Spin rinse repeat

My first mistake was watching The T get into Facebook. That was a small step but a major one. I could feel my mind split into two. I followed her down the FB rabbit hole and now I suffer from online schizophrenia. This is just like in Stephen King's The Drawing of the Three, the second installment in the Dark Tower epic when Roland has two sets of memories those that really happened and those that also happened. There was a boy. There was no boy.

My mental split happens along the line my virtual existence. You should post that to your anonymous blog. You should post that to not anonymous facebook. Once that mental debate gets rolling, I turn on ye olde iPod and continue listening to the Gunslinger series. Hence, nothing gets posted anywhere.

FB is an odd world. Just what is a friend? Anecdotally some meatspace friends and I have meta-FB discussions about the environment of constantly checking in for status reports, the politics of who to friend and whom not to and which way the friend requests flow, the politics of accepting or ignoring or accepting and then quarantining friends. Granted, we also just post like crazy and continue this little run down the stairs (we've got momentum now and dare not look at what our feet are doing lest we fall).

But it seems strange to me nevertheless. What event is worthy of a status update? I enjoy hearing about what folks are doing but gosh and golly the sun is out and why don't we just meet for a cup of joe or a brewski and chat? Reading the feed is a weak substitute for face to face. I know I am not the first to say this but I am coming to understand it in my own time. I have selfish underpinnings. I think I am much funnier in the flesh. I like hearing people laugh at me or with me, it matters not most of the time. When the FB crowd does not respond with a "Jane Doe likes this', I feel like the humor fell flat.

My incessant feed checking is much like Tourette twitch. What is Sally doing right now? She hasn't posted in 12 hours is she all right? Should I call her? Should I call the police? OK, I agree that bringing in law enforcement is a bit extreme but I truly think I am wearing out the refresh button in my browser's URL box.

I've got errands to run and cat boxes to empty. Right after I read the feed one more time.

IM ;)-ing @ U

His name is Nick Thune.

I've been updated

Thank you, St Steve, for releasing the new gadgets in July when I am not teaching classes full-time and can devote all my hours to scrolling and pinching and downloading and playing and ... and ... forgetting to eat and giving up bathing and ignoring the litterboxes. For two years in a row, July has been a lost month.

What a good time to be alive.

Some of you may have noticed the addition of a Twitter link on this page (it's at the left, see it?). I started Twittering in a feeble attempt to fend off the junkie twitching I was going through leading up to July 11th, Day of iUpdate. Now I'm not sure what to do with Twitter. I read somewhere that tweets fill the moments between blog posts. I'm wondering if you really want to know that I'm picking grass out from between my toes because I tried to mow the lawn barefooted. I find myself hesitating to tweet because of an information overload at the readers' end. How much is too much?

I am interpreting my hesitation as a sign of my age—my actual age, not the age I live in. Younger pups behind me are all about the tweets and the umpteen other forms of filling in every silent moment when they are supposedly alone with themselves. I wonder if they hesitate to post anything or worry about approaching inanity. I wonder how they define inanity.

I follow two tweeters (I'm not even sure if that is the correct title) who I think creatively use Twitter and avoid inanity and overload. One is sockamillion, who is linked in my sidebar. The post that sucked me in was "A plastic bag! Quick! Everyone this way before it gets us all!" If you've never seen a cat inadvertently back out of a bag with handles via a different route than it went in, then you have no idea what you're missing and a certain edge to sockamillion's fear is dulled. sockamillion is by no means overload (one a day) and is definitely funny (I've got to get into the basement. RIGHT. NOW.) The tweeter has a balance of funny and just enough. Another Tweet I follow is posted by a woman who posts only in haiku. I appreciate the challenge in that.

But what could I possibly tweet about that is valuable in some way—and I'm open to very broad interpretations here. My hesitation and nervousness regarding inanity has brought my blogging to a halt as well. Why say anything? (Is it possible the narcissist in me has low self-esteem?) Who cares? Well, with 3,000+ hits on this page in three years either one very, very, very obsessive individual checks in on my ramblings or a few dedicated souls or many, many, many random clickers.

So I'm off to ponder more about where my definition of "too much" falls. And—of course—to check up on the latest batch of iPhone Applications.