"Santa Claus Is Fake" & Other Innocence-Destroying Utterances.

So Thanksgiving's over, which I suppose means we're onto the next holiday. 

For many, Christmas represents a time for sharing, looking inward and appreciating one's family and friends.

For me, it marks an occasion to ruin the fantasies of young children.

Since we all (hopefully) know there's no such thing as Santa, I figured I'd try something else -- revisiting, celebrating and possibly spoiling some of my favorite other pillars of wide-eyed innocence.  This top 5 list is highly subjective.  Feel free to add your faves in the comments.

5.  The tooth fairy is but a work of fiction.

This discovery inevitably raises a larger (and, depending on the cognitive ability of said child, potentially more disturbing) question, "Then who did what with my teeth?"

(It's worth noting that some tooth-fairy believers assert that the tooth fairy is actually the Easter Bunny, rewarding kids for losing teeth while eating the candy he gives them over the holiday.  And this is why I love Yahoo! Answers.)

4.  Babies do NOT come from the stork.

The method in which a youngster learns of this fact is the primary determinant of its accompanying level of shock. 

Being told by a relative?  Easy to deal with.

Being told what really happens by a classmate? Eh...

Discovering the gory truth by walking into your parents' room late at night to retrieve a mistakenly misplaced Shadowman video game cartridge for Nintendo 64, which may or may not have happened to my sibling?  Utterly horrifying.

3.  There is no Mavis Beacon.

I'm sorry, but it's true.  In 1995, the Seattle Times reported that this venerable, virtual typing instructor was a mere fiction designed to create a personal connection to the software.  Despite more than 8 million copies sold, cover model Renee Lesperance reportedly received (and receives) no residuals for her likeness.  It's almost enough to make you boycott home row.

(FULL DISCLOSURE:  "Mavis Beacon" is the reason I was able to type out this post at approximately 180 WPM.)

2.  Carrots will not improve your eyesight.

Sad, but false.

They can, however, turn your skin orange.

1.  Unicorns are not real.

Okay, so this is not one that I expect impacts many children, BUT I felt the need to include it for two reasons.

a) This incredible This American Life episode in which an adult woman recounts her tale of learning about the unicorn's true history in one of the worst social settings in which to publicly confront this fact.

b) When I was 6 years old, my parents took me to the Barnum & Bailey's Circus in Norfolk, VA.  The main attraction of said circus was the "Living Unicorn," a supposedly authentic beast that piqued my generally unicorn-free imagination. 

What I saw that night was definitely no unicorn.

I hesitate to use the word "abomination" in mixed company, but what we witnessed was, at best, a goat with giant, non-organic horn grafted onto its forehead and, at worst, oh god... I don't even want to consider it. 

(UPDATE:  My best guess was somewhat accurate.  The process for converting goats into unicorns has been patented. Oh god what have we done.)

And here is a close approximation of what said "Living Unicorn" looked like.  I'm sorry.

Merry Christmas.

Google Social Search Dead?

Is Google's vaunted real-time social search mechanism, which lets users search blogs and social content from their group of friends, dead, or am I just not cool enough to have access to it anymore?

Wait, don't answer that.

Facebook for iPhone, I Hate You

Hey there, current and future Facebook event planners; here's a little PSA for ya.  Last night, I had the unfortunate experience of learning that Facebook for iPhone is seriously flawed (at least in the most up-to-date version as of this writing) when it comes to posting accurate event listings.

Last night, I threw the Nickelodeon-tribute-to-end-all-Nickelodeon-tributes in Long Island City, NY, using Facebook to circulate the invite.  If you checked into Facebook on the Web, you would've seen it started at 6 p.m. and went until 10 p.m. EST.

But if you accessed the event via the Facebook for iPhone app... well, it would've time-shifted the event by 3 friggin' hours (9 p.m. to 1 a.m.). 

I haven't seen a good explanation for this online, but it's clear that there's some bizarre time zone stuff going on in the FB app.  Be warned.

Maybe the Droid folks should be spinning this as an advantage for its barebones Facebook Lite app.

Bite-Sized Songs: Anodyne

So I didn't go outside on this beautiful, 90-degree day, but I did record this odd, 30-second song snippet.

Twitter + Poop = TwttrPoop

I don't know why I did it.

I don't know why I spent so many late nights researching the common, colloquial phrases people assign to their bowel movements.

I don't know what possessed me to learn Twitter's API rules inside and out in the service of a search engine dedicated to tracking and analyzing the number of people using the service to publicly talk about... pooping.

And I'm still not sure how I convinced my friends, like Willis Lambert, an unbelievable designer, and David Fishman and Will Braunstein into donating their time and financial resources to making this... thing... real.

But here we are: TwttrPoop is live.

Every 24 hours, about 3,500 tweets are sent out, each referencing someone's most recent release. For reference, that's generally more than Twitter users talk about:

• AIDS (As of 7/24, 12:18 PM EST, 2060 tweets)
• Iraq (As of 7/24, 12:19 PM EST, 2109 tweets)
• Oprah (As of 7/24, 12:20 PM EST, 2308 tweets)

For what it's worth.

We built TwttrPoop to become the world's ultimate resource for gathering and transforming previously taboo-laden data into something useful.  Think of it as the software equivalent of this:

Enjoy the site.