i was thinking today about my friends and was amazed that i have any at all.  not for the normal emo, insecure reasons that most people are amazed to find that they have any friends at all (e.g. that they smell funny, have no personality, that they stare at your breasts/crotch/mole/whatever), but because i have a fairly idiosyncratic negligence of most of my friends.  it all comes down to my recently discovered phonophobia.

i don’t like to talk to my local friends over the phone – it’s easier to send them an email or message them on their phones so that they can consume my correspondence at their convenience.  i hardly call my parents more than three times a month. my last girlfriend dumped my ass over the phone. hell, the very last phone call that i had was bad news, so why would i think of the phone as a bearer of good tidings?  i’m not sure if this is something clinical or just a temporary thing, but i found recently that i hate talking on the phone.  i love to see people face to face and i don’t usually have trouble dealing with people in a general sense.  i’ve isolated several things about talking on the phone that just rub me the wrong way.
the first reason is that i lack visual cues as to when the other person is done talking, and i typically try and talk before the other person is done, or leave long pauses waiting for the other person to continue which make me sound stupid.  if talking on the phone was a skill like a dungeons and dragons character class, i’d be like a zeroth level  phonographer.  telephone solicitors – they’d be like 20th level.  i’m so far beneath an average skill level in carrying on a phone conversation, it astounds me.  seriously.

then there’s the second reason which is that good news is rarely communicated over the phone.  say you’re calling someone you love – well, you’re usually expressing the despair of not being with them right then and there – that’s sort of negative.  if you’re talking to someone that you don’t like – then that’s intrinsically negative.  if you’re talking to someone near-by, then why don’t you just go over there and talk to them in person, and are you keeping them from doing something that they rather should be doing?  negative.

my final reason is that i have an overdeveloped sense of not wanting to inconvenience or hinder anyone – which extends to keeping them on the phone.  i tend to believe that most of my friends have 24 -96 better things that they could be doing at the exact moment that i am calling them, and so i am probably keeping them from doing those things at the exact moment that i am calling them.

that’s why i prefer things like email or blogs or even – sigh – facebook to communicate to my friends what i’m doing. 

so what is the profile of my average great friend?  someone who recognizes that i hate the phone, can go for long periods of time without “hearing” from me, and who, when i see them next face-to-face, will recognize that i love them just as much or more than the last time i saw them face-to-face.

i recognize that this is abnormal.  i am working on fixing it.  i’m willing at this point to declare 2008 george’s year of the phone, where i make better use of my unlimited long distance plan and cellular plan, and bother the hell out of all of my friends.  but until then, just hold on.  i know that you’re out there and i’ll try and get over this.  or get a blackberry or something that we can message on.

- g

song of the day for admiring the friends who still try and keep in touch with you: it’s not unusual, tom jones

(From my email to the company, announcing our results)

This weekend, imason's Toronto Marathon team made a glorious return to the 13th annual event, representing in the only way we know how - by overcoming impossible odds and unrealistic expectations to place 37th out of 97 corporate relay contestants, with a total time of 3:41:37.1.  Not bad for a team that had virtually no formal training and composed of a pair of supermodels, a clubbing, day-trading playboy, a former clubbing playboy, an expecting father, a hockey thug, a senior citizen from Edmonton, and well… a marketing guy.

Here are some other ways of interpreting our performance:

• we soundly demolished one of the two Mercer teams (the one that placed dead last);
• we beat both the Johnson & Johnson (89) and PWC IT (81) teams who had very pretty and young girls picking up their race packages Friday morning;
• our average pace per kilometre was 5:16, which is pretty good, considering that i run fairly regularly and typically clock between 5:15 - 5:30/km… so non-runners, hold your heads up high!!!

Notable moments/statistics:

• Greatest positive increase in elevation - Angela ("I can run 5km straight uphill and still look good enough to marry royalty") J:  over 50m incline over 1 full km;
• Greatest negative increase in elevation - Nariman ("There's nothing I can't do better than 97% of everyone with two day's notice") H:  almost 100m over the entire leg, yielding possibly the fastest section time (along with his superior physical strength and speed);
• Longest-section - Jim ("I cannot be stopped by any force in nature or made by man") S: whose 7km leg was dishearteningly lengthened by having to run all the way around college park before he could reach the college park finish line;
• Most stoic running warrior: Cosmin ("If the run is outdoors, then I can still legally smoke") O: in spite of only recently quitting smoking and having to lower his Coca-cola intake to three pre-race cans to avoid cascading myocardial explosion, dug deep into his highly-classified military training to deliver superb results;
• Most disconcerting announcement: Noorez ("Why did no one think I had it in me") K:  who called me after his hand-off to Salma to inform me that he had dropped the ball by running his leg in like 23 minutes and that I would have to run my leg in under 20 to make up for it… i took 24 minutes.
• Worst transition: Salma ("I can kick all your asses all up and down this town") N. to George ("Whadya mean I have to run now?") Pechtol at km-30:  where basically Salma had to smash into me to get me going because i was busy texting Jim that I would be starting soon;
• Worst table service ever - Over Easy (208 Bloor St. W):  granted, they were busy, but we had no ketchup, no side plates for toast, had chipped glasses for juice, the saddest excuse for "home fries" ever, forgotten orders, but one celebrity sighting (sighted by me… apparently, no one else in the restaurant was concerned);
• Highest number of group emails sent complaining about the difficulty of his section: Andrew ("If I complain enough, then when I make it look easy, everyone will think that I had to work hard") S, for sending no fewer than 39 emails (+/- 38 emails) complaining about the "hill" he had to run up, when in fact, Angela did.

A huge thanks to all of our courageous athletes for coming out on a brisk autumn morning to show team spirit and what they were made of.  And a huge thanks to imason for generously sponsoring the team and without whom I might never realize that I will never be able to (want badly enough to) actually run a full marathon.  Finally, thanks to our team captain, Jim, for all of his efforts to coordinate the team in spite of a constant work schedule and the fact that he has been 1,200km away with a broken laptop.

Way to go team!!!  Proving once again that even though we might be full of "unhandled exceptions" we can still "run"!!!

- g

there comes a time in every blogger's life when he or she realizes that he or she cannot single-handedly populate the interweb with content. that is why the internet gods created things like youtube and wikipedia to fill in the missing blanks where bloggers have either (a) too much work to do (2) too many cats climbing all over them in every single blessed freaking waking moment of his or her ever-loving lives to spend even 10 seconds at the keyboard without someone trying to paw out an order for delivery black forest ham on the keyboard or to scratch your forearm.

sigh. anyway - here are the best things that i've ever seen on the internet today (with thanks to all of the people from whom i stole all of these fantabulous links):

1. an online debate on the qualitative issues surrounding dating in the city... incomparably frank and sadly, brutally illustrative of what is wrong with dating expectations these days (click here to eavesdrop);
2. if i liked country music, junior brown would be my favouite artist. not only has he recoreded tracks for such mega-stars as spongebob squarepants, but his awesome combination electric-slide guitar is a beauty and he's an incomparable master with it;
   
3. finally, i've discovered a new religion - the church of the technoviking. when i saw this, i realized that my purpose in life was to spread the word of technoviking so that all the world could be remade in his image. all heil the technoviking!!!
   
4. this is a postscript to my original post. i went to my friend dar's website, and somehow, i failed to notice this... it's a "translation" of a bollywood music video that is utterly hilarious!!! i only feel comfortable posting this because i love bollywood videos, but felt alienated because i couldn't sing along... now we all can!!!
   

- g