Facebook Hater

Someone sent me this:

Hey there you face­book-hater,

I’m forced to con­tact you though the bor­ing medi­um of gmail, since you are too cool to be on face­book. I guess all the hilar­i­ous com­ments, and inter­est­ing videos and pic­tures that I post are not rel­e­vant to you. That’s fine, I guess if I was a tru­ly inter­est­ing per­son I would know how to make my own per­son­al­ized blog. My per­son­al life’s tapes­try is worth­less in your eyes, because it has been woven with the low class, and eas­i­ly obtain­able fibers offered by face­book. If every­one can do it, then is must be crass.

But I did­n’t email you to lec­ture you on your elit­ist, seclu­sion­ary stance towards all the peo­ple who would like to be your friend and share the inter­est­ing tid-bits of their ever-chang­ing lives with you through an easy, fun, and con­ve­nient social net­work­ing device, which can only invade your pri­va­cy as much as you let it…

It’s fun­ny cause I bare­ly said any­thing to him about Facebook. As usu­al, I just explained that I don’t hate it, but don’t think it’s nec­es­sary for me when I have a per­son­al domain that gives me com­plete con­trol of my con­tent (and pri­va­cy). This is my polite answer. But he saw through all that and quite ele­gant­ly summed up how I feel about com­mu­ni­cat­ing through Facebook in the first para­graph of his e‑mail.

Character study

By some, he’d be con­sid­ered a catch, but only because he fol­lows the rit­u­als of rela­tion­ships (even if it is with­out an appre­ci­a­tion for them), and is exceed­ing­ly nor­mal, some­thing more and more uncom­mon when com­bined with the qual­i­ty of being sin­gle as we get old­er.

He has a good heart. This fact becomes par­tic­u­lar­ly clear by his fourth domes­tic beer, which he drinks because he can’t tell much of a dif­fer­ence between brands and it’s cheap­er than import­ed; though he’ll hap­pi­ly stock his fridge with Corona when his friends come over. The alco­hol makes him slop­py, but nev­er abu­sive or acer­bic.

Sitting just out­side the main­stream is his taste in music. It’s nei­ther eclec­tic, nor par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing. If one of his favourite bands hap­pened to have a sleep­er hit, he would­n’t care, or even notice.

There’s an even­ness in his deme­nour that makes you won­der whether he can tru­ly feel joy. If he tastes the same thing as you do when bit­ing into a piece of medi­um-rare steak, or if he real­ly appre­ci­ates her.

But he treats her well, and that’s all that mat­ters. Maybe not as well as you did, but it’s good enough to make her for­get.

When she’s with him, she knows what she was nev­er sure of with you. He’s uncom­plex, yet so unlike your­self that you can’t fig­ure out what it is about him.

Their hap­pi­ness is based on some­thing you were nev­er able to share with her. You’ll spend your whole life won­der­ing what that is, and he’ll nev­er know how lucky he is.

Happiness condensed

The weath­er’s been so hot late­ly that I’ve been eat­ing a tub of ice cream every three days. This is prob­a­bly why I’ve been try­ing to come up with new ways of con­sum­ing it. At one point, I added some choco­late wafer rolls, and real­ized you don’t even need a spoon because you can use the rolls to scoop up the ice cream.

It’s best to do this with a pre­mi­um brand like Häagen-Dazs, because they’re real­ly dense (less air is mixed in), so they stay firm for longer. That means you don’t have to eat the ice cream quick­ly before it melts…but if you lived alone and had no one to mind the slurp­ing, a wafer roll dou­bles as a straw too.

ice cream

 

This one is Caramel Cone Explosion, my favourite Häagen-Dazs flavour: caramel swirls and sug­ar cone cov­ered in Belgian milk choco­late with roast­ed almost pieces, in caramel ice cream.

I also recent­ly tried If I Had A Million Flavors by Ben & Jerry’s, which is described on the tub, “A Collision of Chocolate & Vanilla Ice Creams mixed with Chocolate-cov­ered tof­fee, White Chocolate Chunks, Peanut Butter Cups & Chocolate-Covered almonds”. Which is pure hedo­nism, real­ly.

I didn't come here for the tea

I came here to get out of the house. Room, actu­al­ly. I haven’t had a face-to-face con­ver­sa­tion with any­one in three days.

I kept going through my phone book. No one. Not a sin­gle per­son I want to talk to. No one with whom to be myself com­plete­ly, with whom to spend in com­pa­ny with­out con­ver­sa­tion. Hank told me a morn­ing of awk­ward­ness is far bet­ter than a night of lone­li­ness, but I beg to dif­fer. The morn­ings always seem to last much longer.

At the same time, this is when I want to dis­tract myself the most, and being with oth­er peo­ple is the most effec­tive way. I’m too busy being focused on spend­ing time with some­one else that I can for­get about myself.

In the car it’s all Kid Cudi, and even though I’ve always told myself I would­n’t dri­ve when I’m like this, I’d always want­ed to hear this album when I’m in this kind of mood. I was nev­er one to resist a night in cool sum­mer air, cruis­ing under the city lights to old haunts.

Waiting for my order affords me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to sur­rep­ti­tious­ly observe peo­ple and try to fig­ure out their roles each clique as they inter­act. Even though I’m alone, it’s com­fort enough to be among strangers.

The saddest fact in life is that our cats will die before us

When I was young and a cat food com­mer­cial came on where the kit­ties would nuz­zle their own­er after receiv­ing a por­tion of Brand X, I’d think to myself, “Those are prob­a­bly spe­cial cats, the way they use perky mod­els to por­tray every­day moms in clean­ing com­mer­cials. I won’t ever have a cat like that.”

But I was wrong.

She fol­lows me around the house, she sleeps under the blan­kets in the crook of my arm, and I can’t imag­ine my life with­out her.