You can tell a lot about a person by the things about which they blog

On the way to my art class tonight, I stopped at Moe's Southwest Grill for dinner (think Q'doba or Chipotle style food). Anyway, I was looking at the walls because I was eating alone, and I read all the sayings Mr. Moe thought kitschy enough to make into mandatory franchise wall hangings. The one that caught my eye and has been repeating in my head for most of the night is,
"You can tell a lot by the way a person dips their chips."**
Now, I am no philosopher, but I have been pondering this for a couple of hours, and have a few high-order questions. Like, what can you tell about a person by watching them dip their chips? The same thing you can tell about a person by what shoes they wear or if they like dogs or cats better? Or is that different? Would you be more worried if the common expression was "You can tell a lot by the way a person eats" or "You can tell a lot by the way a person drives" (the guy who called today after I scheduled him for a job interview was real worried that his driving record might keep him from getting a job... what does that mean? Is he then inherently reckless, dangerous, impulsive, paranoid?)? And if I venture to make observations about the way you decorate your bathroom, does that mean that I am more prone to make a judgment about you? You know, that Sally, she chose a puke brown sink, so she will never amount to anything. What????
Let's take for example even a slightly rational saying: "You can tell a lot about a person by the way they treat their mother." We might sympathize with this, nod in agreement, maybe relate to it. We can say, people who are nice to their mothers are generally good and kind-hearted. Except though for people who don't have mothers, or who have socio-pathic mothers who don't deserve to be treated nicely, or who for whatever reason do not observe cultural or societal mores about how we were raised to treat mothers (pretend somewhere else it is acceptable and even encouraged to smack your mother on the hand to show affection, and that is perfectly acceptable and right and good and loving, while we, due to our cultural ignorance, treat it as contemptible behavior... then who's treating their mother right?). Further, the opposite may be true. We may think a "bad" person must be so in all aspects of the characterization, until we discover that some murderers are wonderful to their mums. Then what's to be said? "He/She is a terrible person and therefore he/she must treat his/her mother poorly." No! It cannot be applied either, because herein again lies the fault of not being able to know very much about a person by isolated actions and instances. So maybe you can't tell so much about a person by how they treat their mother or even dip their chips.
I am therefore exclaiming that I know very little about any persons on account of this and other impossibly simple ways of characterizing them. I can't even tell a lot about myself by the way I live life.
As evidence, I will post a poem to unprove what I had thought true about myself before, namely that I could not ever dare to reveal such sexy and scandalous personal writing. But here it is, a poem I wrote this week. I am not saying it is good, it just kept me awake and I had to write it, and it is further unsettling the theorem that you can tell a lot about the person by the stuff about which they write, even if it is just to get it out of their head and have a peaceful night's sleep. You might still venture to say that I am a lovesick crazy mo'fo, but you wouldn't be able to prove that anymore than I can.

He whispers, from behind,
I want to make love to you.
His hands inch down to my pelvis
As I lean over the stove
Cooking everything on high,
The gas-fueled flames licking the pots
And I let them boil over and brown.

He declares, from afar,
I want to make love to you.
His hands inch down to his own pelvis
As I curl up in my bed,
Letting everything simmer within,
The love-filled pangs searing my heart
And I let it blacken and char.


** (from above): as a former English major, I have to clarify, that since "person" is singular, it is not really correct to say "they." It is correct to say, "You can tell a lot about a person by the way she/he dips her/his chips." And that is still not ideal if we are dealing with a person who does not fit into the he/she gender category.
Note: I have not yet deconstructed the meaning of "you can tell..." Is that tell in the sense of determine, observe, say or gossip? As in, you can gossip a lot about a person based on the way she/he removes a big black something from her/his teeth at a dinner party. In that special semantics case, I may be prepared to defend the saying. I can gossip a lot about the way a person talks to me on the phone, among other things.

Moral: be glad that I do not analyze things, strategically or otherwise, for a living, only when multiple hours in front of a computer screen has otherwise rendered me useless for life. However, if anyone reading this is interested in Strategic Analyis, please consult me for a possible career path.