While I was read­ing friends’ updates at Face­book today, some­thing remind­ed me of a girl I knew back in high school. She went to my high school, and as far as I know she was in my grad­u­at­ing class. I did­n’t meet her at school, though, and I don’t think our paths crossed there. I knew her from church. She intro­duced me to the guy who became my first hus­band (who she had dat­ed in the recent past).

Now I’m dri­ving myself nuts, because I absolute­ly can­not remem­ber her name! I can see her face, plain as day. I remem­ber that she had a some­what uncom­mon last name. I think she had an old­er broth­er who had been a big deal on the foot­ball team a year or three ahead of us. Why can’t I remem­ber her name?

I’m real­ly bad with names, hon­est­ly. A Face­book appli­ca­tion was ask­ing me to ver­i­fy 130+ peo­ple as high school class­mates, and tru­ly, I did­n’t rec­og­nize many of them at all. I did­n’t remem­ber most of the peo­ple I saw at our five year reunion. After 25 years? I’m hope­less.

Maybe I should get my old year­books out and look at Face­book and the year­books at the same time. I don’t know that I’d be any bet­ter that way, either. I need con­text for most people—not just a face and a name, but also some­thing like “that guy from home­room who was always draw­ing cars in his note­books” or “that sopra­no who bathed in Emer­aude” or “the cute geeky drum­mer who sel­dom made eye con­tact with any­body” (okay, him I’d rec­og­nize, and I do remem­ber his name).

Our year­books aren’t the sort that list­ed peo­ple’s activ­i­ties with their pho­tos. You would have to search through all the activ­i­ty list­ings to find out who did what, which is much more annoy­ing.

This post is almost as ran­dom as my read­ing has been today. I’m spar­ing you excerpts from the fic­tion and school read­ing, at least!

After read­ing this arti­cle, Deal­ing With the Jerk at Work, I find myself want­i­ng to read Robert I. Sut­ton’s book The No Ass­hole Rule: Build­ing a Civ­i­lized Work­place and Sur­viv­ing One That Isn’t. We’ve had a “no ass­hole rule” here at home ever since Sam and I blend­ed our fam­i­lies in 1998, and it makes for a very pleas­ant envi­ron­ment. I’m in total agree­ment with the author that “jerks should be treat­ed as incom­pe­tent employ­ees.” Get­ting along with your cowork­ers is an impor­tant part of every per­son­’s job.

Huh? Chris Bro­gan reports that Face­book showed him boo­bies. I know they’re ad-sup­port­ed, but hel­lo, that’s the clue phone ring­ing! Maybe they did­n’t real­ize that they’re sup­posed to be classier than MySpace? That real­ly did­n’t seem to be a hard thing to accom­plish, con­sid­er­ing the ram­pant trashi­ness on that oth­er site.

A bril­liant school in Penn­syl­va­nia has sus­pend­ed two stu­dents for the hor­rif­ic offense of mak­ing an anti-drug-use pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment. Be care­ful with those dan­ger­ous Smar­ties, guys!

I bet you did­n’t learn this in school, either. Accord­ing to John Stos­sel, the first Thanks­giv­ing would­n’t have occurred at all if the Puri­tans had­n’t giv­en up on their ini­tial Social­ist prac­tices in favor of a plan where­in each fam­i­ly farmed its own plot of corn. I’m not sure that refer­ring to the “tragedy of the com­mons” is apt, but it is an inter­est­ing bit of infor­ma­tion.

Also from ABC comes a sto­ry about the grand­moth­ers who hold the Guin­ness records for the world’s longest nails and the world’s small­est waist. Turn off your images if you’re eas­i­ly squicked before going to the arti­cle, though. That wom­an’s nails are tru­ly dis­gust­ing (and appar­ent­ly, the Guin­ness folks agree with me). The waist thing just looks pho­to­shopped to me, as my brain choos­es not to process it as real­i­ty.

Do blondes make men dumb­er? Accord­ing to sci­en­tists study­ing the “bim­bo delu­sion,” that is the case.

There it is. I take no respon­si­bil­i­ty for what you do with it.