betazed blues + sam puckett soul

If you know me well at all, you know I'm a huge fan of the Nickelodeon television show iCarly.

On a recent episode, one of the kids developed an interesting iPhone app (actually in the show it's a Pear Phone (apples are pears in that universe)) that would take a picture of someone's face and then through math and science would measure the facial features and reveal that person's precise mood. In the episode, the dangerous side effect of doing this was revealed when one character's mood was measured as "in love." Then, wackiness!

Would such an application be a good thing?

It very well might, but I would fight against it. I would hate the forced vulnerability.

Next step. What if the application revealed who we were in love with? Good?

I would vote horrifying. You may agree with me once everything's in the open. I think most people's hopes would be dashed. The people we're in love with would be in love with the people we're in hate with or they'd just be thinking about food. We'd realize the people in love with us are people too nice for our depravity and/or have lame taste in music. We'd be pushed away from love right from the start because we'd have no hope. We wouldn't be deluded enough to think we had the chance with that certain someone -- and therefore we wouldn't get around to deceiving them into liking us.

We're not getting together though. Surely if everyone said who they were in love with all the time, two like-minded people would agree and immediately get together and live happily ever after.

Or would the TOTAL openness dissolve the romance? If you think about it, most of what makes courtship exciting is what's not said. It's intimacies that have potential to be revealed over a steady period of time. Perhaps if we simply said to one another "I don't mind mixing my genetic material with yours" we actually wouldn't mix our genetic material.

Have you ever wondered what it's like living on the USS Enterprise 1701-D? Deanna Troi lives on that ship. She can read your mind. She comes from a planet where everybody reads each others' minds all the time. Everyone knows who's in love with everybody else. There wouldn't be room for any games. A paradise or a prison? According to Deanna, the open book lifestyle is a wonderful way to live. That's easy for her to say. She's the hottest chick on the ship. We don't see what life's like for the ugliest empath on Betazed. For Deanna it's constant validation that she's the hottest girl around. Her mind either receives that or disgusting, sexist harassment (which would still actually be validation if you ask me).

Anyway, this is reason 524 why I flog love out of my system.

Listen to this song. It's my favorite at the moment.