Page Views - They're Just Like Romance

Like most of the great bloggers, I fell into this trap where I didn't really have a blog "mission" so my posts ended up being about these five-really-great-ideas-I-had-all-at-once and there were all lot of those great ideas and some of them were even cohesive enough to travel out of my brain and into the keyboard so I could share them with all of you. 

And then the honeymoon period ended.  Blogging wasn't this shiny new thing I was trying out that could be a relic of my 20-something years like my MySpace posts were for my teens, and it also didn't seem to be something that was going to show the world how I was super cool and awesome like Yo Mamma or Allie Brosh.  I was on the lookout for my relationship with Boyfriend to get all un-honeymoon-ish like that (it hasn't, by the way) but I wasn't ready for the shine to wear off of Blogger. 

Sorry, Blogger.  It isn't your fault. 

But like most great bloggers I'll power on and through and up and forward and possibly at least four other prepositions. And in the mean time, people have actually come across my blog!  I don't even think all of them are the two people I told about my blog because I checked the stats and it looks like people have stumbled across my blog from Google searches and have done so from the far reaches of the world.  Awesome. 

I also noticed that they're coming across it when googling what a pseudo problem actually is.  I guess that means maybe they didn't actually want to read a blog.  On the plus side, it makes me think that presenting quasi-philosophical facts in a humorous manner might actually get me more page views.  Page views bring the romance back into my blogging relationship. 

Now, actual followers, commenters, internet friends...that will have to wait.  I'm ambitious but not stupid.

Animals are Scary

Fun fact: I'm a life long ovo-lacto vegetarian.  That means I consume eggs, milk, honey, and other products made by animals but I don't consume fish, red meat, white meat, or sea food which would require harming an animal.  You can think of the difference being like one of the dividers between vegetables and fruits.  Vegetables are the plant and harm the plant when you remove the deliciousness.  Fruits can be taken from the plant without mutilating the plant.  This is why things like peppers and tomatoes are sometimes classified as fruits even though chemically they are vegetables.  The more you know.

I also don't wear leather.  This is because my high school history/psychology/philosophy/study hall teacher once kicked me in the shoe for being unwilling to kill an animal for food but having no qualms about wearing an animal to keep my toes warm.  He had a point. 

I would be willing to bet that most vegetarians you've met fall into one of the following categories:
a) Hippy crunchy granola save the rainforest types
b) Super skinny girls
c) People of Eastern decent/culture/religion

I fall into none of these categories. I'm more yuppie than hippie.  I'm somewhere between a size 10 and a size 6, and I'm an American atheist of northern European decent. This particular outlier came to be because her mom decided to stop eating meat when she was a poor newlywed dietetic student living in Texas. 

You may have noticed that people from categories a through c all tend to love animals.  They pet dogs they pass on the sidewalk and they stop talking during Sarah McLachlan commercials.  My first pet besides fish is Roommate's cat.  I don't even know what to do with Roommate's cat.  You know how comical it is when you give a 40 something confirmed bachelor a baby to hold?  That's like me with this cat.  I'm socially awkward around animals.  I'm more than a little afraid they are all going to try to eat me. 

I like people.  I've spent a great deal of time learning what goes on in their heads, and I have a sporting chance of actually understanding how another person things. (Thomas Nagel's paper convinced me no one can ever know what it's like to be a bat or any other animal.)  People take care of their own poop, they talk, and they don't shed on me quite so often.  And have you noticed a trend here? HIV, bird flu, swine flu, mad cow: don't mess with the animals or they will mess you up.

Roommate's cat is good for me though.  Maybe she will teach me to be less awkward and freaked out around animals.  And then I can check "living with an animal" off of my list of important life experiences.

What's a Pseudo Problem?

You might be wondering what the title of this blog is about.

First off, it's a philosophical term.

Secondly, it sounds cool with my first name, which is Sarah.  "Sarah" starts with an s, "pseudo" has an s sound at the beginning, and "problem" starts with a p just like "pseudo" does.  Basically, I think it sounds and looks pretty.

If none of that convinced you it's a good name for a blog I guess I have to share the actual meaning.  In philosophy there is a theory that some questions really aren't questions at all.  While they grammatically might work as sentences, there meaning as a question isn't all there.  The questions sound right but are actually a result of misusing language. 

This term comes up when talking about the existence of god or free will.  At a really high level you can think of it like people arguing a moot point, or Inigo Montoya explaining that "inconceivable" doesn't mean what Vizzini thinks it does.

Sometimes I wonder if the topics I spend time thinking about are as important and interesting as I think they are, or if they are rediculous and I should be outside playing kick ball or something instead of staring blankly at the tv while comtimplating if casual sex is moral or not.