Archive for Facebook

I See Dead People

{ March 24, 2009 @ 4:09 am } · { Facebook, These people are killing me }
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Ah….the Facebooks.

So a friend of a friend on Facebook (neither of whom are a friend in real life, of course) posted pictures from her Grandpa’s funeral. 

Fine.

Started out with picture of her family getting ready for the funeral, all smiles.  Thought that was a little weird, but not clearly inappropriate.   But where are the sad people?

Anyway, about midway through (and seriously, why am I looking at this album, I don’t even know the girl!), a picture of the dead guy in his coffin.  Rest his soul. 

Really?  Really, people???  Everytime I think folks have reached the heighth of wrongness on facebook, they surprise me and take it to a whole new level.

I just don’t think that  is how Grandpa Jimmy* envisioned himself being remembered…

*names have been altered to protect the deceased

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

{ March 13, 2009 @ 3:41 am } · { Facebook, aging, unattractive, what am I doing with my life?, worries }
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So a lot of my friends on Facebook have been posting old photographs lately, from high school and even some from junior high.  I don’t mind, I like looking at them.  Those years were a really great time in my life (although I had plenty of teenage angst, of course), and I get nostalgic looking at that stuff. 

However.

One of my “friends” posted several pictures from junior high.  It is a boy I knew in grade school/junior high, but I was never really great friends with him and I don’t remember speaking with him much once we were in high school.  But he’s on Facebook, and I like to see what people are doing and I enjoy leaving nice comments on Facebook, so I accepted his friends request.  Then I started getting email after email that he had tagged me in some photos.  Obviously I knew they had to be old since I haven’t seen him in so many years, and I went to check them out.  

He had posted picture after picture of me.  First a picture of me and my little junior high boyfriend (gnarly sloppy kisser, by the way).  Then he posted a picture of he and I at a school dance (not sure how that happened because we surely never dated).  He added a few more, and I was relieved to see that some of the others included other people, not just me.  But I was in all but one of them.  I started to feel a little weird about it, because like I said, we were never that good of friends.  But obviously it is harmless.

So then another girl commented on the photograph of me and him, wondering if I was his second date for this same dance, as he had posted a picture of himself and another girl at the same dance), and he said, “oh no, [Jem] is second to no one in my opinion.”

Folks, I am a sucker for ANY kind of flattery.  It made me feel good.  More than it should have, I think.

It’s just that when I look back at all of those photos from when I was younger, I can remember the confidence I had then.  I was always self-conscious, mind you, but I don’ t know, I just had a confidence then that I don’t have now.  I was cuter.  Thinner.  I felt a lot shinier then than I do now.  Does that makes sense? 

I sent one of the pictures from when I was 18 to a friend of mine who didn’t know me back then.  It took her a while to figure out which one of those girls was me.  Yikes.  She said, but [Jem], you still look the same.  You have gained weight, yes, but you could be that girl again.

Um, no.  I will never be that girl again.  She was 18.  I am 31.  She had naturally blond hair, thighs that didn’t touch, and no student loans.   Virtually no responsibilities whatsoever.  She used to walk down the football player’s hallway (which had a nasty smell, btw) in her tennis skirt and pretend she didn’ t know they were looking at her.    She could go buy a prom dress without worry about her arm flab and ginormous boobs. 

I can’t get back the youthful naivete and blissful ignorance that she had then.  Nor can I get back the flawless skin.  I try to tell myself that the thing I have now add up to more than what she had.  Those old pictures?  That’s what I looked like when I was proud of myself, and I don’t know how to explain it except to say that I don’t look like that anymore. 

I’m concerned I’m one of those cliche girls who peaked in high school.  I need to pick myself up and make some changes.  And I don’t mean to make it sound like there is so much wrong with my life or who I am not; there’s not.  I just want to polish it up and make it shine a little, you know?

More reasons to hate Facebook

{ October 29, 2008 @ 2:23 am } · { Facebook, These people are killing me }
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I rarely ever look at the “profile” page on Facebook.  I always log in, take a look at the home page, see what all of my friends are up to and then log off.  Today I went to my actual profile page and you know what I saw?

Line after line of my comments on my friends’ walls or to their pictures.  That’s basically it.  Nobody cares about me because I don’t have kids.  If I had children, they’d make comments every time I post pictures, telling me how cute my kids are.  But I don’t, and they don’t. 

I’m cute too, people!  Sort of, anyway.  And if I’m not, then PRETEND like I am.  That’s what “friends” are for.

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A guy from my high school sent me a friends request a while ago.  I don’t remember him at all, but I accepted it, as I generally do to all requests.  Just to be polite, I guess. 

Anyway, this guy IMed me about three times.  I always ignored it, because apparently my politeness extends only so far.  I really have nothing to say to this guy, and have no desire to waste time small talking.  But then he IMed me again the other day, and I just sighed to myself and thought “ok, fine.  I don’t want to ignore him again, I’ll just chat with him for a few minutes and then beg off.”  Fine.

So the first thing he says to me is “so you’re a lawyer now, right?”  Uh-huh.  Already I can see a legal question coming my way.  He then proceeds to tell me about his issues at work, which, by the way, are barely issues.  Blah blah blah, I don’t like my current assignment, blah blah blah, management won’t switch me to a new assignement, blah blah blah, I signed a non-compete agreement and I want to go work for one of their local competitors.  Do you think this is the problem?

How the hell should I know?  I don’t even practice in the state that he lives in.  Nor do I handle those kinds of issues.  So I very politely try to tell him, listen, I’m not familiar with the laws in that state, and I don’t work in that area of the law.  But he keeps pushing.  He says he’s not sure if I have a boyfriend or not (read my profile, genius), but he wonders if I could call him to talk about his problem. 

Um, no?  First of all, my boyfriend has nothing to do with me dispensing legal advice.  Secondly, again dude, I’m not comfortable advising you on this issue. 

Then he says, well, no offense, butI know that most attorneys don’t want to give advice unless they are getting compensated.  Well, yeah.  It is a FOR PROFIT business.  And furthermore, who the hell likes to work for free??  It isn’t just attorneys, asshat, it’s everybody.  I’m fairly certain he doesn’t work for free. 

So I tell him, dude, this has nothing to do with compensation.  I can’t just give advice off the cuff to random people because those people?  Will rely on what I say, and then if things go wrong, guess who they want to blame??  Some poor lawyer chick they cornered on Facebook and begged for advice.  And not every question has an easy yes or no answer.  In fact, most of them don’t.  Hence cases being litigated for years and ending in someone, a judge or a jury having to make a decision one way or another. 

That guy pissed me off.  I told him I was signing off, and he said, ok, I’ll talk to you soon.  Um…no.  Unless soon = never, we won’t be talking any time soon.

Reason number 4,872…..

{ August 29, 2008 @ 3:58 am } · { Facebook, aging, babies, random thoughts, worries }
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why Facebook is evil.

Now, I’m barely a member of Facebook.  I have a page, have filled out the bare minimum of a profile, and have posted exactly one picture on there.  I have about 35 friends, most of whom I never see in real life.  I don’t have anyone to stalk on Facebook, so that isn’t a problem. 

But.

Tonight I decided to do a search on the folks who graduated in my law school class.  Can I tell you?  It had to be about 90% of them that had babies/children in their main pictures.  I was all “awww” and “ooh, that’s a sweet baby” for the first page, but by the second, third and beyond pages, I started to think, “wait a minute, how have ALL of them managed to marry and reproduce in the last 5 years?”

Now.  Basically all of my friends have babies, so that’s nothing new.  But I always think, well, I’ve taken a little bit of a different path – having gone through 3 more years of school than they did.  So somehow I found it shocking that all those people who did follow the same path as I did are all married with children.

So, yeah.  It’s official – I’m WAY behind the eight ball.  Of course I know that everyone has their own timeline in life and these things are not to be worried about, but still.  The clock’s a tickin’