ON FRIENDS: PART II

Last we met I was explaining to you how the term 'Friend' was overly broad and promised you a more useful and satisfying system.  Since it snowed and rained this weekend I couldn't find anything better to do and have thus prepared this for your life changing pleasure:

THE MEANING OF FRIENDSHIP

Much like your favorite swear word, these terms are flexible.  You can use them as nouns, adverbs... actually thats pretty much it.  Still, if you want, you can tell someone its a past partciple, odds are they won't know better.

- FRIENDLIES -   Much like fellow combatants in different battalions, you and your Friendly are on the same side, part of a larger group but when you go on your standard mission, you leave them behind. They are those that are part of your larger 'crew' but through no fault of their own haven't made it to your inner circle.  You may share similar interests with these people, even genuinely like them but, when all is said and done, it's just too much effort to assimilate them into your life.  Instead, you have an ad hoc relationship, 'friends' whenever your're together but never chasing each other down on your own. Friendish.

-FIFL's - Short for friends in a former life. You know how you and Josh were tight in high school? You know how you were sure you'd be friends forever and how people always said you guys will always be friends? How you assumed your friendship would survive through college and work and girlfriends and wives?  Well, it didn't.  The problem is both of you are clearly whiny little girls (friends forever was kind of a tip off) and are unwilling to admit this fact to yourselves or each other.  You still call each other friends even though you dont actually call each other.  Well since neither of you are man enough to cut the cord, and are obviously offending the idea of friendship by continuing to stretch it like contortionist's groin, I give you FIFL.

- FRIENDISH - No, despite how it may sound these aren't a race of beings from Middle Earth. The Friendish are products of circumstance.  You associate with them, consider yourself to be on the same side but you're only connected because of an outside agent.  People on this list would co-workers people you're friends with in camp and anyone else with whom your friendship is part-time. A subset of this group is the 'friends in small doses' these are people you spend limited time with but whose company you generally enjoy... in small doses.  I had a friend in camp who I thought was the funniest person on Earth, after me.  We went to high school together, but we never associated until camp.  After that summer I made a concerted effort to spend more time with said friend, whereupon I realized, he got annoying fast.  I quickly downgraded him to 'Friendish' and have enjoyed his (limited) company since.

- FWOB - Society at large, obviously suffering from the agony of 'Friends' being overly employed, spontaneously gave us 'Friends with Benefits' While I appreciate Societies input I think the much larger group of 'Friends' was ignored, namely 'Friends Without Benefits'.  FWOB's consist of men or women who are head over heels for Friend X whom, if they ever had the chance, would kill to turn into 'Friend XXX'.  FWOB's, and you know who you are, have either decided that their best route to X is proximity and hope, or that they'll never be able to consumate their love, and are willing to accept whatever X is offering instead. 

Have any more?  Feel free to add in the comments section. Just don't expect to get credit for frenemies. Oh, and of course you're all Friends to me...

ON FRIENDS: PART I

So I've been thinking about friends lately.  Not actual people mind you, but the idea of them.  The jokers among you might say this is because I don't have any (bite me), but the truth is, I am having some trouble with the broadness of the word.  Like the rice noodle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_noodles, the definition of important words should be narrow.  For example, when I say 'tax' or 'nudity' or 'you're a douchebag' you know exactly what I mean (In the case of 'nudity' this is true even at the acronym level.  I doubt there is a man over the age of 13 who couldn't tell you what BN stands for at the beginning of any cable movie let alone N or SSC.  Oh just google it girls.).  Now while 'Friend' is a similarly important word and should, likewise, be narrowly defined, it is instead given the Chow Fun noodle treatment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beef_chow_fun, its definition broad and unwieldy.  Sure we have 'aquaintance', 'this person I know', 'the person with whom I have an embarrassing sexual involvement' and many other terms we use when 'Friend' does not suffice, but what about when friends does suffice?  What does the word mean when it can encompass the guy you met a month ago who lets you play with his Xbox360 (God, you people have dirty minds!) and the person with whom you share a deep and secret love for Battlestar Galactica (I mean if you like that kind of stuff... Not that I do, though if I did it would be totally justified given that "Rolling Stone" called it the best show on TV two years in a row.  I'm just saying... if I was a fan.).  The word is demeaning.  It denigrates the value of individuals and lumps them all together like some kind of communist mixer.  I'm surprised Fox News hasn't accused Barak Obama of creating "friends".  (The word not the show, if he'd created the show I imagine he'd have been President a while back and would  now be sitting on a beach somewhere retired. Also and this is probably a minor point, but am I supposed to know the difference between socialists and communists?  I feel like I am.) For these reasons, and because I like naming things, I submit that we do away with the word's usage as currently employed, and instead create a hierarchy of friends, a new lexicon with easily identifiable prefixes and suffixes that identify just how close you really are with friend X.

Tomorrow: The hierarchy is revealed!