"Jingle" All The Way

There's a long hallway I have to traverse every morning from the office back entrance to my desk: Bland linoleum tile grounded under bland off white walls with high, industrial ceilings. Along the passageway there are open doors leading to studios, bathrooms, other hallways and gathering areas. One sharp turn around a mailroom keeps it from being practically a catwalk.

When you're standing on one end of the hallway, you can hear someone coming from the other end, so heels can make quite a clatter. On any given day, I'm wearing some shoe creation that has a squeak or a scrunch or whine effect of some sort. It seems to become amplified exponentially when I walk that hallway.

On more occasions than I can remember (like today), I am immediately reminded of Zelda Rubenstein (pictured) as the organist in Sixteen Candles; an aging small person in a matronly dress, shuffling down the church aisle to take her place. The camera remains still as she walks with her back to it. You can hear a loud swishing of what must be a half pint of rum or some other spirit she keeps on her person. It's a subtle, sad, silly noise and it adds a dimension to her otherwise prim and visibly annoyed character.

In my case, the noise my shoe is making instantly inspires awkwardness. If any of my younger counterparts were walking behind me, would they hear it? Would they think I was too heavy in my shoes? Would they think I looked and sounded cheap?
Was I walking funny too? A litany of self-conscious thoughts plagues me until I arrive in an area that's noisier than my perceived apparel cacophony.

Safely at my desk after that morning's "creak", it's only a matter of time before I'll face that walk again, and the lightly lingering worry that someone will find cause to mock or otherwise disparage my already fragile fashion sense.

Thanks John Hughes.

The End of The Affair

It's been a year since I've been on Facebook.

When I started, I was semi-ecstatic to be on it; locating friends, finding new applications to play with, responding to posts, commenting on status messages, reconnecting with people I haven't seen in 20+ years...it was some kind of silly bliss. I felt like some door in my life had opened and I was looking at the past and present all at once.

Then people I worked with were all there and it felt like I was involved in sidebars noone else at work knew about. It was kind of like a private joke, only noone was really walking around laughing with eachother. Then in-laws and other family got in on it and I was learning more about their daily lives and they mine.

It's now become part of my everyday life - I post one to three times a day, check it almost compulsively from my iPhone (they've finally done decent work on the app for it, I must say), and talk about it with my friends at least once a day. The luster of discovering new ways to interact with it has worn off. I find myself on it simply as a way to catch up with everyone now...it's no longer a pretty, glistening toy in my hand.

I'm not sure how I feel about it either. Part of me is happy that I have all these people in my life, and it's nice to see what people are doing and how they are. On the other hand, it's work to catch up - it's like an added responsibility to an already busy existence. Am I going to feel guilty for not posting a status tomorrow? What if someone friend requests me and I don't even check for two or three days? Will that make me look like a callous, Faux Facebooker?

And I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop from their end...will they start charging for "subscriptions"? Will there be ads that start popping up all over the place while I'm responding to a post?

Where do we go from here, Facebook? Don't leave me hanging, or I'm gonna start scanning the web for a new thingamajig. It's not a threat or anything, but I don't know how long I can commit without some kind of blueprint for our future together...

If I could time travel...

I'd go to New York City: 1980 - 1982
I'd go to the Village and hob nob with the punkers and go to CBGBs and dance at New Wave Clubs. I'd wear horrendous amounts of neon and black and shop at vintage shops. I think Canal Street Jeans would be in business - I'd hit that spot for SURE!


Maybe I'd run into Blondie or Madonna along the way...

Epilogue: Facebook in the living room with the candlestick

Ok, so I read a book I liked, commented on it on Goodreads, by way of Facebook, and shared my review on this blog, also via Facebook. It in turn apparently posted some links either directly back to Facebook, or to Goodreads. One of THOSE links must have gone to an area where they ask for your info or permission to add their app if you're coming from an FB* page.

My head is spinning. That whole debacle needs to be diagrammed like a genealogy chart.

So then, Google and friends** on this WWW thingy we're all using, determined there was something bad coming off my site and shot up warnings to visitors. Scary. All that time I spent, when all I had to do was check out that post and take out the links. Why didn't someone just see that and tell me? Would it have been so hard? Oy.

And now the hidden moral in this story: Make sure you say what you mean to whom you want to say it. Don't depend on someone or some THING to do it for you. They'll put their own spin on it ;)

And goddammit, wouldn'tcha know it, I came online to finally organize my small little wine collection and got distracted by little side dramas. This ALWAYS happens. Suddenly it'll be 10pm and I'll wake up with my head on the desk wondering what happened.

There's a moral there of some sort as well. However, I can only afford one per post during these hard times, and I don't have the time to think of one cause I'm not supposed to be here right now(insert emoticon of me sticking tongue out)!

The End.

ps. New Guilty Pleasure: I get a kick out of putting Legos together. Spencer has been asking for the Star Wars Death Star since he first saw it like in August of last year. I'm at the point where I think I'd buy it if we could afford it — just so I could say I could put it together.


*FB = Facebook
**friends = Any various search engine/algorithm-y utility that monitors sites we all access

ATTACK of the web clutter

Whatever.

I haven't posted here in awhile, and I guess it's on me that suddenly Google (who owns Blogger, the tool I use to publish here) is blocking access and saying there is "Badware" somehow causing problems for users. HUH?

I'm being told to review my source code, but if I go to the site, I get blocked from accessing it.
This is like Irony, Catch 22, Murphy's Law and who knows what else, all balled up in one bad web experience.

I think I need to purge.
I have a Facebook page, a Twitter account, Blogger, two hosted sites, two photo gallery pages, and countless email accounts, Instant Messaging and poor eyesight.

I'm so overwhelmed I don't even have anything else to say. I want to run screaming.

My apologies to anyone having trouble when accessing my site. I swear I have NO idea what's happening.
If you access my site and something like malware or a bad weird link shows up, let me know.

ugh.