Facebook
Facebook allows you to search for friends by plugging in their email address. Email addresses that aren’t registered with facebook will get email messages telling them that So and So has invited them to Facebook. If you’re already on Facebook, you can link your accounts.

There’s one hitch – you can’t look at the person’s profile without logging into facebook, and if you search for them, well, odds are you’ll get a good couple hundred of results. So here’s the scenario:

1. I have multiple email addresses.
2. I don’t know immediately who this person is, but I can’t view their profile to confirm one way or another
3. Facebook keeps sending me reminders that this person has friended me on their site.
4. I can’t stop this email from sending without blocking all future emails (from people I may in fact want to be friends with for sure).

Now, I don’t arbitrarily have multiple email addresses. I have multiple email addresses for an excellent reason, namely that I use them on different sites and they help me preserve my anonymity. My facebook profile is public in one sense, but I don’t want to link it to say, an old forum account where I was a site administrator for a few years. While all of these profiles are public, they aren’t all tied to me.

What pisses me off is that Facebook doesn’t allow for the possibility of someone wanting to keep their online identities separate. Facebook is arrogant enough to try and force me to connect all of them. I don’t have any desire to do that. I can’t identify who’s trying to friend me on that email, but it doesn’t really matter – I’m pretty sure I don’t want to be friends with that person. Still, there’s no way for me to contact them outside of Facebook, and Facebook won’t let the subject drop and stop emailing me about it.

If I block the Facebook notification emails, I block all emails of that variety, even from people I might know and care about and want to reach out to on my existing account.

Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, Facebook.

OBSERVE, NON BELIEVERS:

There are several problems with this. Allow me to list.

1. ONE PAIR OF UNDERWEAR IS $12.00
2. You can get FOUR WHOLE PAIRS of men’s underwear for the same price.
3. “A flattering fit, a comfortable fabrication, and cute detail, make for a perfect everyday pair.” The implications are obvious – you can’t afford seven of these fuckers, unless you want to drop almost $100 on a week’s worth of underpants. SO THIS IS GOING TO BE THE PAIR YOU WEAR EVERYDAY, you dirty, dirty lady.
4. Not pictured, a review from a customer (she gave this underwear five stars): “…they are affordable which is great cuz my basset hound likes to eat them. Haha.” HAHA. HA. HA. They taste like expensive.
5. What makes the above comment terrifying is that these are affordable. AS OPPOSED TO WHAT? Oh.

What’s all the more horrible about all of this is that there’s no logic involved. The less fabric, and subsequently, the more comfortable the underwear is for people who’s asses are not prone to falling off (and therefore need some sort of parachute apparatus to save it in the event that it does), have to pay MUCH MORE for their underwear. You would think that ass-saving technology would cost more, and that less fabric would cost, you know, less. But the opposite is true. That ain’t right!

No, I don’t want raw fish. Fish, depending on what it is, needs to be cooked differently, and I expect the chef to know that. The first time I was asked this question I sort of stared at my waiter and said, “I don’t understand. Just however the chef would ordinarily prepare it. That’s what I want to shove into my mouth.”

Sadly, I forgot this response and answered automatically the way I would if I were ordering a burger, which I haven’t done in years. “Medium.”

I didn’t even realize my mistake until I was served a repugnant fillet of tuna, grilled to an unappetizing shade of grayish beige, and stinking to high heaven like someone’s overcooked canned tuna. This is not what I ordered. Except, technically, it was. This was a situation where I couldn’t blame the chef, and I couldn’t fairly blame the waitress. Had I not ordered my grilled tuna done medium? I had. But why?

Because the question, “How do you want your fish cooked?” is a trick question, as anyone who actually likes eating fish knows. A grilled tuna steak can be cooked well, but not done well. You can eat a rare steak of tuna that isn’t sushi, and tastes great. Most people suggest ordering “Medium rare,” and perhaps that’s the magic answer, but when I go out to eat, especially at finer restaurants, I’d like to be able to put some faith into the chef that he or she will know by now how to cook tuna.

But then, our waitress served me a soda with someone else’s lipstick on the glass. Her simple questions tended to be worded in convoluted ways. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that in this case, it was a situation of an inexperienced waitress coupled with someone who forgot the right answer to a trick question.

What the fuck do these people think is going to happen? The storm is going to be here for about a day. Yes, that means we’ll get some snow. Yes, that might be a record for this decade, but not for anyone else in the United States, and not even for us, if you were alive in the nineties. I’ve seen scary snow before. This is not and will not be it. What it doesn’t mean is that we won’t be able to dig ourselves out. Because after a day, it will stop snowing. Scary snow is when it snows heavily for days, and by the time it stops, there’s five feet of it, and you really don’t know if you can get to the corner store to buy a can of soup. Two feet is nothing.

You don’t need fucking canned goods that won’t go bad for two years to live through a one-day storm without dying of starvation. COME ON. What’s weirder about this though, is that these people, presumably, live near by. Otherwise, why would they be shopping there at 7 pm on a Friday? Wouldn’t they be shopping in their neighborhood stores? Who are these people? They shop like they live in the middle of nowhere and this is the closest general store for miles. Yo, hook me up with some millet, my Amish homies.

Saturday. The world is still here. OH HAY. LOOK AT THAT. IT STOPPED SNOWING. You know why? because that’s what if fucking does in Philadelphia. It stops. Also, everything’s open. Which raises another funny question. All of these people are panicking and racing to buy food so that they don’t die of starvation over night, but all the service professionals are, you know, working. I saw the newspaper truck out front BEFORE WE EVEN GOT PLOWED. What the fuck, people? What the fuck! Who are you, and why are you such mega wusses?

In Virginia, it’s really bad. You know why it’s so bad? Because a) they got a fuckload more snow than we did, and b) they’re a lot further south than we are. SNOW IS STRANGE THERE. Here, though? Seriously? Twenty-four inches? You know what that is? Two feet. Babies and small dogs may have some trouble with two feet. The elderly may need more assistance, but COME ON. You able bodied jackasses who just elbowed grandma out of the way so you could get the last can of beans? WHAT. THE. FUCK.

Why is this a common theme for horror movie scenarios? I guess it would be unnerving if you woke up and it was just you and no one else anywhere ever, and you were alone for the rest of your life until you died, the end. I guess. I mean, it doesn’t really horrify me personally, but I can kind of understand why it might be eerie.

I personally have amazing dreams where the city is completely abandoned, and it’s just me running around, exploring alleys and houses and little shops that look like someone just stepped out. I might see something out of the corner of my eye or hear something just behind me, but in those dreams, it’s kind of exciting, not terrifying or horrible. Everything’s in sepia tone, too. In those dreams.

It’s just puzzling why we think it’s so awful and bad to be the last people ever. Why? Is it like, “crap, I guess I have to face the fact that I’m stuck with you guys until I die, and I can’t rationally harbor a distant dream of one day settling down with brad pitt and/or angelina jolie.” Or is it like, “man, you guys really suck. I wish I had made better choices in life and hadn’t made friends based on superficial criteria, like appearance and income.”

Because if they’re good looking, reliable and amusing, you could do a hell of a lot worse in an end of the world scenario. I mean, most of the fun drugs are pretty easy to make yourself, and in a scenario like that you’d probably have more booze than you could ever possibly drink in your life. I mean, the resources would so grossly outweigh the demand, you could do ridiculous and frivolous things.

Realistically, the only thing that concerns me is that condoms do have an expiration date. I mean, provided you don’t die quickly, there’s going to be some babies at some point, unless it’s all dudes or all ladies, at which point, hey, party if you swing that way. Naturally, if it’s a mixed bag, you’re going to have that kind of awkward discussion where it’s not even just that the dude’s dick is cold and he wants to put it somewhere warm for a little bit until morning, it’s like, hey, you have a fucking duty to take some dick, because like, if you don’t, that’s it. No more people.

Like that’s such a bad thing. This all depends entirely on the type of people involved, of course, but if we’re talking about the standard douchey horror movie cast, I’d probably strip naked and shoot myself out of an airlock. Or whatever. Frozen space titties taunting you, sad douchey horror movie lead. Aww.

If it was just a normal earth and everyone had died or something, but i, a lone survivor, had an immunity or some shit, I’d absolutely plant a garden and maybe get a pet turtle. Or something. Fuck, you know what? I’d get a pet fucking elephant. We’d walk around the city together and get into quirky adventures, usually involving Bessie (I’d name her Bessie, or Alfred if it was a boy elephant), stepping on something fragile. Oh, Bessie.

I’d probably break into labs and aquariums and shit. I’d go find Dick Cheney’s bunker and I’d egg it. I’d just fuck with him. Leave shit outside his door and get squirrely. I’d get a generator from home depot. Screw going through life without resources. I’d hit up the library, get some books on how to do useful things. I’d loot. I’d loot the shit out of everything. I’d loot the most absurd and outrageous shit. I would be buffing my ass with imported fairy tears. My body would glow in the dark as a result of all the amazing magic I would do to it. I would laugh and roll some tobacco in a $100 bill and I would fucking smoke it. And then I would step on it, because it would probably taste horrifying. Unless you like that kind of thing.

I’d probably urinate publicly. I’m just being realistic here. I’d no longer have anyone to impress. No one to bother me, and there’d probably be some animals trying to reinhabit the city. I’d have none of it. I would piss all over the damn city frequently. Take that, cougars!

I’d no doubt get bored and a little crazy. I’d probably stop wearing clothing as anything besides protective gear. I’d either wear crazy shit, like a horrifying combination of spandex-lycra blended biking gear, or nearly nothing. I probably wouldn’t bathe much, because even though I’d have a generator, I probably wouldn’t have water. I’d miss that amenity, for sure, but I’d get used to it pretty quickly, I think. I think most people would. I’d probably get bored and crazy though, so I’d probably take field trips and fight bears.

Depending on what wiped out all the other people, I might do some standard body clean up, before they got too disgusting. I mean, if people just dropped dead all over the place, I’d see if I could get my hands on a truck or something. Or a snow plow. I’m just being real, here, it would be really morbid to go walking around looting and having to step over dead bodies, not to mention the smell. I can’t handle walking under the bridge near my place now. It smells like poop. I couldn’t handle a lot of corpses.

I’d push them to the edges of the city, but not into the river. I’d try to avoid that. Maybe I’d stick them all in south philly. I’d probably try and shoot for a valley or something, but I don’t really know where a good place would be to dump a shit load of bodies. That’s not something I really think about. I’d push them all out and I would stop and I would wipe the sweat off my brow. I realize I’d be operating a snow plow, so I might not really be sweating, but I’d do it anyway, because pushing corpses around with a snow plow is just the kind of thing you don’t figure you’d be doing in life. So I’d take a moment and pretend to do it, even if I wasn’t really sweating. And I’d say some words.

I’d probably say something like,

What the fuck happened? What is going on here? Why did you all die? This is really weird. I sure hope it isn’t aliens or zombies. But just to be sure, you understand what I have to do. I hope that if there’s an afterlife, you’re all resting there peacefully and will forgive me for what I’m about to do. My people are nordic, which is why I’m not very funny and don’t smile much. However, the bright side to this, is we know how to do a fucking awesome funeral. I apologize that I can’t give you the individual attention you deserve, but you’ll appreciate that these are not normal circumstances. We’ve had a good run, humanity. I should probably try to harvest your dna, but I don’t care that much. Instead, I am going to send you blazing into the night.”

And then I’d burn them with fire and gasoline. I’d make sure to contain the area first, ensuring the fire wouldn’t spread. I’d probably have to make several trips, do a number of controlled burns, and I’d probably just sit down and cry at some point, not because of the fact that it’s very upsetting to have everyone die and then be stuck cleaning up after every person on earth who was rude enough to drop dead without telling you, though that is very upsetting, but because of how damn daunting that is.

I’d ultimately probably give up for a few days and go to the library and try to see how easy it would be to move into the wilderness and survive there. I’d probably think about it, and then think of how fun it would be to explore the penthouses in the city. I’d probably break into one of the fancier buildings and go up to the penthouse. It would be deserted and smell bad, because the people in those buildings would probably still be there (I doubt that I’d be that thorough as to clear out all the buildings too), and I’d go up the stairs, all the way to the top. I’d get off and I’d go into the penthouse and I’d look at the view, and see all the beautiful things there. And I’d probably find a body or something would fall and scare the shit out of me.

I’d probably bolt and run down all those stairs and get to the bottom and realize it was probably a cat or something, or maybe I’m just entirely alone and everyone has died and this is some kind of hell, but I never died. And I’d walk back to the library and I’d start looking up what the easiest and least painful way to die would be, and I’d try and see if I could find heroine or something, and overdose on it.

I’d probably faint and wake up later, having failed to actually inject myself with much of anything, but probably just enough to realize that hey, I kind of like this drug thing, and I want more of it. So now I’ll be the lone survivor of an apocalypse and develop a totally inconvenient drug addiction, except, like Charlie on Lost, I’d probably come across a huge stash of shit somewhere along the line. And then I would be faced with a dilemma that would test my moral fortitude.

And philosophically, we’d have to ask, that if there is no society, no humanity, just one individual, what are morals? What governs the individual without the society? It would get kind of weird and preachy for a while as I tried to figure out some rules to understand and govern my universe, but then I’d probably wind up in a bar somewhere and hallucinate ghost bartenders, like in The Shining, and I’d get piss drunk and start laughing about how crap everything is. And the bartender would probably be hot and scottish and would pour me another and another and give me a shot of something i’d never tried before.

I’d wake up the next morning half convinced it wasn’t a dream or a desperate delusion and hunt all over the city looking for that bartender, who really, probably never did exist, and was probably actually a half-remembered memory of my 21st birthday. And then I would puke in the sink (there would be a sink for some reason) and cry hot snotty tears of sadness.

I guess that’s horrifying. It’s mostly just depressing and boring. Then I’d probably try to write. I’d write a great novel, oddly content with the knowledge that it would probably never be read by anyone, even though it might be the best, most defining and poignant piece of literature ever crafted by anyone.

See, if they made movies like that, I would absolutely go and see them. But instead, they churn out crap like pandorum and act like I want to see it. No thanks, hollywood!

I don’t generally bother with stuff like this, but I want to point a few things out. After all, everyone’s got an opinion, and I’m no exception. For those of you lucky enough to have no idea who Carrie is or what all of this is about, she’s the former Miss California 2009 beauty queen. Perez Hilton, a gossip blogger, was a judge for the competition and asked Ms. Prejean what her stance on gay marriage was. It should come as no surprise that Hilton, an openly gay man, would be offended by her answer, which was not at all in support of gay rights. Prejean was later fired for “failing to meet contractual obligations.”

I’m not going to get into a big to do over what she said or what’s right or wrong – I think that people have a right to say what they believe, regardless of whether or not we like it. If Perez knew of Prejean’s stance on the issue, it seems an awful lot like a set up to make a beauty contest the platform to air his grievances about it. It just doesn’t seem relevant within that context. I believe in equal rights for everyone, regardless of religion (or lack there of), sexual orientation, gender or color. I also believe in free speech and freedom of thought.

I think that the mania following Prejean’s statements and eventual firing are complete bullshit, though, and that’s why I’m writing a blog post about it. Oh Perez, why did you have to make a beauty contest about gay rights? I’m not saying it’s not important or relevant, but you effectively made the contest a morality issue, and I fail to see how boob jobs, eating disorders and bleached roots have any fucking thing to do with morality and human rights. Hindsight is 20/20, but no matter what Prejean said, it would only ever possibly be a moral issue after you broached the subject. Way to go.

A movement has started to “stand with Carrie” which presents a really touchy issue: do we support Carrie for standing up for her convictions even if that could have cost her the crown, or do we condemn her for winning anyway and making the Prop 8 issue an excuse to behave badly? How can we choose? How can I honestly say that I don’t support Carrie? I may strongly disagree with her, but I sure do support her right to say whatever the hell she wants, even if it pisses off a really angry queen. The reason I support her is the same reason I support gay rights. It’s about freedoms. And I can’t tell you how pissed I am at Perez Hilton for lacking the common sense to see what kind of a hot mess he’d create with that question. There is NO way Prejean could have answered that question without it becoming a huge issue. If she said no, it would have been to please Perez, and the entire thing would have been rigged. If she said yes, as she did, and ANYTHING went awry, it would be because the entire thing was rigged. It’s a no-win situation for Perez. How could he have missed that?

What makes this all the more disgusting is Prejean’s behavior. I’m so loathe to use Fox as a legitimate news source, but I feel like it’s oddly fitting here.

What bugs me about all the people saying she was fired for her convictions, get real. Maybe she was, but it’s equally probable she was fired for being a douchebag and not fulfilling her contractual obligations. Perez basically set it up where she couldn’t be fired without everyone who agrees with her saying it was because of her beliefs, rather than any bad behavior. He also made it pretty much impossible not to support Carrie Prejean, regardless of whether or not you agree with her. Damn it, Perez. Not only did you shoot yourself in the foot, but you basically threw a public hissy fit that landed every supporter of Gay rights under a banner of anti-free speech, no matter how ridiculous that is.