For all of you people who keep cutting and pasting silly status messages on Facebook, MySpace or other Social Networking sites attempting raise awareness about miscellaneous things which may or may or may not be serious, I submit the following original — by yours truly — for your consideration:

Please copy and paste this to your status if you know someone, or have been affected by someone, who knows someone or has been affected by someone. People who know someone or have been affected by someone affect the lives of many. There is still no known cure for knowing someone or affecting someone, except perhaps never having existed, but we can raise awareness!

     Now, all of you people who do not exist, please stop trying to f#$*ing add me on Facebook.  

     Thank you.  Drive through.

     Yesterday, three quarters of Microsoft’s MSN & Live services were up and down for around twelve hours.  There was no news about the incident.

     Tonight, Twitter has had intermittent connectivity, also with no news.

     The Truth Laid Bear, a well-past-its-expiry-date blog ranking site, has had numerous issues for some time with no apparent plans to fix anything:

Access denied for user 'nzbear_ttlb'@'63.247.140.96'
to database 'nzbear_repdb'

     The outage that seems to be causing the most blatant angst for users, however, has occurred on MySpace, where their Applications platform, MySpace Apps, has been down for two days.  While MySpace has left over two hundred million users unable to use the Applications platform with little explanation as to why, users have taken to posting bulletins with everything from conspiracy theories to all out rage against the ad-driven site.  

     The vast majority of MySpace applications are immensely simple, session-based games, most of which are based off of a much more simplified model of the archaic Solar Realms Elite-style BBS games of the early 1980’s.  However, the outrage at being denied the privilege to play these games is very real.  Some users have reported that a Lawsuit against MySpace has closed the applications.  Others have conjectured that it is due to rampant cheating on a points-for-cash system which doesn’t exist.  Some have found more sinister motives, claiming that MySpace’s creator, Tom Anderson, is pulling a coup d’etat against its media mogul owner, Rupert Murdoch.

     Still others blame the spirit of a deceased Tom Anderson as he posts bulletins from the grave, lame-duck President George W. Bush, Lucky the Dog, and an illegal alien named Urinous Hatte, who claims to be from an extra-solar planet in the vicinity of Beta Orionis.

     I would like to address these particular MySpace users directly:

     While MySpace upgrades their OpenSocial platform to v0.8, this leaves many of you with a great deal of free time.  However, this outage has a silver lining.  This is time that could better spent dealing with emotional trauma, finding girl/boyfriends, educating yourselves, raising your children correctly, or any number of other worthwhile objectives which may actually prove that you can do something for your own, or the greater, good.

     In other words:

     Please remove your heads from your asses and get out from in front of the damn computer.

     Thank you, drive through…

     Whenever I think, “I have no heart,” something always comes along to prove to me that I do.

My immediate thought is always to be skeptical of Internet Chain Letters and such, but with this one, I dug a little deeper and found that it’s totaly legitimate…

Why the one million friends challenge? I get asked the questions, Why 1 million friends? What will it achieve? on a regular basis. So I thought I would try to explain. James and I used to come onto myspace to listen to music and look at the videos just before he was diagnosed and added a few friends.

When James was diagnosed and we came to terms with the fact that his cancer and its treatment was going to take over our lives we needed a distraction and the “James and Daddy” page was born. I asked James if he thought we could get one hundred friends and then one thousand and the ten thousand. When we reached ten thousand friends I asked James to set the next target. James said ONE MILLION.

We will gain nothing financially from this page but have gained friendship from people around the world and we have shared our story with you all and in return shared your stories. This page has helped us as a family deal with the tough times and share the good times. Now as a father I feel I have to achieve this challenge as I made a vow to James the day after he was born that I would never let him down and I would only make him a promise if I could keep it.

So there you have it, the reason for the challenge and why I need you to help me get more friends. We have tried the celebrity route with minor success so all we can do is keep sending out the bulletins and searching out the profiles that have loads of friends and big hearts.

I mentioned a while back, I can’t have kids… Rather, not healthy ones, anyway… I have been using my vaginal dhea cream and I can say I found my peace with all of that a long time ago.
But then again, maybe that’s why stuff like this tears me up so bad… Like it did with Ambriel… Like it does with someone else even closer who went through a bout of it herself (I love you, baby girl, I miss you, and I’m proud of you).

There’s the futility factor, wishing I could do something to make it better, and I can’t…

And then, of course, I see their faces they’re smiling right through it most days.

That…

…is one of the few things that I glean hope from.

And I know damn well that despite everything else, those kids are toughter than I will ever be.

If you’ve got MySpace, be sure and add him as a friend.  Spread the word.  Make a donation.

http://www.myspace.com/bizwiz68

I have never been interested in meeting anybody in an online setting.  I crusied some of the sites and even checked out some of the adult type friend sites.  But, when it came right down to it.  I never met anyone because I’m too much of a chicken shit.

I mean you hear horror stories of people meeting in person and one or the other, or neither of them, is what they claimed they were.  Or look like that picture they sent you.  Visit SEO Blog on OUTK where they explain best methods of marketing.

Call me old fashioned, but when I was looking to meet somebody, I would rather it be over the cucumbers in the produce section of the local Piggly Wiggly, or maybe over a goofy “cooking for one” book at the library.

I joined MySpace last year to comment and cut up with my REAL LIFE FRIENDS.  I never accept “friend requests” from people who I have never met in MY REAL LIFE.  Nor do I ever randomly pour through page after page of people requesting them to be my friends.  No.  If I don’t know ya in real life, then you’ll never make it past the gate.

I know more than a few people who have met their significant other online (eHarmony, Match.com, MySpace…) and who have actually made it for a minute.  But I know of none who has made it for the long haul.  Why?

Well, in this day and age, it seems that those in the online dating community just shift around.  Maybe its because there are so many available folks out there just lookin for love in all the wrong places. 

It’s a meat market for reals.  But, it’s not like a meat market as a bar would be.  No.  Say you go to your favorite bar or club.  Yah, it’s a fashion show.  Yah, everybody is there hoping to meet someone unless they are there with someone.
But, at least you now when you are talking to them face to face, they aren’t sitting there browsing profiles of others while they are talking you up.

I don’t know.  I guess I was jaded, or tainted against this kind of crap.  I’m not a very trusting individual since a guy I was seeing in the last century was a total computer dork that (I found out later) was always looking at online personals and profiles. 

Now you’re prolly sitting there thinking, why is she going off on this lame ass tanget?  What the hell pulled her trigger today?

Well, friends, I’ll tell ya.  There’s a dumb-ass on AOL and yahoo who surfaces now and again thinking we’re the best of friends.  Before MySpace, he used to comb AOL profiles and email unsuspecting females.  I guess so he would have someone to talk to or whatever.  Anyway, I guess it was middle of last year, after he joined MySpace, he surfaced again, showing 198360876 (exaggerated for impact) friends, all of which are female.  Which proves my point.  Or maybe it doesn’t.  I’m sort of annoyed right now.

So, today on my little yahoo messenger thingy, I posted my status as “I’ll never paint again, swear to God!”    And I guess it piked his little curiousity button somehow.  So, he (out of the blue) decided to IM me…  Lord have mercy… 

The conversation went a little somethin like this:

Dork:  ok, I just gotta ask why won’t you ever paint again?

Me: Because I have no feeling left in my arms from painting over dark colors with white like I promised my landllord. lol

Dork:  see you should of called me you know thats whats i do for a living**** 

****NOTE:  Actually, I didn’t know that, but whatever

Me:  Nopie, didn’t know that.

Dork:  yes i told you when we first started talking i remodel houses for a living

Me:  How long ago was that though?  And how long has it been since we talked?  Prey tell, do you remember what I do or from what locale I hail?

Dork:  only couple days…lol just kiddon and in winter months

Me:  No, it was well before last summer.  And as I recall I wasn’t interested in talking to you because you find it to be wonderful to collect women friends online. 

Dork:  no it wasnt you must be thinking of that other man lol

Me:  I talk to no other men, other than the one I’m about to marry****

**** NOTE: That is not all together true.  I have REAL LIFE FRIENDS that are male and I certainly talk to them.

Dork:  see

Me:  See what?  You act like you know me.

Me:  He lives with me, I don’t talk to him online  (Also not completely true, he lives with me part time until we actually jump on the weddin train)

Dork:  well that’s cool

Then the dork went silent and didn’t bother me anymore.  I just get irritated that people have so little value for someone else’s time I suppose. 
Anyway, he is like every other person out there waiting to see some long lost person they added on to their buddy list, so they can feel important because they are chatting it up.

GET A LIFE!

We get these surveys and we all put in canned one liner answers. And honestly, how many times do you have to answer the same question about what color your underwear are or how many times in the last 3 weeks someone else has slept in your bed?

No, I’m not on a high horse. I am one of the most guilty individuals that I know. If I am bored at work or have nothing to do and there is a survey sitting there in the bulletins, it’s like a train wreck. I have to look. And then, before I know it, I am committing a crime against all that is right in the world and tap, tap, tapping my keyboard, filling in the answers.