Bit of a silly rant here, and I know I have probably posted about this before, but as a friendly reminder I would like every to know that Facebook is stupid. It will be in the history books as one of the causes of global stupidity a la Idiocracy: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/. It is like a shortcut to personality. Telling everyone in your friends list something at the same time robs you of the storytelling craft, and the human interaction that makes you who you are. Also, I am sure there are people in your friends list that do not need to know or care what you have done. I would also go a step further and claim that there are people in your friends list that are not even really your friend. There are probably even people who have completely exchanged human interaction and the art of storytelling with simple facebook entries, but hey, at least they have over 200 "friends".

Facebook is free. What? No, of course it is not really free. There are all types of ads on there, that of course, Facebook gets tons of cash for. Facebook gets it, not you, even though you are the one viewing the ads. Recent articles have shown Facebook to be worth 50 billion dollars. How much of that money do you get for being a member? Exactly none. Seems like a bit of a rip off to me.

They also have awesome games like some kinda farm shit, some kinda vampire shit, and some kinda mafia shit. Games where you have to keep playing to stay ahead of your friends (all the while showing you more ads), and if you ever stop playing, you probably feel bad about it. Great, now Facebook is having a negative impact on you.

Here is a small sample of some things I found on Facebook in less than 10 seconds:

"Jeff is now friends with Alex" - Great, two people I don't know are now fucking friends. Maybe they can queer off together and go ride a merry-go-round.

"thank god it's fridayyy :)" - Clearly the world's next Shakespeare.

"God damn. I LOOOOOVVVVEEEE TO COOK!" - Good, go fucking do it and shut up.

"wishing i was in a dead sleeep." - I wish you were just dead.

But hey, at least you can "poke" your "friends". GREAT! Tell you what, next time you are about to poke someone on Facebook, invite me over and I will poke you right in the eye, and we will both have something interesting to share with our friends.

I do also get the irony of posting this in an article format for the world to read at the same time, but this is not something that I haven't told everyone I know already. Also, I can assure you there was 10 times more thought put into this rant than ANYTHING you have EVER posted on Facebook. I would challenge you to go back to 6 weeks ago and assess maybe three things you posted on Facebook, and see if you feel they have any redeeming value. ...See, now you feel like some kind of asshole.

The other day I was driving to work and I saw a lady walking down the sidewalk. She had about 4 dogs with her, all on separate leashes. The dogs seemed a little unruly, but nothing she couldn't handle. Then all of a sudden, I see a guy with a single dog, also on a leash going the other direction, towards her. Just about the time I got even with where they were going to cross paths, the man's dog lashed out at the multiple dogs, causing the lady to yank the leashes and leap out into the street. I was going about 45 miles per hour, but I was able to slam on my breaks and swerve to avoid killing her and all her dogs. Not a huge deal, crisis averted, everyone and all animals were OK, and everyone went on their merry way. This could very easily have gone the other way.

It made me think about some of the tragic stories you see on the news almost every day. It was literally a matter of inches, great luck, quality driving, and good timing. If I had left the house maybe 1 second earlier and was 1 second farther down the road, I would wager there is a good chance that lady would be a dead person. Some people aren't so lucky.

This was not a life changing event, but it does make one stop and ponder how close you could be to death each and every day, or perhaps close to being involved in something where someone else gets hurt, or potentially killed. It makes one think about how many times on earth each day something like that happens, and how many of those times, it ends badly. It just takes a single split second in time to be the difference between a miss and a near miss, and there is a good chance you could have no idea this was even happening. My hero George Carlin once said, "...here's one they just made up. "Near miss". When two planes almost collide they call it a near miss. IT'S A NEAR HIT!! A collision... is a near miss. BOOM! "Look, they nearly missed!" "Yeah, but not quite!".

What is my point to all this? What lesson can we learn here? Probably none in terms of avoidance, you don't get to control that type of fate, but you can certainly take stock in what you have and what you do and who you are, and make sure you attempt to live life to the fullest, because some dickweed in a boogie van might run over you tomorrow.

....and we're back. 2011, Weird. I sort of fell off the grid for a while there. I went to Vegas, then hit Shreveport a couple of weeks later, then there was Christmas and New Years, its all a blur.

So I spent Christmas weekend in Shreveport gambling. Had a free room and free buffets and whatnot, so I said what the heck. I was only 2 weeks back from Vegas, but I figured that didn't matter, a good time is a good time, who says you can't have two good times in any given time frame. Anyway, I noticed something interesting when I was there. In case you don't recall my heartfelt opposition to cell phone companies, and their craft, you can reread the post as a refresher here: CELL PHONE ASS RAPE.

So there I was, in Eastern Louisiana, sitting at a Lord of the Rings slot machine next to a lady who had to be every bit of 75 years old. I heard a strange noise, and this lady proceeded to pull out her iPhone4, and start texting, and using apps and whatnot. Wait a sec. Did I miss something? Has that type of technology reached the elderly at this point? I must say that at first I felt sorta bad. Here I am a thirty-something white guy who has made technology a career. I should have the iPhone, and she should have my shitty low end Motorola RAZRv3. I felt like the old person in the scene. "Why do I need all that fancy new stuff, why would I wanna pay the cell phone company a thousand dollars a year when I don't need to", and so on. Someone could have given her the phone as a gift I suppose, or perhaps someone else could pay her bill for her, or maybe she could be rich beyond her wildest dreams, there could have been lots of variables, but I suspect in this case, things were just as they appeared.

Then the thought mostly faded when I realized that for the amount of money she spent on her phone and her service plan, I could go to that very casino probably 5 or 6 times annually. She is also bound to a 2 year contract, which could quite literally be the rest of her life. She got suckered into their scam, not me. I suppose this falls into my overall plan to balance 'having' and 'being'. She can have her iPhone, and I can be on vacation more. Is she better off than me? I think not. Cosmically, would someone rather listen to her story about her iPhone being awesome, or my story about the old lady with the iPhone, who thought her iPhone was awesome.

I realize this anecdote is weak, but it was one of those sort of whoa moments for me, when I realized a whole bunch of crap at the same time, so I felt the need to document it for posterity.