BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

The “interwebz” can do some strange things. It’s almost as if the damn thing has taken on a life of its own, which I suppose kinda makes old Al Gore a “Doctor Frahnkensteen” of sorts. (Okay, okay, I know… Gore’s quote was taken way out of context, but the joke worked… gimme a break. I’m actually writing this way early in the A.M. and my caffeine system isn’t up to snuff just yet…)

Anywho, the thing here is this – there are just some places on the internet that seem to have become a multi-headed monster doing whatever it damn well pleases. Social networking sites for instance. In this particular instance, Facebook.

There I was, ditzing about on FB, taking care of my necessary social networking marketing schtuff. E K was at her desk behind me, fiddling about with her own FB page, updating the world on her adventures in grocery shopping and slapping a coat of polyurethane on the O-spring’s chest of drawers.

Yeah, truly exciting stuff there… (Hey, sometimes it’s good to be boring…)

So, anyway, I did a quick refresh of my page to see what was going on and the screen went all willy nilly, flashed a bit, sent some gibberish scrolling around, then settled back into my “Facebook Wall.” Everything looked relatively normal except for one minor – well, actually major, IMHO – detail.

Now, just by looking at the picture on the left you might not see the problem. In reality, it looks pretty normal. In fact, it looks extremely normal. And, if it weren’t for the fact that I happen to use a link that generally resides in that box, I might not have noticed the problem myself. However, on the night in question, after perusing my wall I was going to go have a look at someone else’s wall. Namely, the halo wearing half of The Evil Redhead.

Yeah… I was going to go look at Kat’s page, and the easiest way for me to get there is to click on the link under relationship status, because normally it looks like the picture on the right.

But, it didn’t… It looked like the one above.

According to Facebook, I was still married, but to whom was the question. I checked my info tab and it claimed I was married, but my spouse was a mystery.

Figuring this was just some bizarre glitch, I hit the search box, looked up Kat’s profile – which ostensibly was still there – and clicked on the link. My screen flashed, went blank, then my FB newsfeed appeared. I cocked an eyebrow, grumbled, then tried it again. Same thing.

“Hey legs,” I called over my shoulder. “Did you unfriend me on Facebook or something?”

“No,” she replied.

“Did you block me?” I asked.

“No. Why?”

I grumbled a bit more as FB repeated the redirection each time I clicked, then I answered her. “I can’t get to your page.”

“Hmm,” she said. “I don’t know what that’s all about. I didn’t change anything.”

“Let me try something,” I mused aloud.

I went down the line, clicking on several of our mutual friends. Each time I did so, either I was redirected to my newsfeed or told that this person’s page was no longer available.

Grumbling even more I mentioned this to E K. Of course, she promptly began to click on those links herself.

“I can get to Johnathan’s page just fine,” she announced. “And Tracy’s…” A few more clicks sounded. “And Anastasia’s…”

“But I can’t,” I said, perplexed. “Are you sure you didn’t accidentally add me to your block list or something?”

“I’m sure,” she replied.

Just to be thorough I clicked on some of my other friend’s pages who were not mutual between The Evil Redhead and me. No problem at all. Surfed right to them without so much as a brief pause. I cleared my cache just to make sure it wasn’t a phantom page. They still worked.

I logged out of FB, shut down Firefox, restarted it, cleared cache again, logged back into FB, and checked my page. Nothing at all had changed. No matter what I clicked I was no longer married to my wife, nor could I get to mutual friend pages.

“Well,” I sighed a lament. “It would seem that Facebook has divorced us and you got to keep all of our friends.”

E K giggled, of course.

By now it was pushing midnight and well past my bedtime, yet I was still clicking about on my page because I had no intention of signing the divorce papers, virtual or not.

E K clicked off her monitors (she has two, being the multi-tasker she is) and pushed back from her desk. As she rose to head for the bedroom she said, “I think you should just give up for the night.”

“But, it says I’m not married to you anymore.”

“Get some sleep,” she told me. “Maybe you’ll be married to me tomorrow.”

I guess I’ll have to start checking the calendar on the fridge in the kitchen to see which days I’m married and which days I’m single.

Better yet, maybe I’ll just check Facebook…

More to come…

Murv

I know this is going to come off as hubris in the worst way, but I was recently quoted in a news story and I thought I should let everyone know in case some of you missed it but might still have a passing interest in what I had to say.

The Associative Press

SAINT LOUIS, MO – The recent discovery of a new quantum mass in a small suburb of Saint Louis has yielded sufficient evidence to prompt leading physicists to abandon the “God Particle Theory”. The Higgs boson, nicknamed the “God Particle” by researchers was once considered the “Holy Grail” of the scientific community and was hoped to be experimentally proven when the much touted Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva eventually comes online. However, the Higgs boson has now joined the ranks of such debunked scientific hypothesis as “Flat Earth” and “The Moon being composed of green cheese.” The demise of the “God Particle” was brought about by the newly discovered Briggs stratton, which was detected via a hybrid science that blends quantum mechanics and chaos theory.

Doctor Earl-Bob “Bubba Doc” Fröedingschlösser, lead researcher on the project credited his assistant, Rhonda-Sue Crawford with the initial discovery. “We was on our way over to the stop ‘n shop to pick up some more beers when she saw ’em,” he said. “Rot there on the curb, purty as a pickshure.”

“He’s rot,” Ms. Crawford agreed. “Them metal tubes, they was jes sittin’ there.”

Doctor Fröedingschlösser further explained how the tubes led to the discovery of the Briggs stratton. “Well of course we stopped,” he said. “They was enough scrap there to git us change for at least a six pack. Maybe even a six and a coupl’a Big Buford’s from the burger stand if we was lucky. Anyways, we went to puttin’ them tubes inta the back uh my truck, an I guess we was bein’ a bit noisy. That’s pretty much when it happened.”

“Earl jes tossed ’em in there, ya see,” Ms. Crawford added to the explanation. “Made a whole lotta noise. Next thing you know, there it was.”

Doctor Fröedingschlösser agreed with his colleague. “Yep, there it was all right. Scared the beejeezus outta me. We wuz lucky though. Rhonda-Sue was textin’ her momma ta’ see if she wanted us ta’ pick up some diapers and Marlboro’s for ‘er, so she was able ta’ git a pickshure on the camry part of ‘er phone.”

The Briggs stratton      Photo Credit: Rhonda-Sue Crawford

“It’s jes a little blurry,” Ms. Crawford added. “But it all happened so fast I was lucky I got the pickshure took at all before it started hittin’ Earl over the head with a shoe.”

According to Doctor Fröedingschlösser the newly discovered, and highly charged particle was dubbed the Briggs stratton due to the deafening, lawnmower engine-like sound emanating from it as it accelerated toward them. He commented, “This here’s one of them particles that don’t even need no collider. It’ll collide ya’ all by itself, an’ lemme tell ya’, when it does you hurt like hell for a week at least.”

When asked if there were any plans to assign a nickname to the Briggs stratton such as happened with the Higgs boson, Doctor Fröedingschlösser replied, “Well, I ain’t so sure jes yet, but we been thinkin’ on callin’ it the Psycho Bitch.”

Mury Sallers, a resident in the home on the property where the Briggs stratton was discovered declined to comment on this astounding scientific breakthrough. However, when asked what he thought it should be dubbed he did state, “It actually likes to be deferentially referred to as Queen Bitch of the Whole F*cking Universe, but sometimes when it’s in a good mood it lets us just call it Evil Kat. We still have to bow and scrape though.”

Doctor Fröedingschlösser was not available for further comment due to an extended sabbatical courtesy of the Arkansas Department of Corrections. In his absence, his assistant, Rhonda-Sue Crawford, is continuing the research at an undisclosed location.

Of course, they misspelled my name, but that’s pretty much par for the course.

More to come…

Murv