Facebook is the novel we are all writing

When MTV spanked popular culture with it's Real World series in 1992 I realized that reality TV (RTV) was not just a fad, like fondue or pleather, but a new genre that was here to stay.  Riding on it's coat-tails followed a multi-million dollar pursuit to interview and document the lives of the massively mediocre and dull.  While cat-walks spun orange into the new pink, RTV tailored the boring into the latest thrill.

Basically, the RTV phenomenon divides society into two groups; those who watch it religiously, and those who watch it in secret.  I don't have a television so I can't sling too much mud because I subscribe to the great and spacious building site of Facebook.  



Personally, speed-limits and taxes have felt more comfortable than FB at times.  But you can't fault the genius of it.  Conceived in a womb of the world's greatest of universities and fertilized by the deepest of pockets, Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg wrote the algorithm (in answer to the myspace problem) and provided a forum for students to express themselves succinctly, outside of the classroom, to connect, collect, and organize the individual expressions of college life; from campus to campus, throughout academia, and beyond.  A buzz so contagious that by 1994, in less than a year, a new social network secured it's face within the books of history.


It's fairly straightforward to deactivate Facebook.  So feeling bold I took the plunge and suspended my account for a while.  My exit was so badly received that a visit to each of my friend's houses in the middle of the night and throwing rocks at their windows and spray painting farewell's all over their cars seemed a more civilized departure than the havoc I wreaked from a simple click of a button.  So to keep the peace I returned to Facebook and also to a wall splattered with the annoyances and cries from a posse abandoned.

Social networks are fueled by billions of tweets and narcissistic updates driven only by the need for people to broadcast their own uniqueness.  Pull the plug on that and the chaos which started in Egypt is only the beginning.

Pedigree Chums

I started writing this blog to poke fun at people who take their pets too seriously.  Before Rojo came onto the scene (and I've never mentioned this before until now) I owned a Betta fish and named him Matthew, which bought great amusement to me.  Poor Matthew never made the blog but provided me with ample comic relief.  Needless to say he kicked the bucket along with all the rest of my Siamese Fighting fish.  They were great, truly great and I owe a lot to them.  But today the joke's on me because now I'm seriously involved with a new companion and friend.

Meet Trevor...

Synergy: A Collaboration. A Piece of our minds.

Dave Christensen sent me the following prose.  After ingestion and many hours I folded it into a poem.   

Friends and Computers:

For some really stupid reasons we file some away forever; yet a few eventually make it out of the bin and recycle back. A few might be in a police file, and there are some who probably should be in the X files. There are those who can play our hearts like a keyboard and whisper all types of digitized sweet nothings to brighten our screens. Other times we search for the right passwords to bring back those we have defaulted, trying everything we can to open them back up to us again. Those that we inadvertently cut might later feel like pasting us....and also think about putting a boot-up our @*#! Real special ones know just how to gently defrag us. On occasion we turn ourselves into fine-tuned engines and search for just the right one to surf through the rest of our life together with. Yet so many times we somehow never let get downloaded the right programs to upgrade us. Then there is God, Who knows us all without ever having to use google. Who can processes trillions of requests - then answer them all in the twinkling of an eye, sending his Spirit to virus scan our hearts in order to restore our hard driven souls - reinstalling purpose as He Casts His Net. He then leaves it entirely up to us if we want to be deleted out of his Facebook of life or not... but would rather have us all His best friends forever.

Mr KKBB

***

And this is what came out the other end...

An Ode; To the Few 

Seasons of men are filed
and reviled
reasons for that which they lack;
'Tis treason to assume
that a few in their gloom
can't recycle themselves from their bins and back.

A few
might be logged in police piles,
and some who belong in the X files.
There are those who can play our hearts like a keyboard,
typing with whispers in digitized dreams 
to sweeten our screens
Ice scream!

A few
are searching for passwords
with swords to bring the defaulted
and exalted.
Trying in pain
to reach and to teach
opening wounds up again,
in vein.

A few
by mistake
we've cut up like cake.
And in place of a hand
(just for good measure and with way too much pleasure) 
we've offered a swift boot to the head.
Instead.

A few
of the silent know how to coerce
and gently defrag us.
No cuss.
No fuss.

A few
are brighter than most!
Outstanding alone and tall as a post!
Winking and shining, tugging her boats from out of the bleak...
upon shores of rocks
designed for the weak.

A house of light....

Is He.
Knowing us inside and out.
Without google, or frugle, or poodles with noodles, processing trillions and squillions of rants 
twinkling His eye from out of the skies
scanning our hearts
and restoring the hard
driven souls from our wants 
and desires.
Installing the wires
again and again
in the rain.

Not a few
but for all!
 
His net stretching wide to catch the Fall;
The deleted, deflated, fragmented, placated, the Faces with and without.
Booking the lives of our time.
Sublime!

So from out of the bin
all's forgiven
He's risen!

Lending us time
to climb
back again
with renewal
of a greater precision.

***

Learning how to say sorry

I've been angry at the world lately and took it out on a friend last night firing off vitriolic emails which were unfounded and not even close to the truth. I'm up late because I was up late last night talking with my Delta airline connection which will bring me back to the WINDs of POETry. With regards to the woman I offended I have apologized and made amends and learned; It doesn't matter if one steps in s*** but how one wipes it off. And I did both successfully. One can only hope for forgiveness. I will be forever a student of life. And a disciple of the Pollen Pathway.