Facebook Fun for Everyone!
I like facebook more and more. It’s like a conversation in a large, crowded pub filled with people you are supposed to know but really don’t, and everybody’s talking at the same time and it’s all a garbled blur. The same mix of small talk, banalities and comments which actually are meant to convey information or express an original thought and which deserve a response.
The difference is that it’s actually intelligible. Perhaps it’s partly my age, and the old hearing is not as sharp as it used to be, but I really can’t understand about 90% of the conversations going on around me and even when people are talking directly to me I only get about 50%. I depend a lot on body language and spend a great deal of my time just smiling like an idiot, nodding and lifting my glass.
But on facebook every word comes through clear as a bell. Of course, a great deal of filtering is still necessary but it’s much easier to just read and move on than it is to hear and just walk away. I don’t feel as if I’m being at all rude by ignoring all of the Farmwars and Mafiaville stuff whereas in a physical pub I’d feel obliged to make a comment. I don’t need to dwell on the photo albums of people I don’t know (although sometimes I do – I’m a bit of a voyeur if you want to know the truth, I sometimes look through windows and get really turned on that I am seeing someone get undressed, until I realize that it’s a middle aged man and quickly avert my head and walk away, ashamed).
One thing that I kind of do like, which is weird, because I find it a very boring topic of conversation in person and print really adds nothing that I can figure out , is when people talk about what they are eating. What’s up with that?
www.gurukalehuru.com 
I notice all the ‘food’ and ‘cooking’ and ‘wedding cake’ shows on TV now…eating and cooking used to be the center of the home and family…around the table. Maybe we are getting back to that idea in some way, and maybe our taste buds need more stimulation as we age…new foods to try. I crave my ‘old favorite’ foods, but when I eat them they do not taste the same as I remembered, so maybe some new foods and spices would help. I am eating more Asian and Middle East foods and spices now…much healthier.
Willie – I must take you up on one point. You keep writing about being middle-aged, losing your hearing etc. It’s all in your head, man. You don’t have to THINK or FEEL “old,” whatever that means.
As Lenny the Scot once said to me during one of those endless stints of guard duty, “You’re only as old as the woman you feel”
Apart from that , I like your writing.