did you personally come up short? There is great strength in admitting that you don’t have complete control over your life, because you don’t. You could get hit by a car tomorrow and there’s a 97% chance that you couldn’t have done anything to prevent it. But that 3% matters. Take responsibility for that 3% and make the world what you want it to be. The world is not out to get you.

I believe that everything does not happen for a reason. Rather, I believe that some things happen for a reason. What do you believe?

The soundtrack is awesome. There are three or four recurring songs that are intense and unique and kind of a mix of modern alternative and 80s pop. I knew as I was watching the movie that I wanted to buy the songs.

But when I hopped on iTunes, I saw that all but one of the songs had the dreaded label “album only.” The same was the case over on Amazon. Thus, to get the four songs I really wanted, I had to buy an album of extraneous sound effects. I’m happy to pay $.99 or even $1.29 for a song, but $14.99 for four songs? Not gonna do it.

Why do some studios do this? Do they really think it makes people more likely to buy the album if they package all the songs together? Rather, I think it makes people more likely to illegally download the songs they want. I don’t do that (really), but I think studios are leaving money on the table as a result.

The whole idea behind digital music is that you get to pick what you like and leave out what you don’t. “Album only” goes completely against that.

I don’t run into this all that often anymore, but it still happens from time to time. What’s the last time it happened to you, and how did you respond?

(Now I’m thinking I should have made this a True Tale of Survival and responded by running around naked. Next time…)

Can you guess which one I tried?

The other day a friend told me about a new line of drinks they had discovered. It’s this brand called Neuro, and each of the 8 different varieties contain a different mix of ingredients that have very different effects.

For example, my friend had recently tried the NeuroSleep drink, and she said she passed out on her couch halfway through the bottle. Usually I’m pretty dubious about these types of drinks, but her testimonial made me curious.

So I ran out to Walgreens to buy a few bottles. Naturally I had to try NeuroGasm, which “provides you with the right type of energy when you need it most.”

However, one sip in and I realized that the drink contained one of my biggest pet peeves: fake sugar.

Fake sugar is the bane of my existence. I’ll get a headache within 30 minutes of drinking or eating something containing fake sugar.Plus, to me, it doesn’t taste good at all.

Really, this is a personal pet peeve–I’m not trying to convince someone that they shouldn’t consume drinks with fake sugar. It’s just annoying when I encounter what would be a perfectly delicious drink and then I realize that it contains sucralose or one of its variants.

Does anyone else have this problem?

This was before Monster.com and craigslist; companies posted jobs in the classifieds section of the newspaper back then. I was pursuing a degree in marketing at that point, so I went through the paper and circled all the marketing jobs.

I sent my resume to a company that was looking for a “marketing account executive.” I thought I was aiming a bit high, but it was worth a shot.

During the first “interview,” I found it a little odd that the manager wouldn’t tell me what the job was or what the company did. He kept saying that in less than a year, I could be running an office of my own, just like him. I told him that I was a rising sophomore in college and that I was just looking for a summer job; he winked and said, “We’ll see if you want to go back to school after a summer on the job.” Clearly he thought the company was great , and I didn’t have any other prospects yet, so I agreed to come back at 8:00 am the next day for a follow up interview.

Can you name what Amy Adams was selling on The Office?

When I showed up that morning, I was assigned to my interviewer, who ushered me to his car with two other men. My interviewer was a young guy, maybe 20 or 21, and the other two men were haggard and older. I asked where we were going, and the young guy said, “This is part of the interview.”

Then we drove off.

The young guy peppered me with questions for a good 10 minutes before I could turn the questions back around to him. I finally got the first clear answer about what they did: They sold coupon packs for Pizza Hut. $20 for a sheet of coupons.

“Oh, okay,” I said. I knew immediately I wasn’t going to take the job. “So, are you going to watch me make a sale and then we’ll go back to the office?”

The young guy shook his head. “We’re making sales all day.”

It hit me. This “marketing interview” was actually me shadowing coupon salesmen for an entire workday. I was about to spend eight hours going door to door in a terrible neighborhood.

I considered trying to get out of it. Calling a cab or my mother. But I told myself to suck it up, deal with it, and try to learn something. You know what I learned?

1. Many jobs listed under “marketing” are actually “sales.” Dinky little companies flat-out lie about this. There is a huge difference between the two. Marketing involves developing a product or brand and figuring out how to tell the world about it. Sales is nothing other than getting someone to give you money for something else. All marketers are salesmen. Most salesmen are not marketers.
2. Don’t apply to work at any company that isn’t completely transparent about what they do in the job description. If they’re hiding something, it’s for a reason.
3. There are a surprising number of people home during the day in poor neighborhoods. Thank you, welfare.
4. People in poor neighborhoods are surprisingly friendly to random people, even salesmen.

28. Out of shape people who don’t take the stairs. (Or park in the farthest parking spot every time they go to the grocery store. Jared didn’t lose weight by driving to Subway, people.)

29. People who don’t use cruise control on the highway. (I used to be one of those people before I understood cruise control, and now I know how annoying I was.)

30. Unemployed people who watch TV all day. (Time is a HUGE gift. Don’t wallow when you could be doing something. Anything. Make something for Etsy. Write a handwritten letter to everyone you know. Volunteer. You’ll eventually get a job, but you won’t get that time back.)

31. People who forward “urgent” conspiracy theory e-mails to everyone in their address book without checking them out on Snopes.com first.

32. People who smoke with kids in the car. Or the house. That’s just…despicable.

33. People who click on dubious links in e-mails or on Twitter. (Computer viruses persist because we enable them.)

You microwave leftovers–let’s say spaghetti–for what seems like more than enough time. While it’s cooking, you set the coffee table with your milk, your diluted juice, your baby spinach salad (keeping one eye on it so Biddy doesn’t steal a leaf). Then you pull the steaming hot plate out of the oven.

You settle down at the table, turn on Game of Thrones, pile pillows around you, stick a fork into the spaghetti, and bring a well-balanced bite of noodle, sauce, and meat to your mouth.

And it’s cold.

Really cold. As if somehow you didn’t microwave it at all.

But you know you did. The plate is hot. You can see steam coming off the spaghetti. It has been heated. And yet it’s not hot.

How does this happen?!

I walk in with my grocery list on my iPhone, ready for a quick jaunt through the store. I grab a basket, thinking I only have a few items to buy.

20 minutes later, I’m stumbling through the store with a 40-pound basket in one hand, a ream of toilet paper in the other, and some Party Timez cat food dangling from my mouth (unopened).

Seriously, this happens way more often than it should. I think maybe it stems from an article I read that claimed that something like 30% of all grocery store cart handles are smeared with a discernible amount of human feces. I’m not into that. I think some of that comes from babies riding in the cart (which is a total pet please–remember how awesome riding in the cart was when you were a kid?), and babies can’t fit into handheld baskets.

But really, I just need to acknowledge that I’m going to buy more than I expect, and dislocating my shoulder while dragging a basket across the floor simply isn’t worth it. I should just suck it up and deal with the cart handle poop.

Either that or get another roommate who will grocery shop for me. I’ll work on that.