So that happened

I have shared my love affair with Twitter on my blog before but one thing I forgot to mention is celebrities who tweet. Now I know some people believe that they are just using it as a medium of blatant self-promotion with no real desire to interact with their fans, and in a lot of cases they are absolutely right. However there are a select few that do use twitter as a way to talk to their fans and garner an insight into what people think of them. I'm still amazed Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt haven't killed themselves after some of the things people say about them on there. I'm a very mean person but even I think some of it is over the top which definitely says something. Today however I am going to talk about one celebrity in particular on twitter, Rainn Wilson.


Rainn Wilson, or as 99% of all of his fans know him "the cashier at the beginning of Juno"(I think he also has a show on NBC you guys should check it out I hear it's funny), has a little bit of a following on Twitter. In fact as I am writing this he currently has 1,833,915 followers on the networking site. Just to put this into some prospective I have had an account for about 2 years now and I currently have 133 followers. That's a ratio of 13,788 to 1. On average I would say I get anywhere between 1 and 20 @ mentions a day. If we apply that same ratio to Mr. Wilson's @ mentions that means he gets anywhere from 13,788 to 275,760 @ mentions a day. That's a lot to keep up with which makes what happened today that much more impressive.


Now I am one of the 1,833,915 and so earlier today Rainn decided to tweet this little gem about his experience this weekend at Sundance -


Pretty funny right? Well while I understand that most of the celebrities that I follow won't have time to read my replies, I still occasionally will respond back to them as if they are just another friend that I have on twitter. And as such I decided to share my cleverness with @rainnwilson with this little throw away joke -


Now like I said I understand the odds. I know he isn't going to see this. I mostly do it for my friends that follow both myself and Rainn because they can also read it and be mesmerized by my wit. Which is why this next part kinda blew my mind -



Now those of you not familiar with twitter this looks like it's just another post, but let me break it down for you. The RT means that he is "retweeting" my previous tweet, as referenced by the (via @theallenbrand) tag after the RT. The "Love this idea!" part of the post was an original message from Rainn. The point of a RT is that if you see a tweet that you enjoy and you want to share that comment with the people that follow you but might not follow the original poster you can retweet it. So essentially out of the vast majority of comments that he gets Rainn Wilson decided that my comment was clever enough to share with his 1,833,914 other followers. Pretty awesome right?

Surprisingly enough the awesome doesn't end there. Apparently on the website for Rainn Wilson's show "the Office" they have various twitter feeds of their shows stars. Which resembles something vaguely like this -


That's right, not only was my tweet shared with almost 2 million people, it was also shared with everyone on the Office's website at that moment. Now I realize NBC is about as popular right now as a stripper with multiple c-section scars but I still like to imagine this reaching another huge audience, and every last one of them thought to themselves "I like that idea too Rainn. This Allen Brand fellow, he's not only breathtakingly handsome but also some sort of comedic genius!" I don't know why they thought I was breathtakingly handsome since they can't see my face but that's their prerogative and who am I to argue with that?

Unfair expectations

There are very few things about being in a singles ward that I don't like. I like the minimal amount of children crying. I like the general similarities in age that I have with everyone in the ward. I like pretty much everything. The one thing I don't like however is the automatic assumptions that if you arrive at a meeting with a member of the opposite sex and you sit with them you are automatically dating that person. Take for example this conversation I had with my old roommate Spencer today at a Munch and Mingle (or whatever cheesy name they are giving these "go find an eternal companion" post church mixers these days):

Me: Hey Spencer how's it going?
Spencer: I'm good. And you?
A: I'm doing alright.
S: So how did you meet that orthodontist girl you were sitting next to in church?
A: Huh? Oh Joan? She's an Opthamologist not an orthodontist.
S: Oh right, how'd you meet her?
A: Um she lives a block away from me. I'm her home teacher, I met her like a month ago.
S: Oh wow that's cool.
A: (finally realizing what Spencer is thinking) We aren't dating Spencer. I'm just her home teacher and since she lives so close to me I ask her for rides to church.
S: Oh okay....

Now granted Spencer isn't the most socially... aware person I've ever met but still this isn't the first time it has happened to me. When I was first interested in she whom shall not be named our very own bishop came up to me to ask about her and if we were together. And it isn't just me that this happens to. I am certain there are at least 4 people that I can think of off the top of my head right now that constantly get bombarded with these same sorts of questions. Now granted I think those 4 people should just hook up already (in pairs of 2 naturally) but that is besides the point. if they just want to be close friends who happen to be of the opposite sex then that is up to them. If they want to date they will do it on their own time and if for whatever reason it decided they should announce to the whole world "Hey stop asking my girlfriend on a date, she's with me jackass" then they will do so on their own timeline not yours. I really hate to speak in such blatant terms because we're all grownups (unless you're like 12 and reading this blog in which case I'm mostly worried about your taste in reading material) but essentially the only thing asking does is make you look stupid. Seriously regardless of if they are in a relationship or not you look stupid. If someone wants to talk about their relationships they will, if they don't they won't. All you are when you ask is the annoying person who doesn't understand common courtesy. If you absolutely need confirmation on if they are in a relationship observe, watch, check for signals. It really isn't that hard.

I get that as a singles ward the whole point is to mark your territory and find your prey. I really do understand that. However there is such a thing called tact and perhaps it's time we as a group start utilizing it a bit more before bad things happen.

Uncool

Belated Promise part 5: Resolutions

First you will notice that I have skipped my happiest day as requested by Adam. Well you probably didn't actually notice but let's pretend you've been paying attention to previous posts and comments. The reason for this isn't because I don't plan on writing about it, but rather because I want to do it justice and not turn it into a depressing blog post. If you are going to write about something happy it should stay happy and I just can't wrap my head around how to do that with that specific day yet. It will be written about, just not yet.

Anyway Derek wanted to read about my New Year's Resolutions. Well first off an update of sorts on my LAST resolution. As you could probably guess once my updates dropped off the face of the planet I failed. I did make it considerably farther than my last update though and I came quite close. I made it as far as Superman IV to be specific which is about 25-30 movies short. I'm a little disappointed in myself but at the same time I really didn't think I was going to make it that far. A lot of extenuating circumstances led to this failure but in the end it was just me realizing that this was a really stupid resolution and I had better things to do with my time. I guess what I am saying is I actually listened to all of you eventually and gave up. I plan on revisiting this challenge eventually but right now I think I'm going to come up with some serious resolutions for this year. I've come up with a little bit of a list for you guys, let's see what you think.

I want to:

1. Walk around Green Lake twice a week.
2. Read all three of the books I got for Christmas this year.
3. Read my scriptures all the way through at least once.
4. Be more active at church.
5. Learn to appreciate my calling and become active in it.
6. Humble myself.
7. Create a regular sleeping schedule.
8. Move out of my parents house and stay out.
9. Be honest with everyone. Yes EVERYONE.
10. Update this blog regularly. Maybe not as regular as Amera updates hers (she's a blogging machine) but still more than I have been lately.
11. Take a lot of pictures with my new camera.
12. Save money.
13. Live in the present and not think so hard about the future.
14. Have the biggest and best 30th birthday party OF ALL TIME.
15. Go on one date a week. It doesn't have to be with different girls, or the same girls it doesn't matter, just as long as it's once a week.
16. Clean my room once a week.
17. Give Jen Nuckols a hickey.
18. Watch all 8 seasons of Smallville that I have on DVD.
19. Attend Opening Day.
20. Travel somewhere that isn't related to eating challenges.
21. Swear less.
    

That's just a small sampling really of what I want to do this year. Will I accomplish it? I hope so. I will with any luck keep you updated as to what's going on and how I am doing with these challenges. If any of you wonderful people out there would like to help me with these in some way I am certain I will need all the help I can get.