Picasa Web Albums - Andjelika - Untitled Album - AndjelikaMart...

Picasa Web Albums - Andjelika - Untitled Album - AndjelikaMart...

BTW

This is a picture of me since it won't let me link to it on my profile.

“You are amazingly self-assured, has anyone ever told you that?”
“Yes, I tell myself that every day.” - Ten Things I Hate About You

First impressions! You have seven seconds. GO!

Superglue does not set as quickly or last as long as the category you will find yourself in for rest of your life -- chosen for you courtesy of every person you come into contact with. Need to make fine tune adjustments? You have another two minutes. But even the best effort has to put its pencil down when the stopwatch comes to rest at the ten-minute mark. All that is missing then is the headstone. What can a person do in seven seconds by which they will be judged by for the rest of their lives? Simple, as you are walking across the floor to introduce yourself; information is being absorbed through our five senses: sound, touch, taste, smell and sight, and in a non-handicapped carbon based evolved life form, the greatest of these is sight.

Now, if you think it takes a long time for the cable guy to show up, try clocking how long it will take to escape Dante’s Fourth Circle of Hell also known as first impressions. It is true what they say; you never have a second chance to make a first impression. The McDonalds Company just might be shaking in its shoes, for instance, if Bill Gates were to start teleporting fries across the world; but his mother still makes here little boy take the trash out at her house, and unfortunately he is still picked last by his friends at softball. And just like the law of gravity, the social law of first impressions is instinctively adhered to by all. Look at any job interview or first date. The job might require jeans and a plaid shirt, but your average successful applicant nonetheless usually shows up in a suite. Also rare is the individual, no matter how informal, who decides to wear the threadbare sweatshirt and pants (owned since college) while attempting to “hook up” with that potential mate over dinner. And even the most helpless of bachelors will get on his hands and knees scrubbing the toilet bowl and hiding the dirty laundry under the bed, in the hurried anticipation of imminent company arriving.

Since few of us tend to spend all of our time at a nudist camp, what is immediately absorbed by the casual onlooker or intent observer is everything you have decided to buy, keep, use and arrange at that particular moment. In short you are being judged on your taste. You’re IN! You’re OUT! Or, like John Travolta´s singing career, you maybe never even were!

Within moments we all are judged by the things we have surrounded ourselves with: clothes, home, mode of transportation, and even the accessories used in our hobbies. You are what you buy. Life after all is the pursuit of being self-assured and our taste or purchase decisions memos to the outside world either: a confident instinctive relaxed stability or not -- in seven seconds or less. Whichever way the coin lands, even if you are perceived to be like Archie Bunker but without the polish, at least you can say that you’re not French! So, you’ve got that going for you, which is nice.

For a word though that is quite frequently used, so few actually use it correctly. Taste when not employed to describe food or the tongue, rivals the misusage of “irony” or the mispronunciation of “moot point” (moot – cow sound plus t not mute- a non-talking person.) Taste, the noun, is commonly confused and interchanged with related words like: class, style, fashion, manners, and elegance. And even though one can chew gum and use these words in the same sentence, taste in contrast is basically your personality in a pocketbook. John Ruskin back in 1820 wrote:” Tell me what you like and I’ll tell you who you are. A thing is worth precisely what it can do for you, not what you choose to pay for it.”