"NOW FRIENDS"

Okay, so I haven't blogged here in awhile. Call it writer's block, call it preoccupied with too many other things (like Christmas and family and ham roll ups and goop), call it spending too much time on Facebook fending off the senseless drivel of left wingnuts hellbent on ruining this Great American Experiment. I probably missed out on a whole bunch of year-end material to satirize and poke fun at. I'm blaming the holidays.
I like Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Like all good holiday revelers and members of Congress, I simply avoided the proper exercising (exorcizing?) of this fertile, finely tuned PED, nicotine and alcohol enhanced brain.

Sue me....or just continue to ignore me.

But speaking of Facebook. Since joining it over a year ago, I have always been intrigued (mystified) by one sociological aspect of it. Whenever you locate an old or recent friend and make the ultimate cyberspace connection..... i.e. "friending" them, Facebook posts a short message on your profile that says something like..."Islander505 and Barack Obama are now friends".
(Stop chortling wingnuts..it COULD happen.......who knows....What's stopping me from sneaking into a State Dinner and dazzling Michelle with my ham roll ups? Or my newest recipe....Baked Napolitano...a tasty little hot air puffed, sugar glazed pastry that collapses when brought out of the oven....but works).

That short statement by Facebook always creates a temporary dilemma within my short attention span deficit....."NOW friends"???

Especially when I "friend" with folks I have known since..well..... LBJ murdered JFK, I Dreamed of Jeannie's navel, Nixon popularized plumber's butt cracks, a college roommate told me I wouldn't have the mental stability to handle LSD (huh? Good advice Mike, but..how do YOU spell dichotomy?), moved to Cleveland...twice, earned the nickname "The Tundra Thumb", figured out that Reagan's "1981 Tax Cut" was a fraud, and then spent 20+ years withdrawing from a 'til then life of decadence by fulfilling the role of spouse and parent.

So upon "friending" someone, and seeing the Facebook wedding bann (interesting and prescient combination of words, no?) pop up on my profile...I always ask myself (btw, I'm comfortable with the diagnosis that continually asking oneself the same question is the 3rd and final "Speed Limit Ahead" sign on the road to insanity) ....

....If we are "now friends", what the hell were we before Facebook?

But then I think to myself, "Self....it's your own fault for never putting the relationship you had with these people into words".
Even though that thought, and the apparent need for it, never crossed my mind before the Facebook phenomena.
So I'm not gonna worry about it, or give it serious thought, until V99.5 of the Facebook software comes out.

Perhaps by then, Facebook will provide some icons that offer "friend qualifiers" you can click on to categorize each "now friend"

In the meantime here's my (belated) Christmas/New Year's Gift to Facebook.
A list of "Now Friends" qualifying icons that they can (and should) link to the perplexing profile comment that comes up whenever folks friend up.

"Now Friends"... because..

• Just met, we'll see.
• Cut classes and got drunk together in college
• Don't really know (insert gender), but I kinda like their picture.
• We were conceived in the same sleazy motel on State Road 169 in (insert year).
• Had a fistfight with in High School, but shook hands afterwards.
• Has a lot of hot pictures of (insert gender) on their friends list, I enjoy lurking the pictures.
• Had sex with during a rainy, Tequila fogged night 27 years ago..we agreed to be friends then...so here we are again...hmmm, where's my Cuervo?.
• Writes funny comments on my other friend's profiles.
• Since we're related, I s'pose we have to be friends too.
• I really hate this prick, but I'm trying to hit triple figures on my friends list.
• His wife really liked my ham roll ups, and the Baked Napolitano worked for the Secret Service and the White House Party Police.