As soon as I found out Shaq had announced his retirement from the NBA, I immediately tweeted, "Shaq just announced his retirement. Hope that means he'll have time to take his martial arts movies more seriously."


Sure, I was tempted to go with a Kazaam reference, but I decided to stick with the lesser known, Shaq Fu (which I later remembered was actually a video game, and not a movie).


Still, I was pretty pleased with myself, and after a few minutes, decided to jump on Twitter to see how my message had been received.


Nothing. A little surprised, I typed "Shaq" into a Twitter search to see if perhaps the news of his retirement hadn't spread quite yet. And what did I see? Hundreds and hundreds of tweets with my identical joke.

1) Does my generation (raised on Seinfeld and Simpsons) all have the EXACT same humor?
2) Does this teach us how incredibly formulaic and unoriginal most humor is?

I've always been interested in fashion. Aware of clothes that looked good on others and why, yet, I never dressed particularly well myself. Until the day that the boss at my first job berated me via e-mail for my poor style and grooming habits.

I was mortified. Angry. Ashamed. And I called in sick the next day and went shopping for new clothes.

Ever since, I have been incredibly conscious of my appearance. And while looking back at that experience remains slightly traumatic, I am grateful for that wake-up call to superficiality. It was a reminder that dressing up isn't for you. It's for others.

If you don't care what people think of the way you dress, you should. Simply because of how powerful our blink judgments are. You are judged based on your appearance. You are treated differently based on your appearance. Your perceived intelligence is weighted based on your appearance. Whether you believe in the moral rightness of the fact doesn't change that fact.