…mostly because my other blog has. Yes, that other blog, the one nobody I know in real life knows about. But having an alternate life is über lame. (By the way, I have the right to say über, since I know some German. Über is über strange-sounding from most people, especially when you pronounce it so that it rhymes with goober.)

Originally the other Marli blog was founded because, as I explained there (not in these exact words), there are things that (1) I’m not prepared to have all over the Facebook newsfeeds and (2) wouldn’t make sense to most of my friends anyway. But instead of splitting into two people/blogs, I probably should just keep everything together and keep those two points in mind when I blog. And besides, funny thing is that with a bit of generalization, most things make sense to everyone.

So, keeping things appropriately vague:

1 - I was on campus over Thanksgiving break — this is sort of expected, since I’m from Los Angeles and it would take some two days of travel just to go home and come back, and it would amount to basically being at home for two days, one of which is Shabbat, which my parents kind of resent and is consequently kind of tough on me at home. Hey but at least I could have gotten some shopping done, which I didn’t get to do this weekend, but think of all the things I can do with the airfare I saved!

2 - I realized sometime in high school that many aspects of peoples’ personalities are entirely fabricated by that person. Usually they are caricatures of the person’s actual personality; sometimes they reflect the person’s more ideal vision of themselves. Just like everyone else, I have such a persona, and there’s no use being cynical about its existence because it’s kind of a fact of life. Besides, nobody keeps it up perfectly; we all let people see through occasionally.

3 - I’ve often wondered, if I had gone home for Thanksgiving, or if I went home for winter break, how would my friends of 2+ years perceive me? How different or the same would I be? I wrote an essay touching on the matter in German a couple of weeks ago — I hope that I’m different enough that most of my friends would notice, and I hope that those I think are my closest friends would see that I’m not so different after all.

4 - People really like to judge other people by their appearances. I admit to having spent a good half hour this afternoon laughing at the photos that angsty teens/tweenies posted on a “post a picture and tell about your crush” site, because it’s 95% girls who are doing it, and most of the boys posted are of various grungy subcultures — so lots of silly emo kids with guitars and bleached/dyed hair and crazy product and facial piercings etc. So yeah, I feel a little bad about it, but I don’t know these people, and hey at least I’m not one of those unfortunate boys who have no idea their photos are on this site along with the obsessive ramblings of their merits.

So I showed a picture of someone I know to a friend of mine and asked, “If I show you a photo, can you tell me how religious you think this guy is?” And he said, “He seems like a snag; sorry, it’s a derogatory term.” (By the way, it took me a couple of minutes to figure out that snag = misnaged.) But during this conversation it occurred to me (again) that while it is to some extent true that what a person wears is not always just a reflection of their inner self or some ridiculous such sop. It’s also to an extent a uniform, because the wearer knows (or thinks he knows) exactly how other people judge others and then sends the appropriate signals so that people will judge him the way he wants them to do so.

5 - I am a hypocrite. Saying one thing and doing another is all too easy — this ties into the other themes — because what I say isn’t always what I really think. Or, correction, what I say is at least 70% of what I think, because the other 30% consists of counter-arguments/counter-rationalizations, etc, and I happen to think it is really quite impolite to drag people into my internal debates, which I haven’t worked out yet. So I may come across as being 100% confident of what I’m saying when I’m not quite so. This also means (I really hope I’m right about this) that people aren’t actually as terrible/stupid/hypocritical as we may think they are.

6 - When I say I don’t judge people, that’s about 80% true. Sort of. I just don’t have the time to think about all these people enough to stick them in boxes. The ones I do end up thinking about, I like enough that I don’t want to put them in boxes. So I will take note of individual traits, but to piece them into a coherent picture of a person is truly too much to ask of me.