It might be too late, perhaps I have closed the barn door after the horses are gone… but…

I removed my Facebook account today. Or, as Facebook calls it “deactivated” it. I don’t know if it will be permanent but I am leaning that way. If you want to reach me in the meantime, try this.

Why oh why would I remove myself from the “trendiest” fad going? Well, I had completely ignored Facebook and MySpace when they came online… I always felt they were just vectors for being pestered by spammers and people I really didn’t want contact with. But last summer I broke down and signed up when I saw the wife making contact with many people she knew from school, and in a pang of nostalgia decided I would like to talk to some of those friends too. It annoyed the crap out of my from the start. Too many people would make contact, talk a little, get caught up and then vanish never to talk to me again. Just when I thought I was renewing old friendships I found out that what I was doing was simply touching base and then moving on again. That wasn’t MY intent, but apparently that’s all Facebook is to other people. Strike One.

Last night I pulled out ICQ again, a program I have not had installed on my PC since I rebuilt it into my upgraded package last year. I had it installed for a while before that as well without using it. On ICQ I found an old friend from way back in the BBS days who is also on Facebook and talked to him on ICQ. Rarely have we said much on Facebook but we chatted for some time on ICQ.

This really got me thinking: Read the rest of this entry »

State of Mind: Aggravated & Alarmed

Yeah, she is. Doesn’t that bug you? I mean, personally, I think mine is but I know that is my view coloured by my personal pride and biases. No one else who is not related or does not know her is going to care. Even her grandmother doesn’t really care most of the time, but that is another rant altogether…

We have a friend who believes their child is some sort of mythical creature. I mean seriously, this kid needs sunscreen and aloe vera for their rectum because apparently that is the source of all sunshine. Sure, the kid is bright. Might even be a genius. But seriously, no one cares! It just gets old when someone acts like their kid is smarter than you are when you know they have no idea how intelligent anyone is but their own kid. It’s like saying that dog crap is the best food ever, when they have never eaten anything but dog crap. No basis to compare, c’est non? And the problem comes up when the kid KNOWS the parents think they are smart – it’s called [booming echo]EGO TRIP FROM HELL[/booming echo].

Anyway – like I was saying – she is a genius. For a 4-year-old, anyway. She is in that stage that all kids go through, you know the one – it varies in length from kid to kid, can be annoying or delightful depending on how far it goes, and could turn out to be a really boring future career since most of the stuff has been discovered already. Read the rest of this entry »

Oh yes, it is. Well mostly. More or less. Except for all those final clearance sales on stuff the store does not want to store until next year. Odd that stores don’t like to store stuff, in spite of being called stores. One last chance to squeeze out a few more dollars from the Holiday Season.

You wanna know what gripes my ass? – doing best Paul Sr. imitation voice – Somehow, it has become how much money you paid for something that determines the value of a gift. Odd that I always thought value and money were 2 different things, since advertising used to say that you were getting good VALUE for your MONEY. It is pretty pathetic that you can put hours and hours of work into a thoughtful gift and the first thing that pops into the receivers mind is “How crappy, they MADE me a gift.” On top of that, it is completely disgusting that it is suddenly wrong to give something of yours as a gift for whichever holiday you celebrate because either you don’t use it or you know someone else could use it more.

It even has a new buzzword… REGIFTING. Forget the fact the the entire original premise on Seinfeld was that the people were shallow and selfish and upset that someone gave them a “used” gift… I am using used loosely, as in used meaning it was once wrapped up and then unwrapped, not that the package had been actually OPENED or anything. Forget the fact that we are living in a world where it is all about how much CRAP you can accumulate and then throw into a landfill site and reusing stuff would be the ethical thing to do. You know, there is a reason for that order of presentation: reduce, reuse, recycle… you are supposed to reduce and reuse before you think about recycling because reducing and reusing use less resources than recycling. Also amazing that the remarkably-rich HARPY OPRAH asked two remarkably shallow skanks on her show about the “taboo”, and they told her it was totally wrong to regift, and rude and tacky – as if Oprah was regifting to save money.

Oh wait, she probably was, since she is so tight with her bazillion dollars that she can’t even pay for the gifts “she gives” the audience on her “favourite things” shows, even going so far as to not classify things as her favourite any more if the company won’t pay off her endorsement with a shitload of merchandise so she can play “look how generous I am” on her ultimate greed secretly-taped giveaway shows. I mean, do you ever see the beatific look on her face when she is giving this stuff away? It’s like she took a job in a sweat-shop factory in China herself to personally make every item for her audience. Oh, thanks be to the goddess Oprah, that she taketh from the evil corporations to raiseth her own profile whilst savingest the dineros from her own prehshuss pocketses (oops, sorry… ahem… Gollum in my throat).

Lets put it this way for the gift-math challenged: If it takes 15 minutes to go and spend $50 to get a gift for someone, you have put exactly that much effort into it. If we universally translate that into lets say, $10 an hour (just for arguments sake, we are averaging over all waking hours and not just whatever you personally make at work), then your time and effort adds a value of $2.50 to that gift. Total, $52.50. If someone spends 12 hours of work knitting something for you, their gift is already worth $120 in time and effort, not counting the yarn.

Of course, this math only applies to those who feel the need to look at a gift for what dollar value is attached and not for the thought, effort and heartache that some people put into these things. As a side note, 150 years ago people could not go to WalMart and all gifts had to be well thought out, planned and either made or saved for to purchase – yet people seemed happier with the gifts they received and more grateful for them – coincidence? I think not.

By the way, did you ever wonder if Oprah actually does pay for anything herself, ever? But, that’s another rant altogether…