Goodbye FaceBook, Hello Kosher Ham, and a Bra That Men Could Really Use

Okay, so here's a guy who doesn't know how to park. I mean, really? He was delivering pork to the local Chinese restaurant, there were open parking spaces all over the place, and he says to himself, "Hm...I'll park in front of the synagogue: won't need to worry about them swiping my stuff."

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Posted a newspaper article on FaceBook about this crazy Ukranian doctor/Chernobyl survivor who invented a bra that pulls apart into 2 gas masks. A male friend made a humorous comment, a female friend took insult, and elevated the comments up into insult territory, so I went for the nuclear option: I closed my FaceBook account.

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==A Confession: the tempest in a teapot over womens' undergarments (somebody needs to invent a ladies' underwear that doubles as a coffee filter. Now that would be practical.) was a convenient excuse to close my FaceBook account. I had been contemplating closing it for a month, or so, for two different reasons:

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1) FaceBook is a wonderful way to get into fights with your friends and relatives. Why wait until Thanksgiving Dinner at Uncle Bob's house, when you can do it from the convenience of your home computer? Pick a topic that gives your cousin's husband the chance to let you know what an idiot you are, and all hell breaks loose. Next thing you know, you see a post on your best friend's mailman's gynecologist's FaceBook page about what a moron you are. All of this can be easily accomplished with all involved parties still in their underwear.

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2) I can't think of a polite way to put it, so I'll be blunt: 99% of the people on FaceBook only post stuff about themselves, or things that they are interested in, and they are absolutely uninterested in others' postings i.e. thoughts. It's like a theater where 10 actors are on the stage, all talking at once, reciting lines from different plays. Instead of the Tower of Babel, Facebook is the Website of Babble. They literally only read their own postings. Wouldn't it be easier to stand in front of the bathroom mirror, and admire yourself?

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==An interesting manifestation of FaceBook is that I wound up being FB Friends with a bunch of people that I share the same political ideologies with. BORING! I recently got friended by a libertarian birder. Finally, somebody I can argue with! What a breath of fresh air. Actually, the conversations with her and her friends were great because we didn't throw slogans and insults at each other, we actually made arguments based on ideas and theories. I agree with 25% of what the libertarians say, but I totally disagree with their desire to minimize/dismantle government: it's a shell game designed to let big corprations i.e. the rich get richer. This is much better than my years-long fight with another friend who is a religious fundamentalist, and conservative republican. All he does is quote Ann Coulter, or somebody on Faux News Channel with expensive hair.

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==So because I am one of those "all-or-nothing" type of extreme guys, I decided that constantly checking my FB account 4 or 5 times a day, and getting frustrated that clearly nobody was reading, or putting comments under my postings was just making me mad.

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==There are really laid-back, mellow people out there who don't have the emotional investment. They check their FaceBook account once a month--if that often--and don't post anything. I have friends who have that same casual attitude towards birding: Hey, maybe we'll see that bird we're looking for, today. Maybe not. No big deal. I'm the opposite: if we don't see some bird that we went after, I'll actually get depressed about it, like some hard-core Boston Red Sox fan after losing to the Yankees.

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==Oh, and another thing: Friend Requests from people you don't know. One kid sent me a Friend Request, so I asked him if he was a birder, or if he was a student at the university. He said no, he just wants to make friends. That kind of creeped me out, but I thought to myself, "See the fact that you think it's weird for some kid you don't know to want to be FB Friends with you is proof that you're an old geezer."

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==Then I got a Friend Request from some girl who's 12 years younger than me. Same question: does she work in my department? Is she a student in the university? Is she a birder? Why would a she want to Friend me, when it says right there on my FB page that I'm married, and have kids? So I figured, "You're an old guy, that's what people do today."

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==Well, she posted on her FB page that she had posted a link to her personal website. I'm thinking, "Ah ha! Now I'll find out that you do go to the university" or I'll see bird pictures.

==Boy am I sorry I accepted her Friend Request. It turned out that she's a shell for something called fling.com . I'd tell you more, but I closed the link, and immediately unFriended her. The thing that really freaked me out was that fling.com had naked pictures of girls that absolutely looked like they were way the hell under 18 years old. I'm thinking about asking the local police department if they're interested in the details. I hear that police departments have people who go on-line, and pretend to be interested in child pornography.

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==Well, the good thing about closing my FaceBook account is that I'll have more time to blog. Nobody reads my blog. Just ask Uncle Bob, or the mailman's gynecologist.