WWJPFHSM?

that stands for “What Would Jesus Post For His Status Message?”

Facebook is among other things really frickin tedious. At any given moment, you are inundated with seemingly endless “fan suggestions” and “pokes” and inane statuses that answer one of the following questions: what are you eating? what are getting ready to do? where are you taking your kids? where did you take your kids? what shampoo do you use? will you buy this shampoo again?

Let’s face it. we feel connected in some bizarre way because of this information. We give each other thumbs up and we click on a link that indicates we “like” it.

I’m as guilty of being self-absorbed as the next person. Well, if the next person doesn’t happen to be Lindsay Lohan.  I feel the need to share really lame things about my life and what’s going – ie, this here bloggity blog blog – and I fall into hysterics when i feel no one is paying attention to me. I will fully admit this.

But then it strikes me that we are all clawing for attention, to feel important, needed, respected, considered, even laughed at and/or with. We want to matter.

How does one “matter” anyway? What does it take to be a blip on the radar of the world? How high do you have to climb? How far do you have to jump? There are those of us who may have an overblown sense of importance, that if something were to happen to us the world would implode. Well, at least our immediate world, if not the Whole Wide World (of sports).

At the end of the day, everything matters – our entire lives and the things we choose to do with our time. Connections, virtual and physical alike, are important and make up our very souls. We are together in this life, and just a simple click of a button can make your entire being light up and rejoice.  I am always all for all the things that bring us together and makes us smile. All I ask is that you make it count.

Please “like” this… thanks in advance

a word to the web-wise

I don’t know if any of you have been following this story, but it’s really scary to think about. For those of us who have been internet savvy for some time know better (at least I hope so) and in many cases, you have to be somewhat of a naive and/or willing participant in less than commendable (read: illegal) situations. Anyone who uses Craigslist for “services” just has to be dumb at this point. More or less.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/04/21/us/AP-US-Craigslist-Killing.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=craigslist%20killer&st=cse

So here are a few tips for those of you reading who are (a) trusting (b) innocent and (c) my parents.

1. Do NOT post home phone numbers on Craiglist. Do everything through e-mail and even at that, you probably want to set up a “dummy” account on hotmail or yahoo. Don’t use your real email in case that is linked to your home address just like your home phone is. Whether it’s listed or not.

2. Do NOT post your home address either.

3. Do a Google search on the email address that you are given from the sender. Sometimes this will alert you to scammers and known shady characters. You can also try searching for just the username part of the email, meaning everything before the @ symbol. Sometimes that brings something up. Not always relevant info, so don’t jump to conclusions. (For example, mine comes up with an obituary which is not mine and a profile on a dating website which might not be mine… from many many moons ago…)

4. Don’t ever meet someone off Craigslist (or really from anywhere online and maybe includes Facebook… haha) in private. Meet at a well lit busy space. Of course this doesn’t really apply if you are an escort…

5. Don’t be an escort.

So hopefully this list helps you out some. If not, feel free to ask questions. In a way, I am really hoping this all ends up being a mistaken identity thing but I kinda doubt it. Though I do have to point out that I’m surprised the press has as much information as it does about the investigation and maybe this is some elaborate hoax or something? I guess I watch too much Law and Order and now Bones. I started watching DaVinci Code, a Canadian cop show. Although Davinci is a doctor in the coroner’s office and I guess they have quite a bit more leverage over on the northside? I don’t really know much about that kind of thing.

Also, for all the people who are saying that this suspect is a nice guy and all that, I have two words: Ted Bundy.

going viral

I remember my first email account back in the day when everything was text-based and you had to know the code number to Reply or Delete or Forward and there was no such thing as a mouse-click. And soon after email was available for the masses there came the viral messges.

Now I have to explain to those in the house who don’t understand, “viral” is not to be confused with “virUS.” I know they are from the same root word, but don’t go all etymologist on me. When it comes to all things internet, a virAL message is one that get transferred faster than the spped of sound to anyone and everyone with a modem. Before you know it, a link gets a billion some hits/visits from you, your mom, uncle bobby jo and aunt george.

What fascinates me about this is the insight into human behavior that one can derive. I used to go to MSN to see what was on the front page – the “water cooler” talk fodder of the day. How does everyone know about this stuff roughly at the same time? Back when the Sopranos was on, everyone in the whole country seemed to be talking on Monday morning about Tony and Carmela and such. Collectively, it feels like we are all plugged into the same things.

Some would blame the internet, before that TV, and before that newspapers. I love the history of the local paper, the Gazette, which you can find out more about at Colonial Williamsburg. Back in the day, the colonial paper’s motto was  “Containing the freshest Advices, Foreign and Domestick.” I’m not really sure what kind of stick a domestick was…

I had taken to reading old Gazettes which you can find at http://research.history.org/ in the Digital Library. Some of it is absolutely fascinating while other parts are fairly ho hum. You can read about Thomas Jefferson’s arrival at Congress and how he found a dark bay horse which was “roach’d and bobb’d about 6 or 7 months ago.” You can also find entries like poor William Clark, a runaway, who “winks with his left eye” and apparently lost a bit of his hat …

Now with things like Facebook (which I swear is a conspiracy developed by CIA or NASA or maybe PETA) and Google Reader, we are all literally on the same page. When you are subscribed to multiple blogs you can’t help but notice the trends in topics and references. I mean collectively we tap into the same resources and have the same discussions over and over again. Maybe we should be afraid of robots after all – the collective is coming. Resistance is futile. Or maybe I’m just kinda intrigued by the notion that there is, after all, a body of knowledge we share – state regulated tests or not. I guess I only wish it were a touch more diverse.