Farcebook

News flash (not) - a lot of people are on Farcebook these days, for many hours a day. And from what I can tell it’s mostly designed for office workers and students. I mean, I’m unemployed but if I spent as much time on Farcebook as other folks do, I’d have died of starvation by now.

That’s not intended as criticism of people who spend a lot of time on the site. Actually, I kind of envy them. But I think I might not be envying much. Like my friend’s young daughter who saw the Snuggie ad on TV and envied those people their fun-inspiring blankets. Only to discover, when she finally got her Snuggie, that it wasn’t the blanket that was the agent of fun.

So even though I am on Farcebook, I’m still antisocial and cranky and would rather be looking at Victorian knitting patterns. I guess I need a site for the cranky and antisocial. Snarkbook, perhaps.

What I’m really trying to say about being on Farcebook is that I don’t belong there.

It’s not that I don’t like, or am not interested, in what my friends are doing. But Farcebook replaces meaningful conversations with something else, the equivalent of sound bites, and games instead of actually one-on-one meetups and hanging out. I miss seeing the people I worked with and chatting with them, and making them look at my knitting. Farcebook is no replacement for that.

Perhaps if validation by others was important to me, I wouldn’t notice the shortcomings of such a site. But I’m self-absorbed enough that I don’t care if everyone knows what I’ve read in the NY Times today. I have a few people who get that sort of spam from me all the time - I figure the rest of the world can live without it. So status updates aren’t something I’m driven to do. “Still unemployed” would cover it pretty much every day.

And then there’s the Farcebook activities. I suck at those.

When I first joined all my friends were inviting me to this thing and that - like Super Pets. Since I haven’t fed my pet dragon in something like 9 months to a year, I’m sure he’s now a specimen in the Museum of Natural History.

 What's left of my SuperPet Khan

Or the farming games. I got invited to two of them by people whom I really like. But I simply don’t have what it takes to check on my crops. I tried, dear readers, I really tried. But my poor Farcebook friends who’ve invited me to be their neighbors have an absentee landlord. My farms, last time I visited, looked like the Dust Bowl.

My Farmville plot last year

I fixed them up… but haven’t been back in months, and my turnips were going to need harvesting within three days… I’m sure that once again I’m lording it over plantations of dried crops, starved livestock, and tumbleweeds blowing everywhere.

Trying to save the farm - yet again.

 Getting the hell out of Farmville while we still can.

There are other games that I joined, find the monster egg, etc., and some of the gift things were fun, I thought. But no one seemed interested in getting pestilences from me, and I could find no one to give me 20th Century composers. Wimps - what, are y’all afraid of Xenakis or Takemitsu?

Xenakis & Takemitsu only look scary...

and sound scary...

but they were really nice guys.

Honest.

I do check the site once a day. And realized last week that, since they changed the setups recently, I hadn’t seen my wall in ages. When I finally discovered how to get there, I had several birthday wishes that were ignored. Not because I wasn’t looking for them, or hated the senders. It was because I couldn’t negotiate the damned site.

So I’m going to stay on Farcebook and check it once a day, and continue to suck at being a good citizen, and dream of the day when Snarkbook gets up and running.

{Oh yeah, Twister? I have a Twister account. I’ve participated in two Twister knit-alongs (KALs). Yes, I only joined for the knitting. I had a follower, some young lass, I had no idea who she was. I guess she eventually figured out she didn’t know me either, because she quit following me…}

Aurantium Shawl, KAL #1

(not the one I'm knitting)

Twister KAL #2 - Lithuanian Wristers 

(not the ones I knitted)

Down the Drain

If I remember correctly, I previously referred to some plumbing issues I was having at home - my kitchen sink drain had slowed to a pre-global warming glacial pace, making the washing of dishes extremely challenging. Well, yesterday the landlord came over with some high level chemical warfare to use on the pipes, along with an exorcist to cast out any demons who might have taken up residence in or near the clog. It took eight hours for the chemicals to work, and eight hours for the exorcist to complete his ritual. Mind you, this is in a studio apartment the size of two MegaDyneCorp Technologies cubicles. I don't know if you've ever spent 8 hours trapped with a ritual-crazed priest under such conditions, but let me tell you, an iPod is an essential piece of technology at such times.


In the end, though, after all the incense cleared and hot water was run through the pipes, I was able to wash my dishes in the normal fashion.

And so that my former coworkers know that someone in my life is still giving me a difficult time, I told one of my friends that my plumbing horrors had been eliminated, and she asked if I'd been washing my dishes while I showered. I replied no, and she then suggested that I could have washed them while bathing. Ah yes, that would have been nice, taking a lovely soak with a good book, only to notice waterlogged chunks of pasta and tomato floating past...

My week has not been all that exciting - much catching up around the house after the very busy week I had last week. Egon the Mad Scientist will be gone for the next week or two - I'm not clear exactly what he'll be doing while he's gone. After all, just because I assisted with his manifesto doesn't mean I'm privy to all his secrets. Perhaps he's meeting with a foreign government to aid them in increasing their power in the global economy. Or he could be assisting some other deranged researcher with their own secret projects. Maybe he's scored a stint as a technical adviser with some show on the SciFi channel. Then again, maybe he's going to be a contestant on "The Wheel of Fortune." If the Fates were to smile upon me, he'd be going somewhere to invent a self-cleaning kitchen drain, but that seems unlikely.

So today I'm hiding in the library, cooling off (they really could crank the a/c just a bit more - I think the books are sweating). Soon I'll be moving to the fourth floor, my favorite hideout. Time to get back into the serious writing groove - 19th century whaling novels set on steam powered submarines just don't write themselves, after all.

Yuck

I'm eating maple-flavoured yogurt for breakfast. It tastes as if someone spilled stale coffee on it. I really need to lay in a supply of my beloved vanilla.

I found several emails from coworkers this morning - they still haven't forgotten the meaningless chaos I could produce around office just by walking through and saying 'Hi'. How sweet!

Well, I must shower and then hie meself up to the grocer - oh please oh please oh please let me find some vanilla today - and then return for a few hours of writing. I've got my first writing group meeting tonight. I wonder how many different ways they'll find to tell me I suck....



Update - I got to the store late since so many of my former coworkers decided to write today, as well as finding other fascinating distractions in my inbox. I did manage to score 4 cartons of vanilla - woo hoo! - but I think I'm going to have to get there when the doors open tomorrow. Shall I take bets on the likelihood of that happening?

Another Productive Day - Really. I'm not making it up.

One of my regular readers (I think I have two regulars - woo hoo!) commented yesterday that I seem to be having too much fun while on the rolls of the unemployed. Of course, said reader's home was recently invaded by goats, so I can see where my existence suddenly seems an endless party. I love goats, but I have a healthy respect for their special kind of anarchy. I feel the same way about kittens, too.

Last night's activities consisted of an unplanned dinner with the mad scientist, a much-appreciated attempt to cheer me up after news of a fellow coworker's demise (RIP, Bob). And a successful one, all things considered - good food, delightful conversation, and a brief visit to his home where we exchanged cultural goods...he got to download the sound effects from Star Trek TOS, and I got to watch Dr Horrible's Sing-along Blog . Would it surprise you to discover that Dr Horrible is a mad scientist? No? A bit of parody, and a bit of commentary, with entertaining musical numbers thrown in, it's extremely well-done, with the incredibly talented Neil Patrick Harris in the starring role. I found it wonderfully funny - and I hate Captain Hammer. (It should be obvious that I would sympathize with our mad scientist protagonist - c'mon, Captain Hammer is as bad as Zapp Brannigan.) Again, I was returned home well before the pumpkin hour, so I've had no chance as of yet to observe any post-midnight transformations in my mad scientist friend. If there is one, I do hope it's not a Jeckyll and Hyde thing; I'd rather date a Neanderthal from the Geico ads than Mr Hyde. He's just a bully.

You're wondering when I get to the productivity, aren't you? Does it count that I had my teeth cleaned yesterday? No? Well, today my BFF and I went down to the mater's to pick up a pen that's been taking up space in my parent's garage forever. I braved dust, dust bunnies, strange and frightening formations of cat hair, and spider carcasses, among other things, to disassemble this thing. It took three of us in the end - me, my BFF, and a very good friend of the mater's, all wrestling with poles, wire, nuts and bolts, cyclone fencing - and a good time was had by all. We almost cleaned up enough to look presentable at lunch; fortunately, the mater didn't notice us covered in dust, cobwebs, and cat hair. And she doesn't read my blog, so I feel safe in making such a public confession of sartorial disarray.

Upon returning home I had to shower and change clothes, and I'm still looking at taking a Benadryl in an hour or so. Dust is one of the most reaction-producing allergens in my life; small quantities are relatively safe...okay, okay, looking at my apartment, I should say large quantities are relatively safe, but a thick blanket (literally, blanket) of the stuff exceeds my body's capacity to cope.

After showering, I sauntered up to the grocery store in hopes of exploiting the 4 for $3 special featuring my favorite yogurt, Brown Cow Low Fat Vanilla. Breakfast of Chumps, I call it. Now that I'm unemployed, specials like that are to be treasured. I noticed it was on special when I went shopping Sunday, but there were only four cartons, so I thought I'd go back and get more. Today there was one carton. One carton. Why doesn't anyone buy the strawberry low fat yogurt? There's tons of it. So tomorrow is my last attempt to get my favorite yogurt on sale; if I don't succeed tomorrow, I'll just learn to like the low fat maple yogurt. Ugh.

This afternoon I told one of my caretakers at the coffee house closest to me that I had lost my job; a very sweet woman, she gave me a hug and much more sympathy than I'm sure I deserve. I'm fortunate to know as many kind and sympathetic people as I do; I often wonder why they put up with my cranky self, but I'm still grateful for my good fortune.

Finally, I'm going to seek some advice from my readers (you two regulars out there, listen up!). Dating a mad scientist, I'm not entirely certain what attributes are attractive to a delightfully warped psyche with a passion for physics and math; as kal pointed out recently, I am an outlier. I do not follow the normal distribution. But is that enough? Paris Hilton is an outlier too, after all, and she can barely put three sentences together. So, what do I do to make a good impression? Let's take my Geiger counter as an example. Yes, I have a Geiger counter. I mean, who doesn't want a Geiger counter, right? It's a beauty, too; it's a yellow civil defense model CDV-700 with an actual geiger tube. The day I found it was one of the happiest days I had in 2001. I even have an old book on radiation monitoring - I've got everything I need (if it were still 1961). It seems the perfect thing with which to impress a man, n'est-ce pas? There's just one problem - my yellow baby is broken. I put batteries in it and everything, yet there's no power going to the device. Big frown. I've been content to own it in its dysfunctional beauty; after all, it's more than most people have. For years she sat on the floor in front of my bookcase, a conversation piece and object of envy. But would a mad scientist be impressed? Do I get brownie points for owning a classic scientific instrument, or do I just look like I collect weird, broken junk? If I invite him over to my hovel, do I shove her into the closet, or do I display her proudly? Here's her photo for your consideration:

And a very informative volume to go with it:


He was impressed with my beaker mug, but I fear that I've already presented my best material. Let me know what you think about Mme Geiger up above; I'd like to keep making a good impression, if at all possible.

Breaking the News

Anyone who has talked to me much in the last few days knows that I dreaded reporting the loss of my job to my mother. No one wants to report to their parent that she is indeed the unemployed wastrel that the mater always thought she would be. So I spent most of the week figuring out how to pitch it so it wouldn't be 'bad news'. The angle I came up with was, 'you know how you always wanted me to be able to spend more time working on cleaning out your garage?', and I must say, it was a highly successful approach. I recommend that if you find yourself in a similar position, dear reader. I was also able to report that my BIL was laid off at the same time, and everyone knows he's anything but wastrel material.

For the record, I did indeed behave like a wastrel last night. I was scheduled to attend a birthday party for a friend. Due to some bad news about a sick coworker, I sucked down two stiff drinks immediately upon arrival to dull the pain of a bad week and the bad news. Being the lightweight drinker that I am, I was seriously tipsy in no time. My performance at the billiard table, never brilliant, was probably the worst in my entire life - the list of things I cannot do when drinking is growing longer.

After dinner and billiards a few of us dead enders attempted to see "Hell Boy II" (too many people in line so we gave up), and ended up at the local tavern for darts (no, I didn't play - no one wants me throwing things after a couple of drinks, I assure you), beer, and beer. It was great because I saw some folks from one of my favorite eateries sitting at another table, drinking, laughing, and acting crazy. I love seeing people outside their work environment whom I normally see only on the job.

After the pub experience, we meandered back to the birthday boy's home where I tried to acquire a pony for myself (but had no luck, consarn it!), and indiscriminately doled out wedges for Trivial Pursuit players. There is only one question in that game that I know the answer to - the name of Sir Isaac Newton's dog. By the time I returned home it was almost 3 AM, and by the time I'd checked email and watched a Simpsons episode, it was almost 4 AM.

So it's just about bedtime for this sleep-deprived (and pony-deprived) girl.

Only three more days of work...


Waaaah! Waaaaah! I want a pony!