The Fellowship Of Facebook

I have often thought about this wonderful and terrifying tool we have in Facebook.  Over thirty years ago, we would never have had the tools to keep track of so many people in our present and from our past.

The incredible thing I find about Facebook is the amazing ability to snare "new" friends and ignore them all at the same time.  The novelty of Facebook is very intense that everyone who gets hooked on it, invites every person that he or she ever knew.  Catch up with old friends and ex-flames from the past and turn it all into one big reunion party.

However, then you discover why so many of those "friends" were not great friends in the first place.  Like running into an old acquaintance on a long bus ride, you eventually run out of conversation.  Once the common talk and catching up is done, phase two kicks in.  Phase two in Facebook is when you decide to go silent on many of your friends postings.  You may decide that you have had enough but you don't want to be rude by outwardly "rejecting" the said person(s). Remember that person can see all your friends and can spread some pretty wild gossip in no time.

So the act of ignoring swiftly enters the Facebook arena.  It is one of the great passive aggressive features that Facebook has.  "I have Jane Doe as a friend but she has all these stupid applications that I hate and her posts are so dumb. I don't want to rock the boat, so I will put her news items on "hide" so I can get this skank out of my life."

"Jane Doe" does not know any better and goes on ranting and raving and attributing your quietness to...well..  your quiet side.  Of course if she inquires to your new found inactive state, you can always say the lie that everyone gives and believe me, everyone has said this - "I am not on Facebook that much anymore."

Dare I say that you learn stuff about your family that maybe you would rather not know.  Personal postings that are not intended for family viewing come to mind.  How about finding out that someone in your family has Paris Hilton as a role model?  Quick, the "hide" button, THE HIDE BUTTON!!

Facebook does allow us to keep track of those important people in our lives that may have moved to other places.  For those close friendships that may have diminished over years of losing touch, it is an invaluable tool that allows to stay in touch in an inexpensive fashion.  So let my "Friends" list grow astronomically with people who really care as little about my life as I do with theirs.  I can put them in "Limited Friends" and remain the quiet one.  Come to think of it, I do have some quiet friends out there....hmmmm.  Next week, we will learn all about the "BLOCK" button otherwise known as the Facebook restraining order.

A United Nations Address

Looking at my stats, I have seen that I have an international albeit a small audience.   So on my little podium known as my desktop computer, let me address my supporters all around the world before they get back to that world and conveniently forget who and what I am about. (Too late)

I see the majority of my viewers come from Canada.  That is nice to see because one thing we really appreciate in Canada are our own bright stars who flee down to the United States to make it big.   Then, we proudly make them our own.  If we had not done this, Superman would be fighting for "Truth, Justice and the Canadian Way".  Yes, Superman flew down to New York or um...Metropolis where he made it big, leaving us with ....Captain Canuck.  Yikes!

I did not get much support in the Middle East with my site so far.  I guess I did not write "death to Americans" enough throughout my blog although with that phrase in this one sentence, I should be able to get one viewer from Syria.

Speaking of Americans, they represent my second largest fan following.  Still no talent scout from L.A. banging down my door with a mega dollar contract in his hand for signing.  Nah, in order to do that, I have to have a gory, blood-soaked, graphic blog equivalent to something like Maury Povich and some surprise cross-cultural and maybe cross-species paternity tests.  What point was I trying to make again?  Oh yeah, welcome America!

Checking in at number three is beautiful exotic India.  I was thinking that if there was a way to cyber hook up with every "Kwiki-mart" between here and New Jersey, I would reach at least a tenth of India's one billion people.  Mind you, most of them probably would not understand a word that I would have to say unless I quoted something basic out of "Hindi For Dummies".  By the way, I have found a way to get my annoying cloying cat out of my studio room.  If he hangs around an annoys me, I put on a Bollywood film and he gets the message real quick.  Thank you, India!

There are five supporters in Singapore and I personally know one of them.  What a viral explosion!  However, I have to keep it clean on here because Singapore is an extremely clean country and there are heavy fines for people who read smut or smut-like topics and that includes swearing.  Fudge!

Checking in next is the enigmatic country that does not know what to call itself.  If you ask any Londoner where they are from you could get at least four different answers.  "England, Great Britain, the United Kingdom. Britain or even the UK".  Whatever the case, they do have a more sense of modesty here than in America.  If you ask an American where he lives he is more likely to respond - "on the greatest f***ing country on the planet!!".  Sadly, Britain has been on a steep decline.  First, the sun did set on the British Empire, the Beatles broke up and we are left with ... Susan Boyle.  Oh and Charles is next in line to be king with his wife Camilla.   Ta Ta!

Rounding out the bottom of the list are some former Soviet republics - Russia, Hungary and the Czech Republic.  When Ronald Reagan and his advisers toured the Kremlin, they got to see Gorbachev's luxury accommodations.  Reagan who was already past seventy stood up to Gorby and said "Mr. Gorbachev. tear down this wall!"  Gorbachev responded "NYET!"  Reagan was not to be denied.  "TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!"  "NYET!" came the answer.  It was tense.  World War III was imminent.  Finally, a nervous Soviet adviser whispered to his American counterpart.  "He thinks you want to tear down his bedroom wall."  After the adviser relayed the info to Reagan, he declared, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down the Berlin Wall."  Gorbachev agreed and the two men hugged signalling the end of the Cold War.  They then spent the rest of the afternoon testing out the bounciness of Mr. Gorbachev's luxury bed.   Welcome back to Capitalism!

That concludes my address. If your country is not mentioned here, send me a note and I will be more than happy to mock it...umm as nicely as I can of course.  I'm Canadian, I will be gentle to keep the peace.

My Brother And I

I was nine and my brother was turning seven.  Our parents brought us to the zoo.  We had the notion that if we bugged them enough we could get them to take one of the animals back home with us.  Lions, tigers, chimps, kangaroos, koala bears, coyotes...we hounded them endlessly for them all.
By the time we reached the zoo gift shop. the idea of each getting a stuffed animal was much more easy to accept by our parents in light of the constant animal demands we had made earlier.  I got a zebra and my brother got a tall giraffe.  On the long car ride home, my brother and I played with our own newly acquired animals.  My brother was proud of his long-necked giraffe which took up a lot of space in the car.  He took every opportunity to wave it around saying it was better than my zebra.
He started picking on my zebra.  That giraffe became the boss of space and things in our car ride and there was nowhere that my zebra could hide.  Regular attacks coupled with my brother's taunts that his giraffe was king put me in a deep state of misery.  My father decided that before we got home, that we would go through the car wash.  As the car went on the assembly line to be washed by the heavy clunking machinery, I leaned over to my brother and told him that his giraffe's head was stinky and that he needed to be clean.  My brother looked out the window, saw the spritzing and flying soap everywhere and decided to give his giraffe an instant shower.
Without warning he lowered the window and poked his giraffe's head out into the car wash chaos.   The giraffe's body convulsed and my brother instinctively held on to it.  A storm of soap and water entered our back seat of the car and all hell broke loose.  My parents yelled, I was getting soaked and yelling, my brother was yelling trying to save his endangered giraffe.
My father put it in gear and sped through the car wash.  The car came out of the car wash covered in soap because we skipped the rinse and dry cycle during all of the chaos.   However, the real drama unfolded when my brother finally got his giraffe back in the car.  THE HEAD WAS GONE.  He shrieked in a mixed form of terror and sadness while I laughed my ass off.  The harder he cried, the harder I laughed.  My zebra suddenly became the prominent stuffed animal in the car as I proudly waved it everywhere while my brother continued to mourn over his headless animal.  My parents drove on in the front with a wish to get home and a sense of disbelief from what had just transpired.  My brother tried to convince them to go back and get the head.  Out of the question.  The mere thought that my father would have to go through a middle of a car wash, find a soaking mess of a giraffe's head just to bring it home and have to figure out how to sew it back on was too much.   My parents did the only thing they could do.  They arranged a small stuffed animal funeral and buried the headless giraffe out in the back yard.   I am sure that many years later when new people moved in and started to dig up the earth for a garden and came across a headless but buried stuffed giraffe, the house would probably go up for sale soon after.