d: “why does it bother me when i find out that people that i really like are friends with people that i don't like at all?” It's probably more common than d thinks. It was pointed out earlier that Friendster gets friendship wrong because there's the whole "friend of C" problem: Friend A likes Friend B, Friend B likes Friend C, but Friend A doesn't like Friend C. Plus there's the whole degrees of friendship business as well as variance of friendship over time. One network of friends is almost an entirely seasonal affair: dragon boat practices, which I fully plan on attending in 2004 (finances be damned!), happen in the spring and summer months (for my team anyway, there are teams that do it year round). Some friends are year-round friends, some are off-and-on depending on our moods and schedules, and the vast majority of friends through my lifetime seem to have dropped off the face of the earth (or moved to Calgary, take your pick). The last part is due to lack of interest on my part to keep up with what they're doing.

The point, lost in the foregoing, is that it's possible, nay, common to like someone but not their friends. Such is human life. The answer to "can't we all get along?", easily in my list of top-10 clichés of all time, is invariably no.