Far be it from me to criticize the Xanganets, lest I join in making such a thing en vogue, but when I see a page full of blog titles, most of which contain "Xanga," then I get concerned.  Disappointed?  No, too strong.  Concerned sounds better, as in it pains my heart.  There's nothing like a break from blogging, for the sake of my real life, to really put all of this into perspective.  That, and what else will I do while I'm stuck with boring baseball season until August, right?  Blog, it is. 

I'm really amused at this talk of idea-stealing, as if anyone is saying something that hasn't been said around here at some point since Xanga's inception.  That's what happens when you water down current event news articles for the sake of blog material.  Unfortunately, it's all been said, before, especially if we're talking about the hot topics that make political elections mundane...er, RIVETING!  I'm considering removing the words "abortion," "gay," "sex," "marriage," "trolls," and "Twilight" from my dictionaries, since I've seen the words so often and so eloquently discussed that they serve no purpose in the reference books that define them (and as soon as I see  one with "Twitter," I'll promptly black that out, also).  I'll never, again, forget that burqas adversely affect the woman who wear them... no, wait... they don't... or...yes, they do.  To some they do, to others they do not... but I probably could have wagered a bet that it goes both ways, all on my own.  But now I know without having to think much about it, or investigate the issue for myself.  Thanks, technology.  Now, we don't have to do anything, because it's all been done electronically, either by computers or other people in far-away places.  This could be why our brains aren't getting any larger.

Thus, I believe in striving for creativity and originality, without metablogging too much about how there isn't much of it.  After all, it won't do much good for my internal health to complain that the wheel has not only been invented and updated by many others before me, even though I thought of it, first.  It's not my fault I was born so late.  The iPhone?  that was me, too, but oh well. 

But I can tell you about the new office I have.  Yes, complete with a panoramic view of the neighboring woods that will eventually be made into a vacant lot for an indentical office building, all in the name of commercial expansion! 

I have no complaints about the new space, except that the water is heinously bad.  I can handle standard bad water, but heinously bad makes me sip and say "Since when was 'Cesspool' a Vitamin Water flavor?"  Well, it must be, and we've got it, exclusively.  Ok, ok.  Never has staying hydrated felt so awful.  My kidneys don't know whether to thank me for drinking or curse me for doing the same.  I already knew, but now I REALLY understand why wine is so popular in Europe, if their water tastes anything at all like wrung socks after an acid rain storm.  Got it... forever.  Although, I'm not too sure why Canadians like beer so much.  You'd think melted glaciers would provide the purest and freshest water on Earth.  Perhaps a Toronto entrepreneur will one-up Snapple with the slogan "This IS the best stuff on Earth!"

Anyway, this woods view is pretty killer, you know.  There's a pleasant-looking creek carving its way through the... HEY!  [Me, putting together that bad water plus creek, nearby, MIGHT BE RELATED].  It's the polluted creek that has tainted my day.  I may bring my own water, and politely decline to drink from Mother Nature's own mouth. 

Well, at least it's good to know that my mental reasoning remains as sharp as ever. 

TheBigShowAtUD©

What's going on, here?  I thought the recession was limited to the economy.  Call me late-to-the-party, but is it me or has society's collective esteem dropped dramatically?  Yeah, dropped, like the first hill of a high roller-coaster, complete with that "should have eaten something else" feeling in my stomach.  The main differences are that my hands aren't up and I'm not screaming like a teen girl after a Zach Efron sighting, only to deny it later, like "What?  I was just in the moment!"  And then I go win myself an obnoxiously large stuffed animal, because I'm that good.

See?  "I'm that good."  That's what life is like when you put the "self" in self-esteem.  It starts with me.  No one has to acknowledge it, ahead of time, because I have the big red dogs and fuzzy snakes to prove it.  I'd invite you to my room to verify that for yourselves, but this is the Internet, and I'm older than some of you, so that might be construed as semi-creepy.  I don't want emails from your parents asking me what my "intentions" are.  I hate that question, especially when fathers ask.  I feel like saying "They're the same as what yours were when you dated your wife, dude.  Don't try to play me."  That's television sit-com material.

I'm wondering, though, why people practically make a living out of putting themselves down, and thinking they can't overcome life's difficulties because of... who-knows-what.  That's not some modest way of saying I have it all together, because I sure don't.  You guys knows that.  There are no less than five typos in this, guaranteed.  I think life is hard enough, already; the last thing I need to do is join my non-supporters in piling on myself about the mistakes I make, opportunities I miss, and regular failings that make me human.  Yeah, I eat late at night after I've brushed my teeth for the last time, and I haven't seen Love Actually, but that doesn't make me a bad person, nor does it mean that a woman won't one day love me, even though I have too much pride to type "Hello Kitty" into Wikipedia, and find out what the hype is all about.  I suppose I could ask, but I haven't spent much time with twelve-year-olds since I was... thirteen.

I'm far from perfect, but I don't focus on it, you know.  That's something to take for granted, since that won't ever change.  That's why I've made the decision to focus on what I do well that I can improve, to make sure my strengths outweigh my weakness... both of them.  You want another one?  Well, I don't drink diet drinks, because I like real sugar.  I know, I know.  Not hot, and you're saying "No wonder he's single.  pfft."  Somehow, that doesn't really stop me from believing in myself when I'm out with a friend and I have to be the wingman.  I have all of the confidence in the world that I can embarrass him sufficiently enough to make him appear extra attractive to a group of strange women we'll never see again beyond that one moment in time.  See?  That's what healthy self-esteem sounds like.

Seriously, though.  You guys are better than you let yourselves believe.  I can see it, and you're a bunch of strangers to me.  I'm not even sure that's you in your profile picture.  Still, it's a good thing that somewhere in every self-deprecating person, there's a small voice that reminds you of several redeeming qualities that you choose to allow to go unnoticed.  Turn it up.  Your faults aren't going anywhere, you know.  There's always something wrong.  BUT your talents, interests, abilities, and confirmation from the people, like me, who appreciate you are the bridges you need to get over them.

Start building.  And be glad I'm not charging you for the motivational speech.  I'd be rich if I could conjure up some competence for public-speaking.

TheBigShowAtUD©

You know, Mrs. Mok, this is probably the best Featured Question I've seen since the last one I answered, and I forget what that was.  But just between you and me - and the nosy readers who don't think should be between just you and me.

What is the latest you have ever stayed up? Why were you up so late?

I do remember that time in my life when I stayed up horrendously late, for a good cause: GRADES.

By nature, I am a serious night owl.  College, that nourishing mother responsible for teaching essential life skills - such as time management, prioritizing, and don't eat the same thing everyday for a month - did little for me but take more money from me than I thought I had, and enable me to stay up ridiculously late for no other reason than because I didn't have parents to make me sleep at a decent time, every night.  That, and I played a lot of Counterstrike, Quake, and The Sims.  But I blame school, nonetheless.  This is America, you know; it's always someone else's fault.

The latest I have ever stayed up was all.night.long.  Yeah, let the afformentioned nosy readers and Xanga censorship committee assume that this is some PG-13 scandal I'm talking about, but WE know they're wrong.  I'm talking about something entirely academic.   Law school, in fact, where education meets bad judgment.  Just ask a lawyer.   On one particular night during my second year in law school, I spent nearly all day writing an appellate brief.  Yeah, don't worry about that is.  Just think of it as hell-on-paper, with a system of citation that only makes sense to Harvard students and other elites who made the system in the first place.  You may scold me for waiting so long to start, but just remember that I was in my early twenties with much less maturity than I have now (so you can imagine how little maturity that must have been).  I tried, though; I skipped all of my classes to work on it.   A more diligent student would have had plenty of time, even after procrastinating, but not me.  I had food to eat; naps to take; Dexter's Laboratory to watch; and blogs to write, since I was new to Xanga, back then.

Sometime around 3am, I was wide-awake, full from eating a box of Ho-Hos (har har) and drinking several twenty ounce bottles of Mountain Dew.  I started hate my life.  The fake case I had to argue wasn't that good, anyway.  I didn't really care about I could find some laws to absolve little Jimmy Suarez from going to jail after skipping school to sell drugs in a jurisdiction that had strict laws against truancy... and selling drugs.  Luckily, there's a point during one's hurtling toward exhaustion that genius occurs.  And for me, that "genius" was asking myself "What would Denny Crane do?"  [William Shatner's character on Boston Legal, of course].  Then I remembered that he had been sufficiently roughed up by the interrogating officers, so maybe his confession could be suppressed, and he'd be free and back on the streets in NO TIME.   Just doing my job, you know.  I don't remember what I decided, but it was probably semi-underhanded..  It was just a paper, and not my real life. 

And then came the bad decision-making (you know, aside from procrastion, Ho-Hos, Mountain Dew, napping, and Cartoon Network).  A smart person would have finished the paper and emailed it, and realized s/he would be worthless to the world while being so sleep-deprived.  However, I went to classes, anyway, and not the class for which the paper was due.  No, I brought my A-game, and went to the other ones, just to go, because I was (not) thinking, much like a drunk guy on his birthday, you know.  That, and I wanted to feel like a trooper.  Bragging rights are serious business.  Not that I was ever a drunk guy making bad decisions on his birthday, of course.  But I can imagine.  I probably fell asleep a few times in class.  I don't remember, but I vaguely remember something about being able to adopt one's spouse for estate planning purposes.  Intriguing, no?   No, not really.  You're right. 

So, instead of going out that night, I just slept and missed a few of the season finales I really intended to watch that night.  Sweet.  Never again, Mrs. Mok.  Never, ever again.

TheBigShowAtUD©

I just answered this Featured Question because Mrs. Mok wrote it; you can answer it too, but don't copy mine, or ELSE!