Parking Lot Epiphanies about Facebook

Facebook is weird. For a LOT of reasons. I am kinda thinking of leaving it, but probably won't. Mostly, I really like being mentioned on the news, when they say the fastest growing demographic of people joining/using Facebook are people over 35. Ha! That's me...talkin' 'bout my generation.... So, apparently I get jazzed about being a follower.

Today's Facebook rant is (mostly) about people who go missing from your Friends list.

I saw a mom at school drop-off today, and it dawned on me that I hadn't noticed any of her FB updates lately. Not that I check FB frequently or consistently. I go in spurts of checking it and spurts of completely forgetting to check it. Anyway, a few months ago, she had posted about tattoos or something. Well, I saw her that morning several months ago, and I said, "Now you've got me thinking about tattoos!" or whatever and she laughed and said something about drooling over this one guy or whatever.

So, I see her today, say hi to her as we pass each other, no biggie. As I walk to my car, it dawns on me that, oh yeah, I haven't noticed any of her FB updates recently. That's weird. She used to post a status update twice a day or more.

I check FB, and yep, sure enough, she has disappeared from my Friends list.

Which means, she must have removed ME from HER friends list. Right? Isn't that how that works?

I wouldn't know. Once I add you, I keep you. I don't know anything about removing people.

[Added Bonus: Here's a Rant-Inside-A-Rant!
I do know about blocking people. I've blocked some people, who were never on my friends list. My block list is something I update consistently. It just keeps growing, person by person. Like, yesterday, I blocked my boss. And that Work Husband guy. Can't believe it took me THIS long to figure out that I should block them. Duh! I wanna block Work Husband's real wife, but it won't find her, for some reason, even though she is on other coworkers' Friends list, big as day, front and center. Whatever. Facebook is stupid. Where's their 800 number, anyway? Stupid Facebook.]

This lady's disappearance from my Friends list brings the total count of Disappearing Friends to 2 for me. As far as I know for sure. There may be others that I'm just not remembering.

I'm trying to take a page from my husband's book and not take it personally. Perhaps she's decided to prune her FB world down to close friends, or long-distance family relations. No biggie. She has the right to tweak FB to her particular needs. The most we ever do anyway is say hi to each other at school. I have mentioned to her in the past that I think it'd be fun to get together for drinks or something. But she's of the Stay-At-Home-Mom variety, with three kids 9 and under, and I'm of the Works-FullTime-Outside-The-Home-Mom variety, with one kid, who's not available to help watch HER kids when she needs a break or to run to the store or whatever. In that regard, friends-wise, I think my variety is at a disadvantage. I just am not as available to put in the time to cultivate the social ties among other moms, especially those moms that I've been passing in the parking lot for the past 4 years. But still, after accumulating 4 years' worth of acquaintanceship, you'd think it'd be possible to have a margarita together at some point.

Which brings the discussion back to Facebook. Facebook allows me the chance to be linked in a little more to the PTO-ers, to the parking lot chatterers who linger next to their cars in their sweats and flip flops and ponytails as I swing my car past them on my out of the parking lot to get to work. I watch them wistfully just for the time it takes me to arc my car into the exit lane, wondering what they're talking about, what meeting they are dissing somebody for, what groups are their kids in that mine isn't that would cause them to have that much to discuss? Or are they just lonely, just needing to connect? And how can I join them? Alone in my car, I focus on my commute and listen to Morning Edition instead of joining them. And think, well, I can kinda join them, via Facebook.

So, I sent the friend invitation, she accepted, and then two or three months later, she disappeared. No margaritas for us, it would seem.

As you can tell, I don't have a high number of friends on my Friends list, so yeah, I notice when someone goes missing....well, I will eventually notice. Give me a month or two and I'll figure it out one morning in the school parking lot.

Don't Take It Personally

Somebody keeps placing their phone on hold, which blasts new-age, groovy music onto the call for the rest of us to deal with. After three days of this, it was time to identify the one responsible, to avoid future occurrences. My assumption was they had no idea they were causing problems for others.

I thought it was a certain person, and finally said so. The guy immediately yelped, "It's not me!" To which I immediately replied, "Oh, sorry!"

Then the trainer guy says I'm "picking on" that person, who happens to be male. In fact, it is said I am picking on "men", that it is now "the girls against the boys" and that, because another female admitted she also had thought it was that same person (because he seemed to disappear from the call when the music came on), the trainer guy claimed we were ganging up on that guy.

Wha? Where did THAT come from?

How did this become a gender-based discussion?

Am I too insensitive? Or are they just too sensitive?

Meh. I am so sick of IT people. I want to belong to another group of professionals. The kind that doesn't use "irregardless" as a word without flinching.

Fortunately, Unfortunately

I just wanna go home, hang out with my kid, before another growth spurt chases this incarnation away and she becomes a new person, again.

By the way, I'm in class all this week.

Fortunately, it's available online and I didn't have to chance catching H1N1 via mass transit travel.

Unfortunately, I have to sit here and listen to my speaker phone ALL.DAY.LONG.

Fortunately, there aren't any (major) technological glitches so far.

Unfortunately, not being able to whisper to the person sitting next to you, "Pssst, what page are we on?!" kinda sucks.

Fortunately, the instructor tells so many personal stories, I don't think it matters WHAT page we're on.

Unfortunately, there's nothing to stop me from playing Word Challenge on Facebook during lecture time, since he reads each slide anyway and I can listen to him just fine.

Fortunately, my Word Challenge skills are getting pretty hawt, baby.

Unfortunately, there's a test at the end of this training, and it's not on Word Challenge.

Memo From My Quads

To: gudnuff
RE: Bike ride on Sunday morning

WTH??? You never ask for anything, you sit at the kitchen table blogging, you sit in your car, you sit at your desk...and suddenly, you expect us to power you up hills on rough pavement with a major head wind, for a 25 mile bike ride? Are you serious??!?!!

Be advised you will be hearing more from us about this for the next several days. We may articulate our complaints into the evening hours, even if you are trying to sleep. In fact, we may end up screaming at you, unless you drown us out with Advil.

The next time Q has a sleepover, we highly recommend that you and Leo choose something other than a 25-mile road ride for your child-free activity. Or at least give us a little more heads-up. Go for some smaller warm-up rides a couple times in the week ahead. That way, we won't fail on the last major hills and Leo won't have to push you up the hill, riding beside you with his hand on your back, powering both of you up those hills.

Yes, we know that you had a crush on your own husband by the end of the ride. But really, you basically outsourced us. You'll be hearing from our union rep if that happens again.

Filler, filler, chicken killer...wha?

I don't have much to say at the moment. Leo is kvetching about my hours on the laptop ("You've been on that thing for what, four hours today? Are we gonna have to limit your laptop time? Hmmmm?"). Q is at a sleepover for the night, and Leo and I are stumbling around trying to think of what to do with ourselves without her. We are a bit askew.

I'm posting this because I don't want the previous post to be sitting at the top of my blog like it's important or something. So basically, this post is just filler. And I'm in a hurry. I have to get off the laptop and onto a bike to go for a ride with my husband before the sun sets to prove to him that "us" time is as important to me as blogging.

Marital contentment hinges on decisions like that.

CBS vs. Smothers Brothers

In a jury trial, if the jury blatantly hands out a wrong verdict, can the judge be the judge of whether the jury was nuts?

Let's say I shoot my husband dead and it's captured on video tape.

For some reason, the jury says I'm not guilty whatsoever.

Can the judge basically judge the jury's verdict as being just plain wrong? Just throw it out?

That's been on my mind ever since I watched Pioneers of Television recently and they were highlighting Variety Shows. Specifically, the half hour I watched was focused on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.

In short, it was the 1970's and The Smothers Brothers kept pushing the envelope on what was "appropriate content", using satire to target racism, the President of the U.S., and the Vitenam War. Wikipedia does a much better job explaining all of the details if you're actually interested.

Well, CBS cancelled the show. The Smothers Brothers sued CBS for breach of contract.

Apparently there was language in the contract (or was there? this is the part that's unclear to me) about the tape getting to CBS by a certain time, and the Smothers Brothers were violating that part of the contract that stipulated that the tape was supposed to be delivered to CBS within a certain period of time. CBS needed time to censor/edit the tape before broadcast time.

So The Smothers Brothers sued. And they won!

I was shocked.

Apparently, so were the CBS lawyers.

Does anybody study this case in law school? Is this a famous case, or does it not rank as worthy of discussion? Just seemed to me to be a blatant abuse of power by the jury. Couldn't the judge say, hey jury, you're full of it, I'm throwing out your verdict 'cause obviously you're not paying attention whatsoever to what a contract is or what the language stipulated.

I thought I heard ('cause I remember being surprised) that just 'cause a jury says you're guilty or not guilty, that utlimately, that is just a recommendation that the judge does not have to base his ruling on. The judge can overrule a jury. Is that bs? Or is that possible?

What Other People Think

Q's solo performance in the school talent show went well. She sang "Tell Me Something I Don't Know" by Selena Gomez (who plays Alex on the Disney Channel's show Wizards of Waverly Place). One person (in my family) questioned the appropriateness of the song. -OK, he didn't question it so much as his eyes popped out and his jaw fell open in shock and disbelief.

Being a proud mama, I thought he was blown away by her talent.

Um...no, not so much.

He thought she was being a hoochimama. An 8-year-old hoochimama.

I wonder how many others (not in my family) shared this concern? (And so what if they did? I dunno...I'm in a weird place today. All paranoid-feeling and whatnot. Meh.)

I struggle to defend the song and Q's choice to sing it. As far as I can tell, it seems pretty basic: stop discouraging me, stop belittling my efforts, start taking me seriously. Well, it seems I'm not the only one with this interpretation. The folks at commonsensemedia.com seem to agree. Which actually made me feel a lot better.

I'm not going to embed the video. I don't like parts of it (okay, I don't like where Selena is singing to the camera through the legs of that other lady...seriously, what is the point of that? who came up with THAT idea?...). Because of those shots (and a few other fleeting poses here and there), the video walks that strange border between straightforward self-expression and the exploitation of the hyper-sexualization of young girls. (pretty fancy-pantsy, eh?) Or maybe it's just me.

What IS the hyper-sexualization of young girls, exactly? I'm trying to sound all edumacated and whatnot (are you buying it?), but that phrase has me perplexed, bemused and bewildered. It brings up images of Jon Benet Ramsey, of 3-year-old Beauty Queens with lipstick and hairspray and heels. THAT I understand as hyper-sexualization of girls. But what about adolescent girls like Selena? What about girls in their tweens? What is considered sexual and what is just basically fashionable?

Well, anyway, what do you guys think? Here are the lyrics.