The Facebook Ex-Spouse Friending Dilemma (FESFD)

As anyone who uses (plays, performs, applies, traverses, browses, becomes addicted to) Facebook (also known as FB) knows, Facebook likes to play matchmaker. FB is fond of suggesting possible matches worthy of the august term Friend. I am using the initial cap F because we're not just talking friends, we're talking Friends, referring to the proper noun reserved for FB's own brand of kinship, closeness, or "I just accept Friend requests because I want to assemble a large stable of Friends to prove I'm both hip and popular."

Lately FB keeps suggesting I Friend (the English major in me wants to say befriend, or perhaps beFriend) my former spouse. After all, FB tells me, we have 26 Friends in common. (And 23 of those are our offspring! Those were busy years. HAHAHAHAHA!) I am not sure what to do. It does not keep me awake nights. But I'm just wondering. Plus, I wanted to blog about SOMETHING.

This Facebook Ex-Spouse Friending Dilemma (FESFD) poses some delicate challenges of protocol and etiquette, at least for some former spouses.

• Who makes the first move? In other words, who does the Friend requesting?
• Why?
• Is it wise?
• How do current spouses or partners feel about this?
• How do offspring (more warmly known as children or kids) feel about this?
• What if Former Spouse A (FSA) requests that Former Spouse B (FSB) be a Friend and the request gets ignored or is rejected?
• And is such "ignoral" or "rejection" neither an ignoring nor a rejection, but merely an act of prudence?
• Does aforesaid Friending invite FSA and FSB into realms of discourse and quotidian detail better left unshared?
• Has someone already blogged about this? (Probably).
• Is it important?
• Or trivial?
• Is Facebook important?
• Or is Facebook trivial?
• Or should the question be more Boolean?

Facebook Security Word Poetry, an addendum

All right.

I'm a Facebook newbie.

These security "passwords" are common for many sites, including here.

In Facebook it says:

"Enter both words below, separated by a space."

Has the definition of words been so broadened as to include any combination of letters, letters and numbers, and so on -- in a quasi-English syntactical fashion?

Or are all these "words" in the latest O.E.D. Supplement?

Facebook Security Word Poetry

condon hirth

roth 20

kookje Ali5

medan fourth

scofield netted

5 pxp sanely

since stiller

vagabond 39-77

Self-Tagellation

Dan Zak in The Washington Post of February 6, 2009 (today; it's today but someday someone will read this and it won't be today, though it will be the today of that day) writes amusingly about being tagged on Facebook with the virally popular "25 Random Things About Me." I'm not on Facebook. Should I be? I don't like being tagged. It seems silly. Sometimes. It makes me feel so, so, I don't know, like my personal space has been violated, like kids in sixth grade "tagging" me with cooties. But that's just me. Today people get tagged with unwanted cookies, instead of cooties, come to think of it. Maybe I'll be on Facebook before today, this today, is over. Anyway, I hereby tag myself. (I didn't even know I was into self-tagellation, but it's fitting for a blog that invites "solipsistic sophists.")

Here goes.

25 Random Things About Me

1. Last week I discovered I don't care that much for Bruce Springsteen, not anymore; though that can change, like anything else.

2. I have my doubts.

3. Crying comes easy.

4. For parts of 30 years I've had a recurring nightmare about lying about not drinking alcohol.

5. Right this minute, I am sitting in a coffeehouse, wearing only one sock, nothing else (won't say where -- the coffeehouse is, or the sock).

6. I am already tired of doing this.

7. I want to miscount on this list and see if anyone notices.

8. Thirty days in a chipaholic rehab center did not cure me of my potato chip addiction.

9. My pantyhouse is itching me.

10. I do not shower every day and don't mind at all.

11. I like aromatic soaps.

12. My deodorant is very expensive, from Crabtree & Evelyn.

13. When I was under 10 years old, I tried to call Willie Mays.

14. Sometimes I wish I were a priest.

15. Walking the dog alone is often my favorite part of the day.

16. I'm not ready to die, but maybe I am.

17. I've read very little of Soren Kierkegaard; I love the name.

18. I envy enormously people who can gracefully and seemingly effortlessly do anything physical, things like rollerskate or ice skate or dance or swim or play the piano.

19. Now I'm enjoying doing this.

20. I am still angry that Mr. Tunick hit me and sent me shocked and reeling to the floor in junior high.

21. I feel guilty (slightly) that I haven't sprinkled this list with references to my wife and children, but, hey, they should make their own lists!

22. I like the number 22, its palindromic endlessness.

23. I wonder if there is a heaven and hell; purgatory was always hard to accept; more so, limbo.

24. It was probably (almost certainly) the best thing to shuck my job a year ago, but bitterness sometimes sneaks in about how it went down.

25. When I was very little, I loved to rub my fingers along the silk border of the blankets, especially along the sewn nubs, hypnotically entrancing me.

Consider yourself tagged.