When I discovered Facebook for the first time, several years ago, I thought, “This is what my life has been missing: a way to share the trivial details of daily life with hundreds of people who are almost as mind-numbingly boring as me, and a way to find out whether the girls who turned me down in college have gotten fat.”

But now the honeymoon is over, and I, along with many of you, have awakened to the painful reality that Facebook wasn’t created simply to provide an outlet for my raging narcissism without all the hard work involved in blogging. All this time, Facebook has been whoring out the private details of my life to anyone with a buck. Hey, if I wanted that, I would be Kim Kardashian.

Faced with the possibility of millions of users going back to the ghetto of losers and skanks on MySpace, Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckberg, apologized and promised to simplify Facebook’s complicated privacy settings. We’ll appreciate those changes when we find out that our user profiles include a new “Medical History” section, and, unable to resist the lure of a new pull-down menu, we select “Hemorrhoids: Yes” and “Yeast Infection: Raging”.

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The interwebs are abuzz with speculation that the British royal family will announce the engagement of Prince William and his girlfriend, Kate, in June. (Link) Many people wonder why the Brits still have a royal family, since they are essentially just official, government-sponsored celebrities. They don’t do anything to earn their celebrity status. They don’t make movies, sing songs, or compete in Dancing with the Stars.

The Queen, who turns 158 this year, is the “head of state” of the UK. Unlike our head of state, the President, her only official power is room service. But that doesn’t mean she’s meaningless. In fact, she’s a lot like an important part of American civic life, our flag.

Like our flag, she is the symbol of her country, the summation of everything that makes the United Kingdom what it is. She is above politics, and serves as a reminder to her subjects that, regardless of their differences, they are one people. And also like our flag, it is generally considered a bad idea to hang her upside down, or set her on fire. It’s not a perfect analogy, of course. Unlike the American flag, for example, the Queen is not made in China.

Anyway, I offer my heartiest congratulations to the Prince and his future bride. I hope they have a happy life together, just like his parents. I also hope that some American TV channel can convince her to get knocked up with an abnormal number of babies and star in a reality TV show. They could call it … I don’t know … “William and Kate plus 8″?

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Christianity has done some bad things in its time. The Crusades. The Inquisition.

Now this …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0wpAJMFpJQ
http://www.theway.org/Current/Mar07/Mar07Hi.htm

(Sigh. First they got it removed from YouTube. Then they removed it from their own site. Maybe the world is a better place without it.)

… and this …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-NOZU2iPA8

I think God is crying right now.

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So my wife is going to see the Sex And The City movie tonight with a bunch of her girlfriends. Apparently women all across America are doing the same thing, and men all across America are breathing a collective sigh of relief that they aren’t being dragged down to the movie theater for Date Night, like they were for Pride and Prejudice.*

I’ve actually heard that there are some men out there who are planning on seeing it. Let me just say this: if you are (1) a dude, and (2) going to see Sex And The City, and (3) this decision is actually voluntary (ie., terrorists are not holding a gun to your head and/or you will not be getting sex from your spouse in exchange for your attendance) your manhood is hereby revoked. Please drop it off at the nearest ladies bathroom or scrapbook store. (You should also do this if you voted for David Archuletta at any point during the past season of American Idol.)

Ok, ok – I’ve never actually watched an episode of Sex And The City, but I don’t need to in order to know that it’s not exactly oriented towards the male mind. First of all, if guys had made a show for guys called Sex And The City, it would have been on much later at night and it would have been about strippers. And I would have gotten in trouble for knowing anything about it.

Some very basic research reveals that the show is, in fact, largely about shoes. And someone named Carrie, and her three friends, and all their dysfunctional relationships. They’re all really messed up, but they’re rich, glamorous, and sexy, too. So they’re just like normal middle-aged women, except for the rich, glamorous, and sexy part. Oh, and there’s this dude named Mr. Big. I think maybe he’s her pimp. I’m not sure. Not a single one of these characters has superpowers, carries a really big gun, or is a ninja, so why the hell anyone would want to watch the TV show, let alone the movie, is beyond me. Anyway, I just saved you ten bucks. You can thank me later.

* Ok, seriously, why couldn’t Pride and Prejudice have been a Girls Night Out instead of Chick Flick Date Night? I had to employ my trusty “beer belly” to get through it.

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I gotta give a plug to di.fm, an internet radio site which streams techno of various varieties free of charge. I love it.

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My new favorite web comic!

http://pbfcomics.com

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A friend of mine has a very cool … thing … on the web. I’m not sure how to describe it. Basically, it’s a labrinth of web pages linked together non-intuitively and non-linearly. Each page is a creative work of some kind and many of them contain one or more hidden links to other creative works in the labrinth. I’m not sure how else to describe it. Check it out. Link. It is, I believe, still in-progress.

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The lawyer. The boyfriend. The Bahamanian Immigration Minister. Zsa Zsa’s Husband. Osama Bin Ladin. Good lord – Was I the only person not having sex with Ms. Smith? Why didn’t anyone tell me?

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I can’t believe KT Tunstall wasn’t even nominated for “Best New Artist”. But when you consider that this is the category that brought us such musical geniuses as A Taste of Honey and Milli Vanilli, perhaps it was a compliment.

Pundits like to point out that we are a deeply divided nation, and they’re right. There’s us – people who like interesting, intelligent, creative and original music – and them – people who like Christina Aguilera. And it’s one of the great tragedies of democracy that we can’t round them up and shoot them for their appalling taste.

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Love to hear what other people think about this. Do public school teachers have a responsibility to not be crazy whack-jobs outside of the classroom?

Link

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