Facebook is Stupid

Facebook is Stupid -_-

I am so tired of this crap from Facebook.

Hitler's Jewish purge was not some sort of aberration, but a natural outgrowth of century after century of anti-Jewish bigotry, and this bigotry still exists. This is partially why I made a conscious decision to like and trust the Israeli girl at the mall and let her sell me those skin care products I couldn't really afford. Since Jews have been stereotyped by "Christians" as sleazy, cunning money-grubbers for so long, I chose to believe that she wasn't ripping me off and really would take me to the movies as promised. Someone told me a week later that she was probably long gone by now, so I went back to verify that she was still there, and she was, so my trust hasn't been shattered yet. Anyway... that isn't the worst of Facebook's stupidity.

It really disturbs me when pornographers make a big deal about having models as young as they're legally allowed to be. I get the impression that they would use 15 year olds in a heartbeat if they could. Anyway, trained orangutans could literally do a better job than this at policing Facebook's "Community Standards". They could be trained to recognize the shapes of the letters in certain words indicating red flags, which is obviously more than Facebook's staff is capable of. Whatever they're being paid is too much.

Norm

It's heartwarming to see the faith, goodness, etcetera of the old people at the old people place in spite of their deteriorating bodies and/or minds. One old man named Norm stands out in this regard as he joins us in singing the hymns, even though he can't stand up without swaying around like a bobblehead, his voice is so weak as to be barely audible most of the time, and he has great difficulty even turning the pages of the book. I like his attitude about life too. Last week someone told him "Have a good day" and he responded, "It's a good day when I wake up. If I wake up."

Having said that, I never, ever, ever want to be that old and frail myself, as it's probably a hundred times less fun to live through than to witness. I hope I die before then.

Janet

About three years ago I met this lady who I shall call "Janet" in an institute class and for whatever reason, she remembered me and always said hi from then on even though we never really talked or became close. This wouldn't have been a problem except that she was married and I was aware that I had in times past flirted with female friends without even realizing it, even when I wasn't actually interested, and I became super paranoid about that happening if I interacted with her too much, so I just felt super awkward every time and I think she thinks I'm "special" and she isn't really wrong. We never went beyond saying hi except for once when she was trying to use a computer terminal at the campus library and her baby was crying so I went over and made faces to calm her (the baby) down, and one time when she forgot to lock her front door so she asked me to go do it and let myself out the back since I lived close by. It took her like five minutes to ask because she kept oscillating between her worry about someone breaking into the house and her worry about inconveniencing me.

One time a year or two later my ward was gathered at the church building near my house to carpool to a home evening activity, and being Mormons, of course, they were still gathered there twenty minutes after we were supposed to have left. I got frustrated and bored and didn't want to socialize like everyone else was doing so I wandered away to the other side of the building. Across the street, Janet was out with her toddler and newer baby playing hopscotch and eating popcorn and, seeing that I was all alone with no family and no home evening, invited me to join them. So I played hopscotch for a minute, feeling awkward all the while, and then her husband appeared in the doorway. A look of murderous rage came over his face. He stormed out, down the driveway, toward the sidewalk, past me, and moved the baby a little further from the road, and then turned and went back into the house without saying a word. I decided it was a good time to go rejoin my ward.

Afterward I told myself that the look of murderous rage on his face must have been my imagination, driven by paranoia, because I hadn't been doing anything wrong and had never done anything wrong. I was just paranoid and everything was fine. But the next time I saw her she said, "Sorry my husband wasn't very nice. He thought I was flirting." Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because I saw them at Summerfest last night and accidentally made eye contact with him through some bushes as I walked past and slipped away into the crowd, and from what I could see through the bushes I felt like I should probably stay hidden. Predominantly, though, while I was scared the first time, this time I just felt like laughing. Maybe that makes me a bad person but, setting aside the fact that I've never done anything,  he must be the most insecure person in the world if he feels threatened by me.

The Mormon Section

Last week I mentioned Elder Glenn L. Pace's book "Safe Journey: An African Adventure" and his struggle to gain government approval for the temple in Ghana, and since it's such a good book I'm going to lift from it again. During this time period he also got church approval for the temple in Nigeria, albeit this was a much easier and less frustrating process. Church leadership hesitated to announce one because of the instability in the country. When he returned to Utah for General Conference in April 2000, they asked him about conditions and he responded:

"We just had riots in the north over the passing of Sharia law, and several hundred Christians were killed. In retaliation, several hundred Muslims were killed in the south, including many right in Aba where the temple site is located. In the delta region, where the oil fields are located, many hundreds of people have been killed. Whole villages have been burned from explosions caused by sabotage of oil lines. Oil executives are being kidnapped and held for ransom. In Lagos there have been serious riots in the streets. Vigilante groups are springing up all over the country - and they are recognized, condoned, and even encouraged by the police and military. In summary, things are better than they have been in thirty years." I just have always wanted to share that quote. More seriously he continued, "Brethren, if we wait for Nigeria to be stable before we build a temple, we might as well forget it. I feel we have to move forward and support the people. I understand your apprehension. However, if I remember right, there was a lot of instability in Nauvoo when we built that temple."

President Hinckley announced that temple at the end of conference a couple days later. The moral of this story, in case you didn't catch it, is that sometimes you just have to go ahead and do something and not wait to be ready for it because you never will be.

The Music Section

The choice paralysis described by Aziz Ansari in "Modern Romance" and mentioned here extends beyond marriage to several other aspects of life. For example, I have over three months' worth of music on the hard drive from my busted laptop, so when recently I was able to remove said hard drive and put it in an enclosure, I was faced with a real dilemma of which song to listen to first. (My life is horrible.) The winner ended up being "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" by Norah Jones, which was a free iTunes download in December 2012. There's a lot of legally free stuff available if you know where to look. The reason I accumulated so much music was that after the first time I had a laptop fry, and was without it for so long, I realized that was what I missed most of all. And as Aspies are prone to do with this or that, I developed an obsession with it. I became at least as fixated with accumulating music as with actually listening to it. I developed a mindset that I was moving toward a goal of "completeness" in my collection, which of course was nonsense given the sheer volume (pun intended) of music in the world.

Of course I was already aware that I needed to re-balance my priorities and not spend so much time accumulating more, but being without a laptop again helped me to accomplish that more quickly. Now, with over three months' worth of music suddenly available at once instead of gradually, the thrill of accumulation is there again and I don't feel compelled to keep doing it so much. Of course I still have the list of albums that I intend to get someday, and tracking down obscure and out of print things on the Internet is still an adventure, but I'm doing it over a longer timeframe and not devoting so much time to it all at once. Listening to music, on the other hand, is good but not inherently productive, so the idea is to write stuff while doing so (like right now, for example). What I like most of all is to shuffle all three months plus of music at the same time. Then I never know what will come up and it removes the problem of choice paralysis or bias. When I first heard the concept of a "playlist" after getting my first mp3 player about ten years ago, I thought it was weird. Why limit yourself instead of playing it all?

Now, continuing on with another alien invasion song, this one from UFO Phil, a strange individual "who has made a name for himself through appearances on national radio programs, television, films, and internet videos speaking on the subject of extraterrestrials and the paranormal. Whether Phil Hill is an actual believer in the paranormal or is engaging in a kind of performance art is the subject of some debate." (Wikipedia)

UFO Phil - Alien Jam