"H.A.G.S" means "Hey... Another Generic Sentiment"

"Hey there Dr. Q, I had lots of fun with you in [insert class here]! Stay cool. H.A.G.S!

Good luck next year at [insert high school/university here],

[signer's name here]"

-Every Yearbook Ever

I am one for creativity and individualism. I know when fitting in is appropriate (purple suit jacket not good for going to, say, the pool), but yearbooks have never been one of those times. Yearbooks sum up the entirety of at least 180 days in your relationship with a person, or should, anyways. Wishing them a great summer is granted, DON'T ABBREVIATE IT!!!

Damn, people! Can't you at least think of ONE thing that you and that person shared in 180 days? I've spent time with people in line to buy a pack of gum and fill up the gas tank and could think of something meaningful or at least funny to say about/to them.

To those of you out there who read this and sign full pages of comments for your friends, complete with a funny little doodle, I salute you. THAT'S the sort of thing that makes me want to pull down a yearbook from the shelf and smile at what once was. But an abbreviation and a signature? It's like you're writing me a check... a very very cheap, unthoughtful check. One without any personality on it, like having the bank name instead of Elmo or Scooby Doo or Batman in the background. (For the record, I have a Snoopy checkbook).

Taking a tangent from my brazen beration on antisimpatico aquaintances, I had a strange revelation at a baseball game today...

It is utterly and entirely impossible to be unhappy while eating marshmallows.

Period.

Since when have you heard of someone "bitterly eating his gooey and slightly burnt marshmallow"? Or someone "weeping as she took another fluffed mass of sugar from the bag and popped it in her mouth"?

Forget it. I ate a whole bag and was in a nirvana of relaxation and contentness. It's the last legal high, I swear. Try it sometime.

Back to my main point, don't shortchange people by signing badly in their yearbook.

...Even better.

Don't shortchange people by halfway knowing them. Take time to get to know people around you. As a rule of thumb, try to know enough about them so you could sign a yearbook if they asked.

WITHOUT saying H.A.G.S.

Doctor out.

Prologue

"Buy the ticket, take the ride." - Hunter S. Thompson

Pure gonzo journalism. I never realized that incoherent yet highly revealing scribblings actually were a valid media form until I heard the term used.
...weird.
This is my space, and I'm not talking about that fool Tom and his top 8 tomfoolery. I mean this is where I share the truth(?).

I say truth(?) because really what is truth anymore?
Some kid the other day posted a quote he crafted himself on wikipedia attributed to a musician who had died a few hours before. Newspapers and magazines picked it up and printed it as the singer's quote. Had the kid not come out? Would've been fact. Books written later would've picked it up from magazines and publications and then scholars would use the books as proof. The politicians and sages and authorities (when not lying to get ahead), can quite easily be presenting truth(?) as truth and not even realize it.

We live in a strange and fantastic time. If you blink, you probably just missed more than you could've seen anyways. The only way to really take it all in is to live it.

Experience is truth. You can only really know something if you've been there, seen it, hell, even DONE it. People use the phrase "you had to be there" lightly, but it really applies to everything. You can talk about a great malt you had at a diner in the middle of the desert, spend 10 pages describing it, but you can't replace sipping it through a bendy straw, leaned over the coffeestained counter listening to the radio of the cop on the night shift eating his blueberry pie at the booth behind the one with the russian (maybe polish?) truckers talking about god knows what in a harsh gutteral dialect. Wait a second... are they hostile? Thieves perhaps? What will you do when one pulls out his AK-47 and starts claiming the smoking section in the name of some small ex-Soviet state, because you know the pie cop's not going to be any help. Your mind races through the possible escape plans before you realize the absurdity of the thought, and go back to enjoying your shake, albeit with one hand on your pocketknife for reassurance.
...It's nowhere close to being the same.
You have to go out there and seek out the good, the bad, and the freakish (and I use the term endearingly to people and events). Live hard and live well. Live like your life depended on it.
Be your own legend.

Buy the ticket, take the ride.