Facebook Friends List Upgrade

I decided to upgrade my Facebook Friends List. I have only about twenty folks on the list and every one of them is a ex-classmate from high school, some forty years ago. Just looking at my Facebook Friends list, if a person didn’t know any better, he’d swear I must have lived in a cave for the last several decades. If I saw a friends list with no neighbors, no co-workers, just long-ago classmates, that‘s what I‘d think too. Don’t get me wrong, Facebook friend and ex-classmate Bob Sayre is an entertaining guy, but c’mon. So anyhow, I made up my mind that I needed a few Facebook friends from the new millennium.

I decided I'd put a few celebrities on my friends list. Celebrities would give the list some panache. I figured I’d start out with Richard Gere. I chose Richard because he is about my age and he probably lives in Southern California somewhere. I’ve been in that area once or twice and I thought it would be nice if Richard would put me up for a night or two if I were in town. I mean, isn’t that what friends do? Then it occurred to me that if he were ever in Columbus he might want to save some money on motels by staying with me. A single occupant at the nearby Red Roof Inn is now around $50. And Richard hasn‘t had a megahit in a while. Anyway, though my condo is not overly spacious, I figured that it would be okay for Richard to stay over. I have one bed and a couch, and for a night or two I‘d be willing to relinquish the bed and take the couch. We would be friends, after all.

So after going through the pros and cons, I entered the name “Richard Gere” into the Facebook search engine. Well, I must have found fifty Richard Geres, all with his photo as the primary profile photo that is seen on the search list. Either Richard had a lot of Facebook accounts or there were a lot of Gere phonies out there. Worse, the first ten or so were not really personal Facebook pages but kind of “fan sites”. And rather than the standard “friend request” option, these sites had a “Like” button with a “thumbs up” icon. Well of course I didn’t like. You see, I was trying to offer my Facebook friendship.

I thought that the Facebook Richard Gere might be an anomaly so I entered the name George Clooney instead. I surmised that he would be almost as good as Richard Gere. My ancient computer took a few seconds to work and for that brief moment I had visions of George, Brad Pitt, and myself sitting front row at a Lakers game, Jack Nicholson seated not far away. But Clooney’s Facebook search results were very similar to the results I’d found for Richard Gere; some Facebook fan sites and a number of dubious George Clooney personal pages.

I figured maybe I was shooting too high. Maybe I ought to take the position that if Gere and Clooney want to be my Facebook friend, they can request the friendship on my Facebook page.

Anyway, slightly annoyed, I pushed my chair back from my desk and turned my eyes onto the PBS program on the TV in my computer room. There was Neil Tyson, the amiable host of Nova. He was eloquently describing the formation of Saturn’s rings. Then I thought, Crap, why not see if Tyson could be a Facebook friend? He's a noted scientist. That's almost as good as a Hollywood star.

Quickly I put in his name, Neil Tyson, into the Facebook search engine then waited as my old computer churned. I discovered that low and behold, Neil Tyson had an “official” Facebook webpage. Official, so I knew it was probably really his. Not only that, he referred to himself on the page as “I” and “me” rather than by name, as was the case with Clooney and Gere on their respective Facebook pages. Yeah, this was the guy to be added to my Facebook friend list, no doubt about it.

Then I saw where Neil Tyson already had almost 5,000 Facebook friends. I can’t say that I was too thrilled by the idea of being just one of 5,000. It also meant that Tyson was not especially discriminate or prudent in who he selected as a Facebook friend. But then I thought, heck, why not go ahead and click on the ADD AS FRIEND button. Why should I worry about Tyson not being particularly choosy when it comes to Facebook friends, after all, I’m living proof that I have about twenty ex-classmates who aren’t.

National Economy Analysis

I went to the bank today. I wanted to see if I could buy a certificate of deposit for my $9.23, a certificate of deposit that paid at least 15%. I found out that the cheapest certificate of deposit still costs more than $9.23. This is really a shame because when we as a nation face economic hard times, I'm effected too, despite the fact that I wear a lot of old clothes and eat mostly microwave food.

Though I'm not an expert at the nation's economy, I'm nevertheless occasionally asked, "Jim, how did America get into this economic predicament? Was it the politicians or simply Wall Street greed?"

"It goes back further than that," I explain. "Truth is, it's the Irish. When the Irish came into this country, that's when the trouble started."

I know that a lot of people blame politicians. Others hold Al Qaeda responsible. And still others blame the Tea Party. And there are a lot of folks who point an accusing finger at gays, (both open and closet variety). But personally, I blame the Irish.

My sister came to visit me the other day and we talked about this very subject. [For the sake of this post I will now declare that] my sister is a sociologist. Not only is she a sociologist, she attended The Ohio State University. So you can bet that she knows stuff. She has mentioned the Indians as being responsible for the nation's economic troubles. The Indians have apparently benefited from American outsourcing. I'm not sure which tribe of Indians. My sister wasn't being specific about that. She once mentioned something negative concerning the Apache, but that might be due to the fact that she has seen a number of old, John Wayne westerns, and she was once in a minor auto accident involving a Jeep Apache. So though she is an expert, her view might be bias.

A female co-worker of mine blames blue collar workers, hardhat guys in particular, for the bad economy. See, she's a good-looking babe and when she walks by a construction site, she gets a lot of whistles and catcalls. With all the whistling and so forth, she wonders how any construction gets completed, let alone on time and budget. Just to be fair, I don't think she blames gay hardhat workers, although they may whistle at good-looking guys. I wouldn't know about that. I'm neither a gay hardhat worker, or a good-looking guy.

Call me an optimist, but I do think the economy is just beginning to get better. One way you can tell when things are getting better is by the age of the person who delivers the newspaper. If the delivery person is a kid, that means any adult that might potentially run the paper route has a real, full-time job. Another words, when it comes to a sound American economy, the younger the delivery boy, the better.

And yet another way to determine the strength of the national economy is to check how often the ice cream truck goes down your street on a summer day. If it goes by often, that's a bad sign. That means he is not being stopped for business, and consequently he makes a lot of passes down the street.

Some people try to determine the economic situation by watching business and stock market analysts on TV. But I wouldn't pay any attention to them and all their fancy charts and graphs. Truth is, most of those analysts are simply counting the number of times the ice cream truck goes by. Or they're waiting at the studio door to see how old the newspaper delivery person is. And as for the rest of the analysts, well, they're Irish.