Tara's got a great post on how our generation is truly living online more and more everyday...

Link: ::HorsePigCow:: life uncommon: My so-called online life.

What I'm saying is that things are going to get interesting as more and more people migrate online. I don't know if it will bring us closer together or further apart.

I do know that we can connect easier with people all over the world - enabling all sorts of opportunities. On the flipside, we are choosing to interact online more often than offline, so what does that do to intimacy?

What I find is that a lot of this online stuff fuels intimacy.  Just the other day, a placement agent called me about a deal.  He sent me pitch deck and when I replied with a thank you, he clicked on the blog link that I have in my e-mail footer.  He called me back ten minutes later to tell me all about how he used to be really into the canoeing and kayaking community back in the 70's in Philly.  All of the sudden, he became a multidimensional person to me... not just a phone call and an e-mail Powerpoint deck to be screened and triaged.

Yesterday, I got a pitch from a guy in Latin America who asked about my leg. No better way to get free sympathy than to blog about your various injuries.

When I blog, my friends are able to catch up on my life so that, the next time I actually do see them they know what's going on.  We don't waste time "catching up" with monologues, but just actually conversing and sharing real time together.  It invites people I'd never know to comment, exchange, and impact my thinking.  More people know that I'm dating someone now than anyone I've ever dated, because I blog about her.

That's intimacy, to me.   Its different than we've previously known it to be.  Call it Intimacy 2.0.  :)

"In eighteenth century London or Paris, sociability did not depend on intimacy.  Strangers meeting in parks or on the streets might, without embarrassment, speak to each other.  They shared a common fund of public signs which enabled people to conduct a civilized conversation without feeling called upon to expose their innermost secrets  The romantic cult of sincerity and authenticity tore away the masks that people had worn in public and eroded the boundary between public and private life.  As the public world came to be seen as a mirror of the self, people lost the capacity for detachment and hence for playful encounter, which presupposes a certain distance from the self." - Christopher Lasch, Culture of Narcissism

When I was in high school, I read On the Road by Jack Kerouac.

I don't remember that much of it, but I do remember the importance of conversation...  Two of the guys in the book used to get together for these extreme "brain dump" sessions where they'd literally spend hours, even a full day or two, just talking about everything... Everything. 

The didn't let time constraints get in their way.  They just talked until they were done.

College was a little bit like that.  I was so fascinated by new people that I often ignored the clock for the tradeoff of some good topical exploration.

Blogs do that to some extent, but I feel like they're  somewhat self-reenforcing.  They're great for attracting likeminded people or at least people talking about the same topics as you, but they're  kind of bad for discovery. 

I don't think anyone's quite figured out that algorythym yet...  "people and things not like me at all that I would still find interesting."  How do you find something you've never sought after before, yet something you weren't consciously avoiding?  And, how do you do it in a limited way?  I could subscribe to a blog about metaphysics, but I'm really not that interested in it as a totally new pursuit. 

I'd read a post a week on it, though. 

That's why I loved those college dorm conversation.  Dorm life stuffs you in with people you might not have ever encountered otherwise.  Your friend group is random and accidental, and it takes you some time to gravitate towards more similar people.  I think that's good, to a large extent, to develop this kind of a network, but I also find myself pining for a little more of a mix...  People whose worlds are really interesting who introduce me to new stuff.

Dating never quite worked for this...  In theory, dating introduces you to a fascinating set of people with diverse interests, but the reality is that most people want to meet people just like them.  I never met an artist who found it really interesting to date a business guy.

Where was I?  Oh yeah... Conversation.  When is the last time you had a really interesting face to face chat with someone semi-random about a topic you usually don't talk about?

[16:25] lightbox5: believe me, there are no end of things you will go to the mattresses on
[16:25] lightbox5: clothes will, in the end, not be one of them
[16:25] Ceo21: See.. that's the problem
[16:26] Ceo21: at the end of the day
[16:26] Ceo21: I want to go to the mattress...
[16:26] Ceo21: literally
[16:26] lightbox5: right
[16:26] lightbox5: so wear the shirt

Talk about transparancy...

Now you get to watch all our little domestic issues play out in real time, because Adrianna is blogging.

She wrote this because we have this issue about her trying to buy clothes for me.  I'm sure there are a lot of cavemen in my court.  I just don't really care too much about clothing.  I just want to be comfortable.  I hate the idea of buying brand for brand's sake or following what's "in".  She says she just thinks I'd look better in certain things. 

"I'm just a caveman.  Your world of pastels and flat front pants frightens and confuses me."

In the meantime, she helped me with some of the apartment stuff and will continue to do so... so its not like I'm totally closed minded, right?  Anyone agree?

Should I let her dress me for success or draw a line in the sand that my no-style style is personal and shouldn't be messed with?

A certain someone has convinced me that I need some more outside input into my fashion choices... perhaps a bit more flexibility.

She made a convincing argument.

So, I'm opening up the selection process to all of you, starting with my winter coat.  I will buy and wear a winter coat solely selected by my blog audience.

Here's the deal:

1. To submit a coat for group voting, tag it in del.icio.us with the "coatidol" tag.  (No quotes, obviously.)  Only coats tagged in del.icio.us qualify, so if you want to be a part of this, learn how to use del.icio.us by clicking here.
2. Submissions will end in one week on Tuesday, October 25th at 5PM.
3. At that point, we will do a two day vote ending on Thursday, October 27th at 5PM.  Every coat and its picture will be displayed for voting and voting will be anonymous.
4. No coat over $350 will be considered.
5. Remember, this is a winter coat...  so ideally it would keep me warm.
6. You're free to select any colors, but I think its obvious what colors I like.  (See my living room, my car, my blog)
7. The community will police itself.  Tagged coats will appear at del.icio.us/tag/coatidol as soon as people start tagging.  If you see a coat that's an obvious attempt at getting me to wear something stupid, just tag it coatidolsucks.  No coat tagged coatidolsucks by anyone will be considered.

Oh, I forgot to mention...  whoever tags the winning coat gets lunch on me. 

The first coat has been tagged by the dark side:

Link: del.icio.us/tag/coatidol.

Its here.

It arrived Friday.

Its a fantastic to drive...  it definitely has a Mustang "feel".   The front end is a monster and you definitely feel like you've got to corral the 300 horsies in front of you.   I put the top down as soon as I could... even drove around Friday night with it down.  (With the heat on full blast for Adrianna, mind you.)

Weekend car highlights:

I pull up to a light on Flatbush Avenue and two guys in a delivery truck pull up next to me, peering over at my car.  I've got the top down.  One guy beeps the horn and goes, "Yo, dat shit is tight."   

That's good, right?  :)

Then, last night after softball, I went to go get my car and a little kid about nine had his jacket on the trunk.  I said to his group, "Hey, who's jacket is this, I don't want to drive away with it."  He goes, "Hey man, this your car?  This is a cool car, man."     Stay in school kid.  Stay in school.

And the best part is, the chicks love it:

If you haven't noticed, yet, the car is also why I have that new little widget on my sidebar.  Peer produced reporting for gas prices...   Web 2.0 is going to save me some money at the pump.

So now that the couches are in and the walls are painted, it was time for detailing.  Like, for example, my bare gray walls.  I called in an expert...   Adrianna and I went to Bed Bath and Beyond to look for framed pictures, mirrors, etc.  I had a bunch of postcards of Pike Floyd album covers that I wanted to put up as well, but how to put them up and where to put them? 

We found a few items that we liked and started brainstorming right in the store:

Here's the final product: