My A to Z of Facebook - Part One

This Blog has been a long time coming and recent changes to Facebook mean that I have to get it out of my system so here goes.... WARNING! Some of this is funny but some of it may make you squirm!

A is for Affairs of The Heart and all the angst and fall out they cause. There is actually a website called Facebook Cheating.com . According to The Telegraph, 1 in 5 affairs are conducted through Facebook. Now, I'm not going to preach to you because I was one of those statistics. I am single and he was very married. An old school friend, yeah, I know, but this was a few years back. I really thought he was a decent person. But Keith (and you are very lucky I don't mention your full name on here) was a pathological liar, shoplifter and collector of sexual diseases. He was sleeping with several women and was obviously too stupid to understand the term 'safe sex' because he managed to give his long suffering wife genital warts. Luckily I managed to extricate myself from the situation before I was exposed to any nasties. His wife likes to comment on my Blog from time to time, putting the blame firmly at my door. Blame? and you still want him love? My only regret is losing a lovely girlfriend because of his lies. If you're going to do it, then don't! It really isn't worth the fall out.

B is for Bejewelled Blitz .This is one of the most addictive games known to man and has ruined my life, it is more addictive than crack. I can give it up (she says sniffing into her sleeve), I can beat it and I CAN remain top of the leaderboard no matter what it takes! Bejewelled is something you play with your friends. In fact, I am so friendly on it that I never share points and tie my son to the bed until he gives in and sends me at least 10 lots of points via his FB account. I have also been known to withold food until he agrees!

C is for CIA or Intelligence Agencies thereof; Yes it IS true. The CIA/FBI/GCHQ/POLIS.... are all reading your posts, in fact they think it's their birthday. They love Social Networking Sites and cannot believe their luck that all this information just dropped into their laps. I have a guy on my timeline who works in Afghanistan and regularly posts his flight details and locations. Hilarious! Bet he isn't going to get promoted anytime soon. Yes! Big Brother is watching you. Now behave :)

D is for Drunk When I was a few years younger I used to phone girlfriends/exes/whoever when I had, had far to much of the Pink stuff. Then I progressed to texting, that was terrific fun and now.... Hmmm, well I think we have left the one dimensional phone/text scenario behind in favour of Social Networking.

Step One - Have far too much of the wet stuff, get bored with the crap on Telly and Log on.
Step Two - Look at all your friends profiles in a Stalkerish manner and leave inappropriate comments on their photos.
Step Three - Enter Facebook Chat at 3 a.m and talk a large load of rubbish to people you hardly know.
Step Four - Pass out and wonder, upon waking, why you are nose down on your keyboard and have 57 notifications and 18 messages in your inbox!

If you are planning a heavy night then I strongly suggest that you unplug the 'pute and disable the router!

E is for Editing Always ensure that you understand a Facebook post/comment cannot be removed. Perhaps you have just commented and made a really bad typo such as "I thought your brother was a Wanker" (replace the W with a B). Lawksamighty, you are understandedly mortified. So, it's been 20 seconds since you posted and luck has it that you have spotted your horrendous typo. 'Phew, I'll just delete it and repost' you mutter to yourself. WRONG! Every single person with a smartphone has just read your comment, in all its glory and it's only the poor saps on a PC that are wondering what the joke is about! Think! before you press that magic Enter button!

F is for Facebook The Great God Facebook has become our new religion. Some statistics for you. Facebook has over 800 million users and apparently the average user has roughly 130 friends. It's that six degrees of separation thing that fascinates me. Imagine my feelings when I managed to track down some 30 odd school friends. For those that have lived in the same town all their lives, this may be no big deal. But for me, a Donut Child (forces brat) and then an Army wife, constantly on the move, it brought a whole new dimension to my life. We all attended so many schools that I never thought I would ever see any of my friends again. Facebook has given me an enormous amount of pleasure, a smidge of grief and I think I would cry if they closed down my FB account. My father, being ex-GCHQ, shudders at the mention of FB and refuses to pose for photos if he knows I am going to post them. He is, of course, right to be wary. Social Networking is in it's infancy and only time will tell whether the information we post on our walls/timelines will be available to prospective employers/insurance companies. Note to self - Think about what you post.

G is for Girlfriends Or for that matter Friends as I already did F above! You may think that you should count all those on your wall as friends but you (and I) are sadly wrong. Many of us have subdivisions of our friends which are as follows.

a) Stalker - a person who is always on FB, has their laptop constantly by their side and comments on everything. They love to 'copy and paste' irritating messages and threaten to break your legs if you do not follow suit! This person also likes to share their entire back catalogue of fave You Tube Videos with you. You are one click away from deleting them but a perverse fascination makes you continue.
b) Friends that share nothing, only pop up once in a blue mooon and you find yourself grinding your teeth and willing them to share a bit more so you can be nosy.
c) Family members, such as older children. Only kept for their ability to curb your wild side and ensure you keep in touch with Great Aunt Batty.
d) Interesting and semi famous people who you love to have on your wall as you need the street cred they provide.
e) And finally, those that make you smile, post interesting and thoughtful comments or you fancy the pants off them and.....FB comes full circle!

Just remember if you have more 'friends' than you can count on the fingers of one hand, you are horribly deluded!

Thats it for tonight. More to follow soon.

Questions...

I DO try to take people at face value but it becomes harder and harder as I get more and more sucked into the social networking sites that have become our new Religion. Ten years ago it was the Great God Supermarket. I remember coming off a night shift and so desperately hungry that I parked up outside a Supermarket to feed myself with hot coffee and toast in order that I could drive the 75 miles home safely. It was 9.30 am on a Sunday morning and I groaned at the amount of bored people sat in their cars, queuing to get in. Our Church today is of course Facebook and the acidic Twitter. More of that later.

Going back to face value. There are two points I need to make about 'Face value'. The first is, can we take anyone who is online at face value? Am I so naive that I still try to do so? Yeah, yeah, yeah...I got my fingers burned ONCE and ONCE only on a dating site. I lent a guy £100 and he buggered off. But I feel quite smug as I dated 17 guys in a year (for this Blog) and never once got 50K in debt. I am talking about a programme I watched last week where older women ...shall we just say jaded, lonely, messy looking older women...(sorry but frankly my Great Aunts keep themselves in better shape!!!!) plundered their life savings in order to finance someone they had never met. Oh and can I just say here (cattily) that the 22 year old girl that ran off with my ex got stung for 15K. Phew! nice to get that out of my system!

Anyway, I digress. I NEED to realise that I am actually naive and should not get sucked in to everyones life stories on FB/Twitter. Erm..FB is not too bad as you can usually weed out the nutters but as for Twitter...Feck knows. It seems that everyone has an alter ego/is pissed off with the world/does not understand the rules of life or is some loved up religious freak. So perhaps it is time for me to create an alter ego, to be a Dr Jekyll or Mr Hyde and to have stupid fun on Twitter. Hmmm...I'll have to think about it but honestly I am such a crap liar that my new Twitter account will have a huge red siren over it every time I tell a lie! Enough about our new Gods!

The other thing I wanted to say, quite gently, in case you think I am a man hating Amazon, is that HOW can I possibly understand men when one of my life long male friends has grabbed his testicles and dived into 'lurve' with a lady that has somehow managed to scoop his brains out? Well done babe...lets see you deal with the consequences! Why is a Higher Power up there laughing his/her bits off when they see us doing all these dances around each other?

Blimey toots...my brain has had enough for today. Answers on a Postcard Please!

Namaste

Muse x

Facebook...a scary premis?

Here I am at last, after a few days of hell with nasty toothache. It is still going on and I am just about ready to knock on the the local vets door and beg him to put me out of my misery. I was prescribed the wrong dose of antibiotics and so 5 days later there is no improvement and I have to admit I am struggling. I am trying not to be too grumpy but when you are in pain its so difficult to put a smile on your face. Oh well, I am looking forward to 'another' putting that smile back this weekend! Brings new meaning to the words 'take your mind off it'! Hee hee, just a naughty little Muse joke!

Those that know me are aware that I have a terrible facebook habit and really must seek professional help for it. However, when I broke my elbow, it became my lifeline and a way to keep in touch with all of those nearest and dearest to me. My love affair with FB is slowly fading, as I once again embrace the real world. I have discussed FB with a few people and they are divided into two camps. The first say it is a wonderful thing to do and love sending hearts, bunnies, kisses and other various yak to each other, whilst playing mindless addictive games. The second say they would never put their details on there as FB is used by the government as a way to snoop into peoples lives. Each to their own I guess.

I have one foot in each camp. Yeah, I love keeping in touch with my friends and play a word game called Pathwords because I can no longer write for long enough to do a daily crossword and need to keep my brain active. But if anyone dares to send me bunnies, teddies ..etc they are immediately ex-communicated, never to be seen again.

I have happily posted my details, and tend not to worry about it because HELLO, you are talking to a Donut child here! Yes the big 'G' probably do have a wander around FB but exactly what are people posting that could be of interest? Lets face it, you are in control of what you write and if you are stupid enough to include your bank details, complete with pin number, then on your head be it! If you have an email account or have ever shopped online or indeed use the Internet at all, you are exposing your personal life willingly and often without thought.

The only thing that sets my teeth on edge about FB, is that 'six degrees of separation' thing. I already know how small the world is because of my background. For instance, back in June I attended a mini school reunion in Dorset. A couple of old school friends from the frozen North came down for a holiday and booked a tiny cottage in the middle of the beautiful Dorset countryside. Nothing for miles,(not even a mobile signal...grrrr!) except for a picturesque pub and I travelled up to see them, booking a room at said pub. Regular readers of this blog, will know we went to school in Cyprus, on a military base. We got chatting to the landlord, only to find that he was Head Army Chef at the base whilst we were at school. Cue Twilight Zone music. Of all the pubs and all the villages we could have chosen....

I guess what I am trying to say is none of us usually sit down and think about how entwined our lives really are but with the explosion of the WWW the world has become one Lilliputian village. That doesn't sit very easily with me, in fact it disappoints me because that insistent travel bug in my blood still swims strong and as soon as The Git is old enough, I shall be off again. No pipe and slippers for me, thank you very much! Enough of my meandering thoughts, its these pills you know, I do feel very out of focus at the moment.

It has been a good but tiring day. I went to the hairdresser as usual, I go twice a week and let the juniors practice on me. My lovely hairdresser Jess is nearly 18 and learning to cut. Sitting still was never one of my strengths but with a bad tooth it was even more difficult. I was a good girl though, I sat and watched the concentration on Jess' face as she cut my hair beautifully and gently reminded her to breathe from time to time. So well done Jess, you are a little shining star. Then to the beauty salon for.....ahem, well what goes on in the salon is between a girl and her beautician. Oh and clothes shopping. I failed miserably and returned with two pairs of boots. Bad, bad Muse, tut, tut! Can't help it, shoe habit, must seek urgent help!

So I am sat here blogging when I really should be upstairs sorting out what to wear on my date tomorrow night. Right I had better leave you in peace and have a wander through my wardrobe.

Be Kind to yourself

Muse x