Matt Bernier

Un-friend, un-follow, and sell are the negative sides to Facebook, Twitter and Empire Avenue, respectively. Each of these shows that it is possible to give your vote in Social Media without actually saying anything. This is a lot like the theory that “you vote when you shop, by not buying Jiffy you say that you don’t like Jiffy”.  My questions is though, why does it matter to me if you stop following me?  (or why do I like honey more than jelly with my peanut butter?) For brevity’s sake I will use “follow” to refer to friending, liking, following, buying, or selling from now on. In the grand scheme of things, I don’t really care if you stop following me…. » Read More

I often get emails that the very last sentence says “please advise” and it drives me up a fucking wall.  It is something so simple, but it totally reminds me of words that make you sound dumb.  The reasons for this are not as simple as the fact that some people have the bad habit of adding ‘please advise’ to every email. It is because it makes me feel like the person who is writing me the email thinks that I am going to just file their message away and do nothing with it. The difference between me and this assumption, is that when you send me an email asking for help, I am going to respond!  Yeah, seriously. I… » Read More

“… You are a scholar and a gentleman, and there are damn few of us left.” I often hear this saying from a friend who uses it to say thank you in a kitschy way.  I believe that he is trying to let me know that he truly means thank you, but to me it seems like overkill and drastically demeans the value of these words. Let me explain. Normally, when people say things, I ignore the fact that they are just using a phrase because they “heard it once” and think its cool to say.  This happens every day, and in a commercial advertising driven society, things get brought into common parlance where all meaning and value is completely… » Read More

Rant Status                  = Extreme Likelihood to Offend  = 93% This morning I was watching the Today Show’s coverage of the window shade recall.  I was instantly appalled, frustrated, and infuriated at the same time.  I still cannot believe that this was allowed to happen. Basically, the whole story boils down to little kids getting the string wrapped around their necks and dieing. This in itself is horrible, I never want to hear about another accidental child death again. The thing that bothers me about the fact that a recall was put into effect is that ALL of these deaths could have been avoided if the parents would have been paying attention.  Why are child services organizations around the country not… » Read More

America the beautiful. America is a safe-haven.  America is a melting pot. America is teeming with opportunity. America is full of assholes. I am so worn out every single day by the stereotypical American rearing his/her head.  It is tough for me to even want to talk about the fact that I am lumped in with people who are so purposefully rude, entitled, and awful. I am going to ask this very cliche question, “What happened to us?”.  At what point did we decide that we were not only better than everyone else, but that they were not even really worth the dirt we scrape off our shoes?  Why are we so rude? Why are we so damned self-centered? I… » Read More

I took the day off today so I could catch up on some things, go to the allergist, and go to a concert tonight.  This gave me the opportunity to sit in rooms with large numbers of people I don’t know.  Meaning, I worked at Panera and then the public library because Panera’s wifi stopped working for me.  I took lunch and went to a new-to-me restaurant called “Tuk Tuk Thai“.  Their green curry is AWESOME by the way. If you have been to Tuk Tuk, you know that the seating there can be a little tightly spaced.  This led me to sitting in between a couple and two guys who seemed to work together.  Right about the time I… » Read More

At some point in the day, every single day, I find myself surrounded by people who are way too focused on themselves and the goals they have for the next 5 minutes that they completely ignore the people and environment around them. I am talking about the people who SHOULD NEVER drive and talk on the phone, the people who drive 10 under the speed limit and block traffic, the people who do not use their turn signals, the list goes on and on and on.  You might have noticed that most of the examples in my list involve people in cars, this is because I have started to notice that as people shut the door and put the key… » Read More