Just Like "West Side Story"

Sometimes, the most frustrating thing about the Internet (well, Facebook specifically) is that when you think you are being devastatingly clever in your sarcasm, not everyone gets it.  Jokes fall flat if you have to explain them.

Walt and I have been through about 5 hours of intenses Shakespearean drama this weekend, as we watched first an all-female version of Romeo and Juliet and then a normal version of the same show, all put on by the 30 year old Acme Theater Company, comprised of high school age kids.

This show was set in some sort of dystopian time where the military rules and tries to keep the warring Caputlets and Montagues from disturbing it.  The costumes are white for the Capulets and black for the Montagues, who mostly wear leather, chains, and, in the case of the regular cast, tall mohawk hairdos.

Given the setting and the costuming, it was actually easier to find West Side Story in the action and so I wrote on Facebook:  "Saw a production of Romeo and Juliet tonight.  It reminded me of West Side Story."  I then added a little winking smiley to the end of that.

Well, I got lots of comments:

Michael - Never heard of it.

Tracey - What's this you speak of? Are you in a foreign country again?

Lynn - LOL

Sue -  Um, duh?

Crilly - Obvious rip-off.

Michael - Yeah. Must be a cheap ripoff. You know what they say. By any other name, it still smells the same.

Mary - Imagine!

Neil - "No, sir, but I DO bite my thumb, sir"

Buncha wiseasses, all of 'em.  I love it that there are learned people who appreciate my wit.  But then came this comment:

Of course WEST SIDE STORY is based on ROMEO & JULIET , what else could it be based on?

The writer then added:

And I'm sure when Shakespheare wrote it down, it wasn't a new tale then....

and then explained that she used to work backstage in a professional theater.  

What Facebook needs is a "sarcasm" sign to keep people from thinking you're seriously stupid, though as one of the commentors said "you'd think the winkey would be a clue."

But sarcasm aside, this was a great production.  If I had to choose the better of the two productions, I couldn't do it.  The girls playing the men's parts were totally believable, for the most part, as their male characters. 

Interestingly, though, the director mentioned that she had intended the same direction for both casts, but as they got into rehearsal discovered that the nature of the actors kind of dictated the nature of the direction.  While both productions were excellent, there was definitely more testosterone in the mixed gender production, especially notable in the fight scenes.  While the girl-men held nothing back, they didn't quite have the same intensity that you would see in a group of guys fighting each other.

The thing I loved about the show was seeing age-appropriate actors playing Romeo and Juliet.  It's no secret that Shakespeare is not my thing, but I learn something whenever I prepare for going to see one of his plays.  I guess it never hit me that Juliet is thirteen, or that Romeo has been swooning over the lovely Rosalinde, but totally loses his attraction to her the first time he sets eyes on Juliet...and they are married the next day by the town priest.  Things move quickly in Verona.

Anyway, having teenagers do these roles makes them more believable.   The Juliet in the all female cast was so ephemeral, so flighty, so much a teenager in love while Romeo is just as much so only in a masculine way.  The other Juliet was more the pouty, defiant-teenager Juliet, while Romeo was more of a macho figure.   Their balcony scene didn't move me as much as the first one did, but their death scene was so powerful you could have heard a pin drop in the theater.

So the show got a good review, but I still say it reminds me of West Side Story!

Social Me

I had my Facebook participation analyzed today.  It was really kind of interesting.  It analyzed 7,372 status updates and came up with this data:

Where do you post from?
99% of your posts come from Facebook.com and 1% come from Twitter. The average person posts from Facebook.com 58% of the time.  You post most often in the afternoon.
Here are my most talked-about subjects:

(Interesting that movies ranks so high, since I haven't seen a movie this year and barely any for the last 3 years...I wonder if they are lumping theatrical productions in with moving pictures.  They must be.)

My posts are most often...

Verbose?  Who me?

You post about 88 statuses per month.

The average person posts 12.8 statuses per month. You posted the most statuses in one day on May 21, 2009 with a total of 15 statuses.

This information doesn't surprise me.

Fun stuff:

You have posted as many words as a book!
In fact, you have posted more words than "The Hobbit," which has a total of 95,022 words.

• Bev uses more words per sentence than 85% of people.
• Bev uses more abbreviations than 94% of people.
• Bev uses fewer question marks than 86% of people.
• Bev uses more quotation marks in her writing than 94% of people.
• Bev uses less punctuation in her writing than 87% of people.
• Bev uses more prepositions in her writing than 90% of people.
• Bev is more insightful than 87% of people.
• Bev speaks more in the past tense than 90% of people.
• Bev uses longer words than 86% of people.

I have 1,018 friends and the people who comment most, in order, are:

• Jessica Moms Brown (334 comments)
• Ron Clough (330 comments)
• Patricia Williams-King (220 comments)
• Barbara Watkins Hyde (205 comments)
• Joan Callaway (182 comments)

I see there is no category for the over-60 group, and I suspect many of my friends are over 60.

Not sure if that was interesting to anybody but me, but I found it fun.  If you're on Facebook, you can have your own data analyzed at Zeeb.ly (sadly you do have to give up some permissions to do it.  I almost never do, but I was curious this time...)

Compression. Not.

How to compress this very. full. day. into one illustrated journal entry.  Can't be done, so I apologize in advance for the super long entry.

It started when I left at 10 to meet Susan from Texas in Old Sacramento.  We were actually meeting at noon and I thought I could stop at SuperCuts on the way and get a much overdue haircut.  But when I got to SuperCuts, there was an hour wait, so I just headed on over to Old Sac anyway.

We were meeting at the Delta King paddle wheeler and I was nearly an hour early, so I took a picture... 

(I love this boat!)

...and then settled down to wait with what turned out to be a homeless woman, who, among other things, told me she hadn't trusted boats since she learned about the Titanic.

A train was arriving by where I was sitting and as I took this picture...

...I realized that Susan was on the opposite side of tracks, just out of the frame of this picture, also taking a picture of the train arriving.   We walked down to Joe's Crab Shack (of course) for lunch, where we shivered on the porch watching boats go up and down the river under the Tower Bridge.  It's supposed to be in the 90s, for Pete's sake, and it was freezing (which *I* didn't mind, but Susan was not dressed for cold weather (remember, I said she is fromTexas).

I ordered a crabcake sandwich and was disappointed in it, but the "onion strings" that came with it were fabulous.

We then took the grand tour of Old Sac (which pretty much means going into lots of gift and tsatske shops.   I bought lots of postcards to replenish my supply.

I took this picture of Susan, as a tourist shot, but I really was taking a picture of the guy in the jacket behind her.  Old Sacramento has become a big biker hot spot and there were bikers all over the place today.

This one I meant to take.  This is the statue of a Pony Express rider.  Sacramento was one end of the Pony Express (I think St. Joseph, MO was the other).  They hired young riders who had no families, because they assumed many would be killed.  The Pony Express only lasted 18 months, until the transcontinental railroad was completed.

After the statue, we wandered around the Train Museum Shop (deciding NOT to pay the $9 admission to the museum itself.  I found a fascinating book about which I will report when I have finished it.  It is another tale of American History about which I was woefully ignorant.  We then gradually made our way back to the parking lot and garage where we had left our cars and we headed off in our separate directions to take a nap before Part 2 of our big day.

I went to sleep at 3, fully expecting to be awake at 4, but was shocked to realize it was 5 when I woke up.  I was being picked up at 5:15, so I had just 15 minutes to get ready to go.  Fortunately, other than changing my shirt, I didn't really have anything to do.

Beth arrived in the carport at 5:15, in a car with herself, her daughter Katie and our friend Anne (whom I have known forever; I had never met Beth or Katie before).  We drove to get Cindi, who has been Buddy's foster Mom ever since he left our house (he was adopted today!!!).  Cindi's roommate's dog was in the window of the house when we drove up and Anne and Beth leaped out to take its picture, since they see pictures of him on Facebook all the time.  I think I got the best picture, though!

The five of us (minus the dog) drove to West Sacramento, where we were meeting Susan to begin our River Train ride. The train was kind of out in the middle of nowhere, next to a water treatment plant.   Trying to figure out where to park was a challenge, but we finally did.  We stood around with the other passengers waiting to be told what to do.

We finally boarded...

...and were taken to the car where we would have our dinner.  We were seated four on one side and two on the other and there were 3 courses for our dinner, so we switched seating arrangements for each course, so we could each get a chance to visit with everyone by the end of the evening. And since this is a photography group and we are all geeks, we all had our cameras, cell phones and iPods out for the whole trip

.

Dinner was ok -- nothing to write home (or a journal entry) about   -- but the best part was just getting to know each other.  Beth and Susan discovered they had practically their whole lives in common and had been at the same place at either the same time or very near the same time all over the place and all over the country.  The coincidences started being a bit creepy.

Anne and I were on the opposite side, enjoying the view of the fields as they passed by.

(she had to squint because we were heading into the full sunset)

Between the salad and main course, we went up to the observation cars

(there were 3 observation cars; Katie was the only one in any of them!)

On the way back to our main course, we stopped to listen to the guy entertaining in the dancing car.  He was alone, except for us (but a small crowd did come to listen to him after the main course.)

Time to change seats

When we arrived back at our starting point, the crew gave Katie a little Train Bear.

It was such a fun time.  We didn't go where we thought we were going to go, it probably wasn't worth the money we paid for it, but the friendships forged made it all worthwhile.  (And as Cindi said when we were leaving, "this was the most fun I've ever had at a water treatment plant.")

Tomorrow we are all going to tour the UCD Arboretum and have lunch together before Susan has to head to the airport and back to Dallas.

What a really great day!

Sharing

Walt thinks I spend a lot of time on Facebook and, granted, I do check in several times a day, but I don't think I spend even an hour on Facebook. But I "share" a lot of great stuff that people have posted and I thought I would copy some of the most recent here for people who aren't on Facebook.

I thought this said so much, but it got a long message from a someone who wrote, "with all due respect, my friend, this isn't the most accurate statement. I don't know anyone who disagrees with homosexuality who isn't moved by the suffering of malnourished children. The struggle of keeping one's life vs. a persons choice to have sex with someone of the same sex. You can't compare it. Not even close."

My response, "I would like to see people spending as much time trying to eradicate malnutrition as they do trying to keep homosexuals from having equal rights under the law -- to marry, to serve in the military, to get a job, etc. I suspect that if you made a table of how many anti-gay bills vs. anti-poverty bills were voted on in Congress, those little kids would lose by a mile. If Fred Phelps sent the money he spends on his "God hates fags" campaign to churches in African countries, he could have saved thousands of children from death from malnutrition."

I see 36 bills about marriage, which are trying to prevent or abolish gay marriage...do you see a single one that will help starving children?

A picture that made me feel all warm and fuzzy today was this one:

I "shared" it with all of my SPCA buddies ("sharing" means reposting it to your own Facebook age). But then this picture hurt my heart:

This is the last picture of a dog who had just been put in a gas chamber, and was posted originally by people who are trying to eradicate gas chambers for animals. As several people asked--who would take a picture of such a thing. My heart hurts for this guy. Animal euthansia is probably necessary until people start acting responsibly about pets, but surely there is a more humane way to end an animal's life.

I liked this one, which really needs no comment:

...nor does this.

There are lots of cool things posted on Facebook and sometimes I'm sorry that there isn't a more efficient way to spread some of these things that strike me strongly with more people.

And now I've done just that.

Status Updates

People don't understand the lure of Facebook or Twitter. For me Twitter was a place where I could try to be witty in only 140 characters--a challenge!--but Twitter and I really didn't bond all that much. In contrast, I dearly love Facebook. So many people seem to have their own style of messsages, called "status updates." Members of my family post totally incomprehensible updates that mean something to them, but to very few others. A few examples (and my family includes children and in-laws, so I'm not going to identify anybody. You Know Who You Are.)

- bird must be omen
- ** is confused. Good thing I'm not in charge.
- would like to be done with it, already
- ** is a lump of delight
- sad for the opportunities missed when you are busy sitting around
- cracking myself up, and wondering who will be the first to get got

But the ones I really love are the ones that the animal people write, relating their animal "situations." Ashley's are the my favorites, but reading all of the animal lover status updates makes me feel better about our own house. Here are some recent ones (again, writer(s) unidentified)

- Windy woke up to Mini cleaning her ears - very cute - and then Jesse attacked her as she was getting on the couch - not so cute. Mixed messages here people!!! (followed of course by Jesse's first seizure of the day.

- (and in response to the above status udate): can't you just wake up to a nice cup of coffee like the rest of us? I think I am going to look into the STUFFED ANIMAL rescue group and see if you can volunteer your life to them instead!

- Rub a dub dub 5 pups in a tub and who do you think is the wettest?

- I currently have a temp. of 98.9.... (and yes I had to buy a new thermometer because all the rest had been used on dogs!)

- The dog keeps trying to bite Jesper Parnevik on the tv. What's she got against the Swede?

- We've got a lot of dog drama here. Chanda came over and Matilda is all over her, practically drooling. Licking the inside of her mouth, just ecstatic with joy. Then she turns around and growls at Cookie.

- So let's just say I bought a heated perch for $100 for the parrot and it looks like I got it at a sex shop and the damn thing is not heating up! Why?

- Demon Puppy has a sore paw. But I've noticed limping ceases outside house, when there are sticks to catch. Con dog.

- Billy has gotten very good at splicing wire; an unexpected advantage of having a puppy in the house. The vacuum cleaner, ethernet, and lamp all work again.

- XX was playing Parcheesi with Billy. We got up to get his tea and the puppy chewed the dice cup (and for a brief moment we thought swallowed the dice). While we were retrieving the dice cup and looking for dice, she managed to drink some of Billy's tea. It doesn't stop. You'd have to be crazy to adopt one of these.

- The other evening I walked away from my drink, pomegranate vodka and juice, and Max, age 14, helped himself... I had a small bout of wondering if Vodka might be toxic to dogs, but apparently not, at least my dog and his cast iron gut!

- Tonight, he did it again when I turned my back for a second! I think he is trying to blame it on old dog senility... he just looks confused when I jump and run at him.. and of course, he is deaf.... this one, I drank anyways... he only got one good slug in, I debated, and figure the alcohol would kill the dog germs... It was my last little shot of the vodka..... and, Bev, I have dogs, because I will laugh at this later... gotta luv them, they certainly love us!

- Thinking I need to make my dog her own personal blanket. She keeps taking mine and its the only type she doesn't chew up.

- Late for work because I couldn't find my glasses. Dog was chewing on them outside.

- If my dog were a real boy? He would be young Marlon Brando Machismo

- wish LJ would stop hiding his bones in my bed!

- why oh why would a dog eat a needle?

- This afternoon, on our after Thanksgiving dinner walk, we saw a toilet in some guy's yard, a dead cow in full rigor, and a used condom. Thanksgiving Day Fail? Or Win?

- My dog mimics ambulance/fire sirens. It's amazing how much it sounds like the real thing. But when it's 1 a.m. I realize it's not so amazing.

- my dog has this odd foot fetish, he just wants to lick my feet...no one else's. Just mine.

Here's a conversation of sorts:

- Mini peed in Windy's bed. So Windy has decided she is sleeping in my bed until I fix this problem. Fun for me.

- Seriously! So what is up with these dogs and the musical-peed-beds. I am thinking: If you are gonna pee a bed, just pee your own, thank you!

- no they wouldnt dare pee in their own bed! That would not tell the other dog they are cooler than them. I'm pretty sure Mini was claiming Windy for his woman. Cause now he spends most of his time licking her ears and cuddling. (what a great way to pick up on someone!!)

One of mine:

- Walt is trying to put in a new flap on the dog door...but discovered one of the puppies ran off with his screwdriver. Now he's out searching for it!

--and people wonder why I enjoy Facebook!

A Facebook Experiment

I sure hadn't expected to get an ego bump when I posted yet another Facebook quirk. The challenge read:

If you are reading this, even if we don't speak often, post a comment of a memory of you and me. When you've finished, post this paragraph on your own status; you'll be surprised at what people remember about you.

What the heck, I thought. I was very surprised to get a handful of messages right away.

Lynn H
I remember celebrating Grandmother-hood with you by doing a Happy Dance together, long distance! Boy are we good or what!

Lynn is a friend from Flickr. She is also in her third year of doing the "self photo a day" (a project her son started, not realizing how it was going to mushroom!). Lynn takes some of the most inventive self-portraits, particularly her "Me as art" set!

Debra LoGuercio
I remember meeting you sitting across the table from me at a Winters Community Theater production and being glad to be able to put a face to the name!

Debra writes a wonderful column, Because I Say So that appears in the Winters Express and the Davis Enterprise. We've sat together for two different Winters Community Theatre productions now and I always enjoy talking with her.

Welmoed B-S
I remember sitting under a huge weeping willow tree in Hyde Park in London, marvelling at the fact that we had only known eachother via CompuServe, and now we were meeting in real life! Hard to believe that was 14 years ago.

Welmoed is someone I knew from CompuServe and we did, as she says, meet for tea in Hyde Park with our friend Jane, who had been an exchange student living with us. She says our meeting was 14 years ago, but it sure seems like longer ago than that (but I don't doubt her)

Stacy Lynn C
I remember all the wonderful tasty cakes you made for me and all my friends in our younger days in Davis!

I really don't remember making cakes for Stacy or her friends, but in the days when our kids were in school, it seemed that I was making cakes for EVERYBODY, so I'm sure she's right.

Stacy B
I remember the first time that Tater and Tot came to placement at Petco and someone was coming to see them. The person approached me, introduced themselves, and said that they were there to see them. In one of my less-proud moments, I pointed in their general direction and said, "Oh yeah... they're the ones over there that kind of look like oversized potatoes."

Stacy works with Ashley and so, like Ashley she shows up at our house from time to time with either a dog to drop off or a dog to pick up...or to help with some problem I'm having with the current in-house dog.

Kari P
i remember you worked at the secretariet on G street and typed my first post-college-looking-for-a-job resume on a funny typewriter that had an electronic window that displayed a single stream of text (early wordprocessor), and that you were really fast and patient and turned my draft resume into something very professional. and i got the tennis teacher job with the city of davis!

Boy, the things you don't remember! Kari is the person who got me onto the board of the Davis Community Network, but I didn't realize that I had typed a resume for her when I was at The Secretariat, way back in the 1970s!

Jan H
I remember the photo of the lamingtons you made for Australia Day a few years ago. I also remember how you spoke to my friend Gloria on the phone when she was in the US and had lost Mary and Mary's MUM within days of one another.

Jan is someone else I know from the Internet, but have never met. I had totally forgotten about her friend Gloria, and this comment she wrote reminded me to ask her how Gloria is doing.

Joan C
Well, of course, Scrabble on-line and BBB's!

This one is self-explanatory--except for the BBB, which even I couldn't remember...it was "Bush Bashing Breakfasts" with our friend Nancy. (We've had to change the name since Obama was elected and Bush went into hiding!)

Mara T
You, my mom, and Mr. Brunelle in a hotel room in New Orleans after we'd been caught in a bar on Bourbon Street...

Boy do I remember that! It must be said that this particular group of students were all old enough to drink legally in New Orleans (where the drinking age was 18), but the group had been told that even though they could, they were not permitted to by school rules. I will say that my ability to cry on command was VERY useful in dealing with that situation, since I was the one who found them standing outside the bar, drinking a Hurricane!

Mike G
Beer butt chicken in a Houston back yard.

This was for my friend Lynn's (the one who was just here recently) surprise birthday party. She had met Mike the previous time I was in Houston, so we invited him to come to the party, at which her son BBQ'd the famous beer butt chicken.

Karen M-C
We met at DG's house, didn't we? To discuss ways of helping him promote his website when it was in a new and infantile state? Sean was still a kid, and I think Michael and I were still living in Alhambra, so it's been AWHILE!

A lifetime ago. Karen was the first person I ever met after whom a planet was named. The planet Malcor, in the Star Trek world, was named for her. Together we helped sci fi author David Gerrold design his web site. Karen raises Arabian horses and my most vivid memory (other than one of her horses playing with a child's swimming pool, tossing it into the air)...

...is of one of that same horse in the house watching "The Black Stallion" on TV. (He really did it, too! Karen said he ignored the TV until the horse came on and then he watched intently!)

Pat P
When you and I and Cathy met for the first time in Santa Barbara after getting to know each other on CompuServe (is CIS still around?). Photos show all three of us wearing huge glasses.

I remember that. I can't remember how long ago it was, but about 20 years ago. We all felt very brave, meeting each other face to face. Now the CompuServe discussion forums are gone, but Pat, Cathy, myself and several others continue to remain close friends (though separated by oceans, some of us) through Yahoo groups!

Mary W
I think the first time I met you in person was on the train ride from hell. We spent a day in SF and you came in to meet us. Danny was just a little boy, riding on my back. It was a cold foggy day (surprise!) and you very politely didn't comment on our goosebumps.

Actually I remember a lot of things with you over various visits to SF. The time you drove Tricia and me up to Twin Peaks. Standing on the top of Fort Point watching the currents. Eating that divine tofu sandwich at Greens. I'm thinking I need to come back!

Mary is another member of the CompuServe group and, since she is one of the younger ones, I kind of feel like she's the second daughter I never had (and am sorry that my attempts to get her and Jeri together sometime have all failed, since Mary, too, is the oldest sister with four younger brothers--and I know they would have much to talk about!). Tricia, too, is part of the group, but lives closer to me, so Mary flies to see Tricia and they drive to meet me in San Francisco--at least that's how it's happened a couple of times now.

Toni B
Exchanging glances with you as we watched with such affection the way Dick Brunelle sat so proudly on the bus in New Orleans with the huge winner's trophy occupying the seat next to him.

Mother of Mara, above--same New Orleans trip. Yes, watching teacher Dick Brunelle with his trophy was worth everything we went through on that trip!

This really was a fun exercise and brought up a lot of memories of things I hadn't thought about in years--or things I had forgotten. I had such a good time on Facebook, I'll put the same suggestion to people reading this entry--post a comment about a memory of you and me, whether we've met or not. And then, fellow bloggers, try doing this on your own blogs and see if you're as pleasantly surprised as I have been!

Annoying Facebookers

According to a CNN article, here are the 12 most annoying types of Facebookers. I figure I'm about half of them.:

The Let-Me-Tell-You-Every-Detail-of-My-Day Bore. "I'm waking up." "I had Wheaties for breakfast." "I'm bored at work." "I'm stuck in traffic." You're kidding! How fascinating! No moment is too mundane for some people to broadcast unsolicited to the world. Just because you have 432 Facebook friends doesn't mean we all want to know when you're waiting for the bus.

The Self-Promoter. OK, so we've probably all posted at least once about some achievement. And sure, maybe your friends really do want to read the fascinating article you wrote about beet farming. But when almost EVERY update is a link to your blog, your poetry reading, your 10k results or your art show, you sound like a bragger or a self-centered careerist.

The Friend-Padder. The average Facebook user has 120 friends on the site. Schmoozers and social butterflies -- you know, the ones who make lifelong pals on the subway -- might reasonably have 300 or 400. But 1,000 "friends?" Unless you're George Clooney or just won the lottery, no one has that many. That's just showing off.

The Town Crier. "Michael Jackson is dead!!!" You heard it from me first! Me, and the 213,000 other people who all saw it on TMZ. These Matt Drudge wannabes are the reason many of us learn of breaking news not from TV or news sites but from online social networks. In their rush to trumpet the news, these people also spread rumors, half-truths and innuendo. No, Jeff Goldblum did not plunge to his death from a New Zealand cliff.

The TMIer. "Brad is heading to Walgreens to buy something for these pesky hemorrhoids." Boundaries of privacy and decorum don't seem to exist for these too-much-information updaters, who unabashedly offer up details about their sex lives, marital troubles and bodily functions. Thanks for sharing.

The Bad Grammarian. "So sad about Fara Fauset but Im so gladd its friday yippe". Yes, I know the punctuation rules are different in the digital world. And, no, no one likes a spelling-Nazi schoolmarm. But you sound like a moron.

The Sympathy-Baiter. "Barbara is feeling sad today." "Man, am I glad that's over." "Jim could really use some good news about now." Like anglers hunting for fish, these sad sacks cast out their hooks -- baited with vague tales of woe -- in the hopes of landing concerned responses. Genuine bad news is one thing, but these manipulative posts are just pleas for attention.

The Lurker. The Peeping Toms of Facebook, these voyeurs are too cautious, or maybe too lazy, to update their status or write on your wall. But once in a while, you'll be talking to them and they'll mention something you posted, so you know they're on your page, hiding in the shadows. It's just a little creepy.

The Crank. These curmudgeons, like the trolls who spew hate in blog comments, never met something they couldn't complain about. "Carl isn't really that impressed with idiots who don't realize how idiotic they are." [Actual status update.] Keep spreading the love.

The Paparazzo. Ever visit your Facebook page and discover that someone's posted a photo of you from last weekend's party -- a photo you didn't authorize and haven't even seen? You'd really rather not have to explain to your mom why you were leering like a drunken hyena and French-kissing a bottle of Jagermeister.

The Maddening Obscurist. "If not now then when?" "You'll see..." "Grist for the mill." "John is, small world." "Dave thought he was immune, but no. No, he is not." [Actual status updates, all.] Sorry, but you're not being mysterious -- just nonsensical.
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The Chronic Inviter. "Support my cause. Sign my petition. Play Mafia Wars with me. Which 'Star Trek' character are you? Here are the 'Top 5 cars I have personally owned.' Here are '25 Things About Me.' Here's a drink. What drink are you? We're related! I took the 'What President Are You?' quiz and found out I'm Millard Fillmore! What president are you?"

The way I figure it, Facebook is all things to all people and we've all done these sorts of things from time to time (except I refuse to be the "bad grammarian"!) Some people obviously like each one of these things, others hate them, most of us have learned how to use Facebook so that we get what we want out of it and don't run off screaming when we get another invitation to join the "Save the Beanie Babies" Society or sign a petition that declares that Facebook people think Rush Limbaugh is a jerk.

What is Facebook to me?

* It's a way to try to be clever in a terse little status update. Twitter does the same thing (with fewer characters), but I don't find a way to create a sense of "community" on Twitter. I love trying to find a funny way of saying something mundane. Ned is the master of this, as are others. How can you resist a status that read "dry underwear is underrated."

* It's a place to connect with people I care about. In the beginning, I friended everybody who asked because I didn't know a soul on FB, but I now have nearly 700 "friends" and it is unwieldy, so I have set them into groups and I only check the groups that I'm interested in and ignore the rest. In the past 2 years, more of my real life friends have sauntered into Facebook, so why should I bother about Jane Doe from a place I've never visited and whom I am not likely to meet (and with whom I have nothing in common), but who has been on my friend list for 2 years, when I can check out an old school buddy I haven't seen in years and get acquainted with her family? But I don't want to be rude and "un-friend" poor Jane Doe. It might hurt her feelings.

* It's a place to play the games I like to play. It's not my fault that FB chooses to announce every single game that I play. I don't need to have it all posted to my newsfeed, but I can't control Facebook.

Some of the annoying traits above are, I suspect, because people haven't learned how to use the system. I see "Obscurists" all the time, who mean to write personal notes to someone and don't realize that anything put on a wall gets posted into a newsfeed, or someone who doesn't respond to a comment but merely posts a new comment in response to the one above it, not realizing that when it appears on a newsfeed total strangers who read it aren't going to be able to see it in context. I forgive them that because we all at one time were newbies. (I did, however, once write to a friend to let her know that her very personal interaction with another friend about a third friend was visible to the entire Facebook community and to tell her the difference between "wall" and "email"!)

I also get tired of the "Chronic Inviters," and 99% of the time ignore all invitations, but occasionally I find something really fun to try, so I put up with the flood of invites. It's a question of sorting the wheat from the chaff. I try to hit "skip" whenever some application wants me to invite all of my friends to join me in doing...whatever.

The secret of Facebook, if you are going to get any enjoyment about of it, is to find out how you can manipulate it for you and just ignore the rest. It doesn't take more than a fraction of a second to hit the "ignore" button or the scroll bar. I'd rather do that than bitch about how other people we have chosen to friend choose to get enjoyment out of it.

The Return of Gene Oh

I'm hoping that some of the more internet savy folks here will have an answer to this perplexing question for me, though I have come to my own possible conclusions, true or not.

Anybody who is on Facebook is aware that whenever you log on, you get one or two suggestions of people you might like to add to your friend list. It's how my list got to close to 700 people...just willy nilly adding suggestions from Facebook.

Lately, I've been more selective. Unless I actuallyknow the person or know their affiliations which I share, I generally just choose to ignore the suggestions.

Until recently the suggestions made sense. They were friends of friends of mine. Maybe really distant friends of friends, but still the suggested names appeared on the friend list of somebody on my friend list.

But a couple have turned up recently that really confuse me. One is a woman who performed with the Davis Comic Opera Company many, many years ago. I never knew her -- I don't even know if I saw her perform -- but her name is familiar. The thing is, though, that she apparently has no Facebook friends yet. You can check out the friend list of the suggested new friend and this woman's friend list is blank.

So how did Facebook pick this person, whose name I know and who was associated with a theatre I was associated with a long time ago, as a possible new friend for me?

It could be that we are in the same "network" and this was just a coincidence, though they are pretty insistent that I really should make this woman my friend.

But then the one that really confused me. They suggest I might like to be friends with Gene Oh. Gene is the guy who sold me my very first bike. He lives in Alameda (so is not in my "network") and I am sure he doesn't have a clue who I am. He has only 3 friends, all young, all Oriental, and all in the San Francisco area.

Now how did Gene Oh get suggested as my friend?? There is zero cross over in our lives anywhere, but for the past couple of weeks, about every third time I log into Facebook, it suggests that I might like Gene Oh for a friend.

Then I came up with a thought that is, quite frankly, a little too much "Big Brother is Watching you" for my tastes.

Gene appears one time, by name, in my journal. After Olivia and I bought our bikes, I wrote an entry on March 17, 2002, the day we bought our bikes, which mentions him by name.

My question: Is Facebook's search engine going through all the blogs of people who list their blogs on their profile information and picking out people who appear in those blogs as friend suggestions??? It's the only reason I can come up with why a guy I bought a bike from seven years ago, with whom I have never communicated and who lives 80 miles away from me, keeps turning up as a suggestion for being my new friend.

Even if that's true, though, it still doesn't explain the woman from the theatre company, who has NEVER appeared in my journal simply because I never had anything to do with her.

---

"Big Dog coming for a visit," said Jeri's e-mail. She and Phil are coming out here at the end of the month, to be here for my mother's 90th birthday party. The plan was to find a dog sitter for Lester and they have been looking for some time now, but they can't find one that they trust to watch her, so they've decided to drive out. Jeri will have to fly home right after the party because she has classes to teach, but Phil will drive home with Lester, and Walt will go along for the ride.

It's going to be so good to see "our baby" again.

It's been a long time since she looked like this!!!

Peggy Fixed it!!!

I knew there was a reason I kept that girl around.

Peggy called this afternoon, to wish me well on tomorrow's surgery and to offer suggestions for how to fix my computer. The last time this happened, I was very proud of myself for running a diagnostic which apparently fixed the problem because it started right away afterwards.

This time, I ran the diagnostic and thought I'd fixed the problem when the computer started up again, but it started up only to the wallpaper on my desktop. It didn't start Windows and thus I could not get to any programs (or even turn the thing off without hitting the off button.

Well, Peggy asked if I'd started in "safe mode," which I had not thought of. She told me how to do it, I did, then, following her suggestion, reset things back to a December date when it had worked right. It reset things, then started back up again and voila! I was back in business.

So. Each time I crash, I learn something new. Each time I crash I remember the one vital thing that I need that I forgot to store on my external hard drive. So I've now moved THOSE things over. Enough crashes and I won't panic whenever things go sour.

I worked all day on the laptop and it was brutal. Well, I actually didn't work all day on the laptop. I was trying to write a review and the screen was so bright I could hardly see it, so I kept taking half hour breaks. But it did finally get written, so I'm good to go have my eye cut open now.

Thank you, Peggy. You are a gem.

---

I love this photo. It's so "Dave."

The thing about social networking is it's so darn fun. I've all but given up on Twitter. Twitter is peopled more by tech geeks and is designed more for people on the go to arrange to meet other people, to report on meet-ups with other people, to talk about tech stuff. I follow lots of people there and lots of people follow me, but I don't feel that I really know anybody there (other than people I know in real life)

Facebook is more social. With more and more of my real-life friends joining Facebook (18 of our Pinata group are on it, for example, along with some of the spouses of the kids; 28 of the one of the groups I used to belong to on CompuServe, 7 from another group I was very active in, etc., etc.)

One of the nicest thing about Facebook is the people who find each other. I had a note from a girl --well, woman now, I guess-- who was a foreign exchange student in Davis when Dave was in his Senior year in high school. She just posted a bunch of photos from her time here, including a few of David. She managed to find me and sent me a link to her photos--that's how I found this photo.

Laurel also posts picturers of Brianna on Facebook, like this new one of Bri and Daddy enjoying the beach on Martin Luther King day.

I love Facebook.

---

We are presently puppy-less. Ashley came and picked all three puppies up. Tater and Tot went off to a home in Elk Grove, south of Sacramento; Nicki went to Ashley's. We'll evaluate in a week and see when/if they are going to come back. Two people have contacted Ashley about Nicki and one of them sounds really good, so I'm hopeful again. I have to admit that being able to shut the back door to keep out cold and mosquitos, having no puddles or poop to pick up, and not having Nicki's shrill bark alerting me to her every demand has made for a lovely, relaxing evening.

---

So. This is the last entry before The Day. There will be no entry for tomorrow, but Walt will put an entry into the guestbook for this entry after we get home from surgery to let you know how it all went. I'm going to spend the afternoon, after we get home, watching the DVR of the inauguration. All you guys cheer for me at the moment when power changes from Bush's hands to Obama's. I'll be with you in spirit.

I Love Facebook, But...

I have really enjoyed discovering how many of my old friends have joined Facebook in the last year and my participation there has increased significantly as a result.

HOWEVER, nothing is ever uncomplicated and a controversy has erupted on Facebook.

A petition started to Facebook higher-ups states:

Recently, Facebook has started 'pulling a myspace' by not allowing people to post profile pictures of babies nursing. The pictures have been reported as 'obscene' and have been removed- their posters warned not to repost or fear being kicked off of Facebook.

We're wondering: what about a baby breastfeeding is obscene? Especially in comparison to MANY other pictures posted all over Facebook that really are obscene.

Facebook, we expect more from you, and we expect you to realize that nursing moms everywhere have a right to show pictures of their babies eating, just like bottle-fed babies have a right to be seen. In an effort to appease the closed-minded, you are only serving to be detrimental to babies, women, and society.

Sigh. We've been fighting this battle for decades. I am 100% in support of the mothers who are demanding what the hell is wrong with photos of nursing babies?

The first time I ever went out in public with a nursing infant, it was to the funeral of a friend's father. Jeri was only about 3 weeks old. She got fussy during the services and I took her to a little antechamber off the room where the services were going on. It just so happened that the deceased had been a member of the Knights of Columbus and no sooner had I settled myself to, I thought, very discreetly nurse Jeri, in walks all these middle aged men wearing uniforms with plumed hats, epaulets and swords and they all came over to kitchy-koo at the baby. So much for my modesty.

Over the years, I have watched continuing uproar about women trying to nurse babies in all sorts of places and I've never understood the fuss. In case you haven't noticed, a nursing baby covers up the nipple on a breast and if it's done right, there is little to no mother skin showing. But what if some skin shows anyway? My goodness, covers of magazines in supermarkets are more provocative than a photo of a nursing mother.

It's one of those things where smut is in the imagination of the beholder. Men who will buy Playboy or frequent strip joints get uncomfortable at the idea of a baby suckling at its mother's breast.

Women are appalled that their children might see a nursing mother. Why in the world is that? We have these wonderful bodies and every part of our body was designed to perform a function. Contrary to popular opinion, the designed function of the female breast is to feed children. Not to titillate (pun intended) men.

But the overreaction to breastfeeding is so bizarre that a mother was forced off a plane in 2006 because she refused to stop breastfeeding. Another mother was jailed overnight because she refused to serve on a jury while breastfeeding.

With all the problems that have come up lately with nasty things found in infant formula why aren't we encouraging women to breastfeed rather than put roadblocks in their way and make women feel like criminals for wanting to feed their babies?

We've come a long way since the 1960s-70s when I was breastfeeding. In those days there was no support from the medical community and doctors actually laughed at us when we in La Leche League offered to come in and help the maternity nurses help women who wanted to breastfeed.

Now many obstetricians and pediatricians encourage and support breastfeeding, lactation consultants are commonplace and there is a certain sense of satisfaction knowing how it was "in my day" and how it is today.

But we obviously still have a long way to go, when photos of mothers feeding their infants are considered so objectionable that they are removed from Facebook and the mothers threatened with being barred if they try to post another photo...but sexually provocative photos of celebrities are commonplace and nobody thinks a thing about them.

Our priorities in this country are really skewed.

Why I Hate Facebook

When I first joined Facebook, it seemed like kind of a fun thing. You could reconnect with people, find out what your friends were doing, maybe play a couple of games.

But then there were these things called "applications." At first it was fun. You could help someone make a garden by giving him/her a flower graphic that he/she could position in a graphic of a garden. You could give a gift that would "grow." An egg that got bigger, began to crack, and reveal some furry little critter inside.

It was new and fun.

And all sorts of people wanted to be my "friend." Some people I'd never heard of wanted to be my very best friend. It was flattering, in a creepy stalker sorta way.

Then it began getting out of control. For every "application" that you thought sounded interesting, before you could even SEE it you had to invite all of your friends (or a collection of your friends) to see it too. If you wanted to take a movie quiz, you had to invite your friends to take the quiz too. If you wanted to send a friend a "gift" (unbelievably, people could BUY a tiny graphic to send to a friend--I think the price was $1. I can't believe people actually did that!), you had to invite others of your friends to see the gift too.

It was an invitation for everybody that you had ever met, or everybody who ever thought you sounded like an interesting person, or everybody who just wanted to collect names of people as "friends" to spam everybody.

There was also something called a "poke," which means you get a message that says "so-and-so poked you." This is your invitation to poke so-and-so back. Then so-and-so pokes you again. The most stupid thing I ever heard of.

I hated it. Hated it as much as if so-and-so were sitting next to me continually poking me in the arm over and over again.

There are a few people, mostly older women, who are only names to me who keep sending me sappy poetry about the beauty of close friendship and how glad they were to have me in their lives, people who don't know me from Eve.

A guy in the Netherlands whose path crossed mine because we are both Judy Garland fans, now routinely sends me requests--in Dutch--for joining groups I have no interest in, or elaborate graphics and verses--in Dutch. I know it's because he's choosing all of the people in his "friends list" to send something to.

When I turned into Facebook this morning, after a few days of not checking it, the graphic at the right shows you the number of items that required my attention.

One GOOD thing Facebook recently did was to add the option "ignore all." There are things that might be fun. Like the "word challenge" invitation. But I know that the "word challenge" invitation starts with a screen where I'm supposed to select a number of "friends" to invite to view the word challenge. And I'm just not going to do that. I hate all these "requests" so much I certainly am not going to inflict them on someone else.

I actually tried a couple of times to take quizzes that were sent to me, dutifully choosing "friends" to invite to also take the quiz, and then I had to go through so many screens of instructions to get my results, I finally gave up in disgust.

There are good things about Facebook, which is why I stick with it. I've rediscovered some people I've lost contact with. Oh, we haven't had a huge "falling into each other's arms" sort of thing, but I am at least aware of what they are doing now. People like my one of my mother's step-sons, some cousins, kids that I knew when they were growing up, members of groups I am part of.

I like playing Scrabulous, Facebook's version of Scrabble. For some reason that hasn't yet been Facebook-ized and you can just play without bothering your friends.

People can post photos and video. (If you are a Facebook member, I highly recommend Rob Rummel-Hudson's video which is a promo for his book, Schuyler's Monster.)

But really, the fun went out of Facebook for me the day I started getting overwhelmed by "requests" from so-called "friends" of mine, and when I could not do anything without spamming at least some of my "friends" (I started choosing only the stranger-friends who routinely spammed me, but even that got to be too much work that I gave up doing it)

@$%# FACEBOOK

I mentioned watching the 60 Minutes report on the rapes in Congo a couple of days ago. The third story that evening was one I didn't actually watch until this morning. It's about the now-23 year old wunderkind who developed Facebook. This is the guy who rejected a $5 billion offer from (was it Google?) to buy the thing.

I didn't watch it closely, but got the idea that he (and apparently many others) think that Facebook is the wave of the future and that it will soon surpass Google as a search engine because instead of retrieving a host of generic responses to your query, you can get something personalized. Want to go to the Yucatan Peninsula, for example? Ask your Facebook community and get back messages from people who actually know you who can tell you about what you would like and not like about the location.

I don't remember exactly when I joined Facebook, but it's something like six months ago. Initially, it was fun. I met a few people, added some "applications" to my page, and joined a few groups.

But I've come to hate it. Applications are a variety of things that you can do on facebook, from games to play, to quizzes to take to polls to participate in to puzzles to solve, to interests to share. In short, it's anything that anybody with imagination cares to develop for Facebook.

One of the earliest ones I added is called "Super Wall." Everybody, when they join, has a "wall" where people can leave messages for you. "Super Wall" is a place where people can not only leave typed messages, but add graphics, photographs, or even videos. It used to be fun, but too long now it's been a series of sappy sparkling little sayings that one person will leave for me and then 10 other people will also leave for me. I don't do sappy. I especially don't do sappy from people who tell me that I'm the most wonderful person in the world, or how special I am in their life...when we've never met and barely exchanged as much as "hello" on Facebook! For all they know, I'm a cereal killer (your Corn Flakes are not safe around me) but yet they have granted me "best friend" status or "most trusted person."

I think this was the one that really got me--posted by someone I've never met, and have only had very passing interaction with:

What am I supposed to think when I get something like this from a total stranger? I'm her one true friend? We've never even exchanged so much as an e-mail!

But what is bugging the heck out of me now is that you can't do ANYTHING without annoying your friends. There is a woman who posts grammar quizzes on Facebook. I've taken them in the past. They're kind of fun. There are also movie quizzes that I've both created and taken. I enjoy them. But now it's rigged so that you can take the test, but the only way you can see your results is add the application to your already cluttered profile page, and to invite 20 of your "friends" to take the test too.

If I hate being inundated with crap, I'm certainly not going to inundate other people with the crap either. So now I'm ignoring all invitations, taking no quizzes, and the only thing I do on Facebook is play Scrabulous (their version of Scrabble). They say "new features are coming," which I assume means that when they are implemented, I will have to stop playing Scrabulous too.

Facebook may be the wave of the future that is going to overtake Google, but at least Google doesn't bug me many times a day or make me bug my friends before I can go to one of its sites.