Just cause it ain’t rollin’ don’t make it furniture!

A DVD lately seen: Swing Vote, starring the Kevin Costner. Tom and I both liked it. The title of this post is my favorite line from this movie, screamed by Kevin Costner’s character at someone who was leaning on his truck. I also liked this, said by a boss speaking to someone who has just been elbowed out of a cushy spot by a colleague: “I feel your pain. Don’t make me call security.”

I also saw, and found very moving, American Teen, a documentary about high school students in Warsaw, Indiana.

Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn play a married couple living on the fringe of society in She’s So Lovely. Sean Penn’s performance as a man who loses his sanity after his wife is attacked by a neighbor is heartrending. After being institutionalized for ten years, he sets out to get his wife back. I almost wanted to see this a second time.

Tom and I also saw Death Race, with Jason Statham and a very favorable stunt person-to-actor ratio of about five to one. Tom DID see that a second time, but on his own.

Last weekend I went to have the first couple of my entire mouthful of crowns done, and then Tom and I had dinner at Terry and Nancy’s, out in the avenues, along with a few other guests. Nancy had scattered little candy hearts on the table for Valentine’s Day and served us a wonderful vegan lasagna and we had a very nice evening.

I’m a little worried about Facebook currently, and, in general, I’m worried that I might be diverging from the modern world even more than I had planned. Like, in a way I might not be able to recover from, even if desired.

I read just a few blogs, one of whose authors said lately she might put less energy into her blog in the future because she is having so much fun on Facebook. I can readily see the appeal of Facebook. In the couple of weeks I had an account there, I looked up my high school graduating class, and it was neat to bump into names of people I really liked back then. It is fun to read entertaining quotes from people you like and see photos and all of that.

But if those old friends and I had really, REALLY liked each other, wouldn’t we have stayed in touch? Or maybe we did really like each other when we were 16 or 25, but could it be that times changed and we drifted apart? I’m thinking that’s probably what happened.

Would it really be satisfying to have 200 “friends” on Facebook? If I felt like jumping off the bridge, could I call every one of those 200 “friends” and would they listen to my troubles and would they care?

Yes, I know I am being curmudgeonly, as usual, but I did feel genuinely bad about the Facebook thing, because I thought, “Great: now the two people who read my blog aren’t going to anymore, because they’ll be over on Facebook instead, and this blog I’ve enjoyed reading will have fewer or shorter posts because the author is over on Facebook instead."

I suppose it's technically possible to have 200 "friends" on Facebook and ALSO to know two or three people in real life who care whether you live or die.

Then there’s photography, which I used to enjoy very much, using a Nikon FG my father gave me years ago. That old camera broke again in the past couple of weeks, and I think I’m not going to get it fixed this time. Film photography is not good for the environment, and I can see it’s basically over. I was talking to someone who is studying photography in college, and he or she, I forget which, said they aren’t teaching anything but digital photography now.

I don’t have a digital camera, but I had been open to the idea of buying one, until I had some prints made from digital photos: they looked terrible! Now, I’m sure there’s some way of using a digital camera to produce a print that looks fantastic—my co-worker Emily does it all the time—but it probably costs more than I was thinking of spending, and, more to the point, I have no idea what that way is, I have no idea how to find out—given the overabundance of information online—and I’m too tired to try. However, now that I think about it, I guess it wouldn’t kill me to email Emily on Monday and ask her how she produces those gorgeous prints. That I can do.

But I can't figure out how to hear my mp3s in the kitchen and I don't have a cell phone, etc. I was talking to my friend Margaux on the phone tonight (we've been friends since we were 13) and she said something about an elderly relative whose life she feared had become smaller. That's what's happened to mine! But Margaux's relative is 86 years old and may therefore have come by it honestly. Frankly, the idea of being 86 makes me a little jealous at the moment.

The life my late grandmother lived looks ideal to me, but I don't think that kind of life is to be had anymore.

Last but not least, I have been part of an online group for about ten years which has about 350 members, I believe, but only 10 or 15 regular posters. Generally this is a very supportive, kind and friendly place, but a few weeks ago, someone posted something quite harsh and critical in response to something I’d said, which was a bit shocking, but all for the best, because it made me remember that you never really know who’s reading what you post online, and it also made me remember that the best thing of all is in-person friends, or at least on-telephone friends.

So I adjusted my settings for that group so I won’t get email for a time, while I think about whether to leave altogether, and I unjoined Facebook, and I have taken my name off this very blog; I’m sure it is cached in a million places, but it just feels a bit better this way right now, and I’m going to try to make a point of going where actual live people are, and seeing and calling up (i.e., employing the telephone, not having a séance) the actual live people I know more often, goodness bless them.