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30th Sep 09
M. R. SellarsThe “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
Yeah, I’m sure you are probably wondering what I’ve been smoking that would make me think such a thing, but interestingly enough, that’s kind of the point behind this whole blog entry. Not the smoking per se, but the ingestion of psychedelic substances, and no, I’m not talking about a rainbow bomb pop from the ice cream dude.
Now, lest you think I am merely playing both sides against the middle, I am also a great supporter of the squirrel kingdom across the board. I have a pinwheel feeder which I keep stocked with feed corn (incidentally, my father-in-law calls it a squirrel gymnasium), and when winter rolls around and the temperature drops off, a big part of my morning routine is preparing breakfast for the tree rats. I do this by breaking a couple of slabs of Ramen noodles into squirrel friendly sized pieces, then coating them with chunky peanut butter and rolling them in sunflower seeds & feed corn. Not exactly gourmet, but I haven’t had any complaints yet. In fact, Clem and Cletus, a couple of my regulars, can often be found peering into our dining room from the picture window while they wait for the restaurant to open.
I stood there wondering what had gotten into them when something caught my eye. A couple of the tree rats who weren’t engaged in happy jungle gym time were sitting back on their haunches atop a stump. In their paws they held huge chunks of brownish-orange fungi. Before long, one of the crazed rodents who had been doing the backstroke in the offspring’s pool ran up to the stump, tore a hunk of the fungus from the side, then sat back and began gnawing on it. My guess is that his Psylocibin levels were getting a bit low and he needed a booster.