Mime/Clown School
Working out only the top half of your body, so your legs look ridiculous.
Wearing Man-Pris (man capris)
Driving a Volkswagen Beetle
Attending a 3OH!3 concert
Supporting Sarah Palin for president 2012
Visiting daily PerezHilton.com
Public Nose Picking (I shouldn’t even have to say this one, but if you live in NYC you understand why! It’s like preschool all over again.)
Drinking Kambucha Tea (Looks like the hairball in the shower.)

Kombucha Tea

Lower back tattoos for men
Blow-out hair cuts
Civil War reenactments
Leather pants
Prostitution
Sarah McLachlan fan club
Being on the cast of “The Real Houswives” in New Jersey or Orange County or Atlanta or NYC
Wearing Tie-Dye in the 21st century
The Build-A-Bear Workshop
Crying after 30 second TV commercials
Star Jones’ career path
John Goodman’s colon
More than three hair colors at the same time

As you can see, there are a lot of paths that should remain less traveled by.  There are a TON more that I can’t think of so if you email me at joey@blommit.com I’ll add them to the list with your credit.

Continuing Support of George Bush with a “W 04″ sticker on your bumper. (from PJacobs51)

It’s 12:49 AM and I’ve just arrived in San Francisco from LA.

On that drive, in which we literally took a road less traveled—we ended up on I-99 for two hundred miles when we should have been on I-5—I had an eye-opening experience.

Driving aimlessly past cramped cows and wind turbines and neat rows of Central California produce, trying to find the right road, my Korean-American co-pilot and I had a lengthy discussion, during which I was, as she called it, “Race hazed.”

I like to consider myself a pretty broad-minded person. Liberal, unprejudiced, open, enlightened even. I believe black people should live in harmony with white people, constantly ask the ‘why can’t we all get along’ question, and made it a point several years ago to read the Autobiography of Malcolm X.

Shit, I get uncomfortable even using the terms ‘black’ and ‘white.’

But it turns out I am in ‘white-man denial.’

When asked what I thought about a recent NY Times article about black and white high school students having separate proms, I of course, gave the stock, enlightened, 21^st Century white person response: ‘WTF. Why can’t white and black (for the purpose of this post, the term refers to non-white) kids just have one prom? And while I’m at it, why can’t we all just get along?’

It is easy for me as a white person, my friend told me, to say this. I am “privileged enough” to be able to say this. The world we live in, despite what I may think, is a white-man’s world. A world where white peoples’ cultures, customs, ways of doing things and ideas of beauty are looked at by the powers-that-be as ‘right.’

We live in a world where of course most white people will do the PC thing of saying they want to go to a prom where white and black kids will all go together—and they’ll mean it. But who says the black kids want to go to the white kids’ prom? And who says they should? We are oblivious to the idea that we have forced ourselves and our culture on them.

We may think that it’s white and black kids going to a white and black kids’ prom, but in reality, it’s white and black kids going to a white kids’ prom.

After a half hour of arguing with each other, my friend’s comments subsided, and I was left with the stinging feeling of seeing the world just a bit more clearly, albeit a bit more pessimistically.

Weird post, I know. We certainly ended up on a strange road with this one.

But to bring the metaphor full-circle, I think we should all force ourselves to go down roads we’re not used to in our thinking. They force us to see things we otherwise wouldn’t.

Trust me.  I know.  I’ve traveled this treacherous trail once before.  I was six, and I was on my way to find a treasure unlike any other.

We had been forbidden, by the ruler of the land, to have the treasure because only the ruler of the land was allowed the treasure.  As a mere servant, it was in my best interest to acquiesce with the ruler’s request.  But I longed for the treasure and decided that my best interests didn’t matter because after even one taste of the treasure, I could die happy.

On a rainy night in February, I made the proper arrangements to make the journey.  Rumor across the land was that the treasure was stored in a dungeon deep inside the ruler’s castle.  To get to it, I had to infiltrate the ruler’s domain, crossing the snaky swamp by swinging across with the rickety rope that I spoke of before while dodging the flaming balls of flying fire that were reigning down on me from the heavens above.

Once inside, I faced a shiny knight in silvery armor that swung a sword at me so big it could have slain a dinosaur.  I deftly dodged his heavy sword and ran down the dark hallway, dashing into the first passageway I could see.  It was a stairwell that spiraled down into the depths of the castle.  Losing my footing on the first step, I found myself spiraling down into the depths of the castle.

With a thunderous thud I landed on the dungeon floor.  It was damp and dark and there were prisoners chained to the walls by their arms and their legs.  I sat for a moment on the ground, recovering from my tumble, letting my eyeballs adjust to the darkness.

Not sure of which direction to travel, I thought it a good idea to ask the residents of the dungeon if they knew where the treasure was hidden.  As if they had been asked many times before, they all replied in cheerful chorus, “There’s an icy draft coming from over there.”

Credit: Marc Johns

Slightly startled at their apparently optimistic view of the situation considering the dismal outlook of their current chained-to-the-wall situation, I thanked them and moved in the direction they had pointed.

It became cold, very terribly cold.  I knew I was close.  I walked a little further, dodging bats that were barreling through the darkness and booby traps that were laid by a booby trap expert no doubt.

Finally, I came to a door.  It was covered in frost, icy to the core, but the knob was red hot.  Not wanting to melt my hand off, I decided I would numb my hand on the icy to the core door before grabbing the knob.

The door popped open with one touch of my numbed to the core by the icy cold door hand on the red hot knob.  An immediate flash of light one thousand times brighter than the sun slashed through the darkness, illuminating the treasure.

There it was.  The treasure.  Floating in midair because of its brilliance.  A dollop of creamy ice cream perched atop a lightning bolt cone.

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.”

Interesting though, Mr. Clemens.  But I would say it’s also sometimes right to pause when you are not on the side of the majority, as there are two strategies in life: do what everyone else is doing and do what no one else is doing.  To avoid hardship and suck the pulpy flesh from the rind of life, both maxims must be applied situationally.  What follows is a handy-dandy guide to the preferable philosophical uses for a few sample scenarios.

When choosing a Chinese restaurant, do what everyone else is doing.

When choosing a radio station, don’t do what everyone else is doing.

When selecting a day to go to an amusement park, don’t do what everyone else is doing.

When deciding whether to wear a raincoat or not, do what everyone else is doing.

When deciding what speed to travel on the highway, do what everyone else is doing.

When choosing a meal at the Cheesecake Factory, don’t do what everyone else is doing.

When choosing a country to immigrate to, don’t do what everyone else is doing.

When deciding where to urinate at a concert, do what everyone else is doing.

When writing a Blommit post, don’t do what everyone else is doing.  Or do.  Whateva.

“The road less traveled” is a misquoted phrase from Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken”.  That’s okay.  But let’s examine what this means.

Most people think it is “the road less traveled” because that’s their takeaway from the piece.  Of the two roads, he “took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.” People think it’s a poem about doing the less popular thing because that will lead to a more interesting and perhaps more successful life.

But the title of the poem is The Road Not Taken.  It’s not The Road Less Traveled.  The road less traveled is the road that he ended up taking, but the “road not taken” is exactly that: a road not taken.

Viewed in this light, the poem becomes more about what wasn’t chosen, rather than what was chosen.  Every single person, every single moment of every single day has roads that don’t get taken.  This happens for a plethora of reasons, the main one being that time goes forward.

What Frost is saying to us isn’t an inspirational charge to lead a life of making choices against the grain.  What he’s saying is the simple fact that human beings have choices, and that those choices are what make up a life.  The last line of the poem, “And that has made all the difference” is an ironic one.  Of course it made all the difference because what else would it have made?

People are self-rationalizing beasts.  They will look back on something and inject whatever meaning they want so that it fits their purpose.  This is where the genius of Frost comes into play. “The road less traveled” is what people want the poem to be about, so that’s what they make it about, which is the very psychological process that Frost was bringing to the forefront with the poem in the first place.  In this, it operates on a level that most art never even comes close to.  It doesn’t represent.  It is.

But, then again, this is just me injecting my own meaning into the poem.  Looks like Bobby got me as well.

For good measure:

The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;            5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,            10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.            15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.            20