Who are you and why are you friending me?

I recently joined FaceBook, after being urged by some professional associates and being told that I *must* do it. Fine, whatever, sign me up. I’m still learning my way around, but quickly realized there is nothing in my personal profile that I want my professional aquaintances to see.

What I’d been warned about, and hadn’t really taken seriously, was the danger of becoming visible to former high school classmates. Or, possibly, sinister and/or lonely people posing as my former high school classmates.

At least FaceBook has confirmed my decision to never attend a high school reunion. I was overwhelmed by the twit-speak (“Widdle Johnny just frew up!!!”) until I discovered the blessed “Less from this person” feature. Now that’s technology I can use.

But this week has brought my oddest FB experience yet…and I have an inkling I am not the first person to encounter this phenomenon.

I received a friend request from someone named Sally Jo Beyerdecker (not really her name, but it’s a good former classmate name, yes?)…I don’t recall ever meeting anyone by that name. Ever. I looked at her profile, and it turns out we went to high school together (or so she claims). Still no recall.

Thinking “What the heck, let’s see what this is all about…”, I confirmed. And then she wrote a long message on my wall that was all like “Haven’t seen you forever…you still look the same! Let’s get together and catch up!”

Well, okay, first off, I don’t recall ever having seen her, so I suppose the “forever” claim is accurate. She lives a 3-hour drive away and wants to get together to catch up on…what exactly? Like, say, oh…How we’ve never met? I baffled at this all evening, briefly wondering if perhaps we had met at some point in the hazy past and that now that I am getting old and alzheimery, I simply am forgetting these small, yet important, details of my past. I panic a little at that one.

The other thing is, I am fairly certain that even as an insecure and slightly dorky high school student, I would never have been pals with this particular Sally Jo Beyerdecker. She has the relentless, somewhat alarming, smile of the social-climbing high school cheerleader. Her FB profile pic? This is a woman who decided her wedding picture was the one to use. Her profile includes the info that she never left “our” hometown, is an unabashed Republican, holds an AA from the local community college, and has numerous children who she takes to church every week.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure we weren’t exactly pals.

And, what do I say back to her? “Oh, hi! Gosh, what great times we had, Sally Jo. I must’ve been really stoned all through high school, because I haven’t got a frigging clue who you are? Were you the one who gave me those mushrooms that made me see Sasquatch?”

It took some thought, but I finally came up with the answer to her post: “Hey, you look great, too. Haven’t changed a bit!”

Then, I selected “less from this person.” See ya, Sally Jo.

That’s as diplomatic as I get these days. I think it was a good effort.

Just basking in the zeitgeist…

So, I’m breaking New Year’s Resolution #52, which was “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t blog about anything at all.” It was a stupid resolution, anyway, and one that resulted in nothing short of a total injunction for someone like me.

I spent much of January in that weird state of liberal angst that involved holding my breath, waiting for January 20, because I just couldn’t believe it would actually occur: That we would be rid of Bush and his cronies and a new day would be upon us. Or that the new day would come, but that Obama would muck it up royally somehow, a la Bill Clinton, or that…well, anyway. There was about a week or so there, post January 20, where every morning was like a little Christmas. Each morning’s paper held some new policy change that repudiated some of the topsy-turvyness (and that’s putting it nicely) of the last decade. Hey, let’s allow funding of birth control in impoverished, overpopulated countries. Hey, let’s take another look at the shreds of the Endangered Species Act. Hey, let’s talk to other countries, rather than using large-scale bombing as an opening gesture. Not too shabby.

The depths of my disillusionment with people were revealed on the day the US Airways flight crashed into the Hudson. While Sullenberger was being hailed as a hero on the news, I was suspicious. I had this awful feeling that–as with many other “heartening” news stories, this one would turn out to be some sort of fakery, a scam. I thought “He did it on purpose. They’re probably going to find out there weren’t any birds.” When it turned out he is part of an airline safety consulting firm, I smelled a rat. Did you? Didn’t you get that tiny little qualm in your stomach that said, no way, too good to be true? (And, yes, I am quite pleased that I was completely wrong.)

But, there are so many opportunities for cynicism and so many good stories that turn out to be big fakes, it’s easy to preemptively brace yourself for disappointment these days. I mean, we’ve got Wall Street banksters whining about “excessive” restrictions on how much bailout money they can transfer to their offshore bank accounts, corporate exec dudes whose profit-blindness allows them to guiltlessly send out contaminated peanuts to make children’s food. We’ve got women of questionable mental stability foisting 14 children on the state of California’s taxpayers, not to mention a doctor who thinks creating eight little fetuses all at once is a good career move. Some of these things almost make me wish I were a Catholic, so that I could at least rest easy in the knowledge that there’s some awful place where these people will end up. Or, better yet, a Hindu: Then I could imagine their karmic reward of returning as something like a disabled cockroach.

All this, and I haven’t even mentioned the “stimulus” package. I read a quote from Lenin the other day, which said “Fascism is capitalism in decay.” I thought I smelled something funny.