Cracker Jacks

The Cracker Jacks' box says "Tastes as good as you remember." For some reason this makes me really sad. Like when I see run-down amusement parks. And I think the combination of sad and Cracker Jacks makes me miss my grandma, too.

I like how MySpace now has a "status update" section where you can choose your mood from a pull-down list. Not that anyone ever looks at my MySpace page, and I think only a very small percentage of my 44 "friends" would actually care whether I was feeling "melancholy" or "nerdy" or "pissed off." But for some reason, I really enjoy filling out surveys and taking multiple choice tests to determine my personality, and this is the same idea. I like having my options artificially narrowed for me, as if by choosing from a set list of adjectives to describe my emotional state, I can actually reduce complex feelings into something more manageable. The options range from "thirsty" to "morose" to "happy" to "quixotic" to "recumbent," but for some reason the list does not include "angsty." I mean, come on, MySpace is not only an outlet for but also a source of teen angst and so I can only imagine that at any given point in time, over 87% of MySpace users are feeling angsty. I choose "nostalgic," which for some reason is represented by a frowny-face emoticon with question marks floating above its head.


I think it's interesting that nostalgia has been so clearly designated as a negative emotion. I also think it's interesting that I need to look up one of the mood choices because I don't know what the word means. So apparently "exanimate" means "inanimate or lifeless." It seems dumb that "inanimate" and "exanimate" are synonyms while "internal" and "external" are antonyms.