“Got to pay your dues if you wanna play the blues, and you know it don’t come easy.” – George Harrison
“Meanwhile, back on my suicide farm, I’m reading about Snooki’s book deal.” – Suzy Soro, Comedian

This dispatch comes to you from a Starbucks parking lot, where I’m sitting in a very used car that’s leaking oil onto the cold pavement. I find myself in need of a thick wool sweater for outings like this, when I travel 10.5 miles to get free Wi-Fi and a cup of decent coffee. I’m also in need of a bottle of red wine (to take back to my hotel room), several trips to the dentist, and a reason not to jump off the tallest building I can find. Around here that would be Walmart, though, and I’d most likely survive the jump, which would prove not only anticlimactic but also rather pathetic.

Upon hearing the news that Simon & Schuster signed Snooki as an author, I felt the same kind of futile desperation that I did a decade ago when a roommate suddenly moved out and I had to take a low-paying temp assignment in a penile implant factory in order to cover my now-doubled rent. $7/hr. was not going to cut it but I figured it was better to ineffectually tread water than to drown altogether. I also figured it might make for a good story one day which is, perhaps regrettably, the basis for many decisions I’ve made in my life. I’m infinitely curious, even to my own detriment, and I couldn’t wait to see what awaited me on the penis assembly line.

My job, as it turned out, was to fill the implants with saline, pump them up until they were good and hard and then bend them back into softness before placing them in a sterile box. I dressed in surgical garb for this and five minutes of my ten-minute long breaks were spent getting in and out of uniform. The allure of my duties quickly wore off but I contented myself with the thought that as wretched and mind-numbing as the work was, I was contributing to the greater social good. 75 year-old men could now perform like studs because of something I did. FTM transgendered people would no longer have to get their penises out from a drawer. Porn stars like John Bobbitt wouldn’t have to worry about being inadequate on the job. And there were side-stories, like working beside a cagey woman who was a defendant in one of Minnesota’s most notorious daycare abuse cases. She claimed innocence but at the same time seemed pleased to be in the newspapers. Then there was the day we all got called to a sensitivity training meeting after a group of Hmong workers protested that the three sizes of implants were routinely called African, Caucasian, and Asian.

I’ve tried to keep my sense of humor although desperation has been a long-running theme in my life. I began praying to Martians and/or God and/or Mother Nature as a multi-theist toddler, begging one or all of them to take me home. I knew early on that I didn’t really belong to the strange group of humans that were my family. I didn’t care if I was sent to a fiery planet, became a chubby naked angel, or was reincarnated as a duck—I just wanted an out. The deities let me down though, so at 16 I hit the streets in search of the American Dream that had been pounded into my head by teachers, authors, and civil rights leaders. I found plenty of jobs (working at an ice cream shop, a burger joint, and a Silicon Valley stockroom), but I didn’t find inspiration, only a red-headed Cuban boy whose silence I mistook for depth. It turned out he just didn’t have much to say, even when he left me at 21 to raise two kids by myself.

I’ve lived in ghettos and suburbs. I’ve been a cocktail waitress, a radio sales person, a airplane parts greaser, a student, an advertising executive, a short-order cook, a factory worker, a bookkeeper, a copywriter, a counselor, and more. At last count, I’ve worked 42+ jobs—not because I love working, but because I’m a lousy employee. I was not meant to be a massage therapist, a media buyer, or a farmhand. I was meant to write stories. It’s the only talent I have, really, even it is highly subjective and often capricious, and not everything I write is well-polished or streamlined, including this rant. Then again,the kids in the car next to mine are screaming because their mom got them juice instead of Frappuccinos, and I’m worried that turning my engine on and off to stay warm is going to make the oil leak even more. Distractions, distractions, everywhere.

“Never give up,” the actress Ruth Gordon once said, “and never, under any circumstances, face the facts.” I’ve unwittingly spent a lifetime subscribing to Gordon’s philosophy if for no other reason than I have always preferred perpetual naïveté to the kind of angry cynicism that I feel when I’m forced to pay attention to the way the world actually works. My resilient sense of idealism has allowed me to keep putting one foot in front of the other even through the worst of circumstances. There are times, though, that such blinders simply do not work and this is one of those times.

Unlike Snooki, I have never aspired to be anything other than a writer. It’s not a a temporary infatuation or a quick way to cash in on fleeting celebrity status. I had my first two poems published in the school newspaper when I was 10. My mother set my newly minted works under a stew pot and threw them away after dinner. Still, I wasn’t discouraged. At 13, I had saved enough money from lawn cutting and babysitting to buy my first Smith Corona. I regurgitated the fucked-upness that was my childhood onto reams and reams of 20# bright white paper. I later wrote horrible rhyming poetry and stories that featured talking dogs, dead grandmas, and stilted dialogue. I did everything wrong for many, many years. Eventually, though, I became a “real” writer, trading in my wooden speech and the strings that were being pulled by authors I admired (and wanted to be like) for my own strong, authentic voice.

In 1996, I moved to a small town near the Canadian border. I lived in the cement basement of a restaurant, on a cot next to an ice machine. The owner of the restaurant was a 36-year-old man who looked like Wolfman Jack. His girlfriend was a 16 year old who spent hours studying for her GED at the lunch counter, wearing striped tube socks and cut-offs. There was a Pentecostal waitress there who had five different children by three different men, but who warned tattooed customers that they were going to hell for marring the temples of flesh that God gave them. One day, she cornered me in a freezer and threatened to kill me for cutting a pie the wrong way. The next night, she showed up in a purple mini skirt and black boots and asked me if I wanted to go dancing. It was a crazy place, filled with too many out-there characters and absolutely no peace, but then I found a tiny cabin on Lake Superior to call my own for a few months.

I thought I was a good enough writer by then to submit my work to literary publications. I spent a small fortune on subscriptions, printing, and postage. I had a file cabinet full of short stories that no one had ever read. I took them out, polished them off, and began submitting: 298 times in all. In the course of that year, I received three acceptance letters, all from journals so small that they weren’t even listed in the Writer’s Market. In total, I received $75 for my efforts.

I was so dispirited that I didn’t write for a year. The rejections weren’t the only factor that made me feel hopeless; it was the quality of work that was chosen over mine. I distinctly remember sending one of my best pieces off to Peregrine, the literary journal of Amherst College. The editor rejected it immediately. When I received the publication the next season, it was rife with horrible writing.  “Dis poem be bad, ‘dis poem be da bomb….”. “Petunia red, I love you…. let me roll over into your morning dew.” I was stunned.  Nothing I have ever written, not even when I was 16 and trying to be the next Maxine Hong Kingston—not even my most tongue-tied and bloody Gothic poetry—approached that level of awful. I was stunned and I was disgusted. I wanted to throw away everything I’d ever written and in a despondent fit, I did. I wiped my slate, and my file cabinet, clean.

Eventually, I got over my panicked sense of futility and began writing again. When I felt confident enough, I started a blog, writing about everything from politics to love. Encouraged by readers and friends, I even managed to swallow my trepidation and began submitting work to literary journals again. When nothing came of that—and after I got sidelined by a long lasting illness—I decided to go on a year long road trip. During the trip I realized that what I really needed to write was a memoir and a few novels. My reservoir of experiences was overflowing and I believed they would be better told in whole books rather than piecemeal, in short stories.

When I ended my trip I was poorer than usual, jobless, and car-less, but the friends I’d gathered across the U.S. were supportive, and I began writing the story of my journey in-between searching for jobs and an inexpensive place to live. I thought the story would be easy to tell, but it hasn’t been easy at all. There are parts that are so difficult to write that I have to get up twenty times and smoke twenty cigarettes in-between paragraphs. Author Nadine Gordimer nailed it when she said, “Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you’ve made sense of one small area.”  In the process of writing, I’ve had to try to make sense of some really painful, senseless things that ache to be told nonetheless.

I felt like I was making progress even if slow, but more than that I had the “this is it” feeling that only comes when I know I’m writing from the rawest, most deeply connected part of myself. That feeling was expansive enough to lead me to believe that I might have a shot with one of the major publishers.

Then came news of Snooki’s book deal with Simon & Schuster. It was like sticking a hot knife into old scar tissue, and dredging up every rejection letter I’ve ever received and all the palm-sweating, missed-it-by-a-hair, we-changed-our minds and wish-you-luck moments I’ve ever known. Snooki is an “author” who giddily admits to having read only two books in her short adult life. A “writer” whose entire life experience can be encapsulated in a single, shallow paragraph. Really, Simon & Schuster, I want to scream, really? Why not just shoot all actual writers point blank and be done with it? What’s next, a ghostwritten memoir from one of the Gosselin kids?

Yes, I am as bitter as I sound. The news of Snooki’s book deal made something in me want to curl up into a self-comforting ball and die. This is more painful than when my jaw was broken in juvenile hall, or spending most of my 20’s plagued with a head-to-toe skin disease caused by stress. It’s worse than when my millionaire boss gave me a $10 Christmas bonus when I was on the verge of homelessness, or when I found out that the one great love of my life didn’t love me at all. It’s worse than when my mother shaved my head for stealing a candy bar at six years old, and it’s even worse than when a well-known personality came to my blog to offer me a regular spot on her radio show and then never contacted me again. (I was sure my tide was going to turn on that opportunity and so were my readers. We were wrong).

The news of Snooki’s book deal frustrates me even more than when a comfortably situated stay-home housewife who dabbles in scrapbooking and blog writing tells me in superior tones that it shouldn’t matter—that she writes for the love of writing, because she needs to, because it’s a calling. Snooki’s book deal doesn’t matter to her because she doesn’t need to be published to make a living. She has a partner who doesn’t care what she dabbles in between soup and sex, as long as the soup is hot and the sex is willing.

I feel more deflated by the news that Snooki is now to be a published writer than when readers and friends tell me to hang in there, my day will come, my ship will come in, and that there’s a reason for everything under the sun, we just don’t know what it is yet. They mean well, but they have no idea how many closed doors, rejections, and broken dreams I’ve had to absorb over the last two decades.

And there is no reason for Snooki to have a book deal outside of the ugly turn the star-making machinery has taken—turning the basest, most talentless spectacles into hope-draining, logic-defying, space-sucking, how-low-can-we-go before the public screams foul celebrities. There’s no reason that Simon & Schuster signed Snooki (and I can only assume a ghostwriter) other than to hop a ride on the reality television train which, no matter how hideous or freakish, still manages to gather fans and steam.

That’s mortifyingly sad to me and probably thousands of other writers who’ve spent years collecting stories that we were sure would one day be retrieved from the slush pile and read by someone who actually likes to read and who might be excited by the prospect of finding new literary talent, instead of just waiting like a scavenger to throw lipstick on the latest pig to come out of the celebrity barn.

“Write what you know.”
“In order to write about life, you have to have lived.”
“Writers are not born, they are created through experience.”

Everything I’ve ever been led to believe about writing and publishing has been corrupted by Simon & Schuster’s book deal with Snooki. I now find myself in need of a warm sweater, some hope, and a cabin in the middle of nowhere where I might be able to stop thinking about jumping off of a cliff long enough to repair my threadbare blinders.

I also need my car to last through 2011, and a sense of redemption—or at least the kind of apathetic acceptance that will somehow make it okay that even my best stories may never find their way to a book that’s not self-published. That, instead, they will be left to the archives of a blog that a handful of kind people read and just as quickly forget. A blog is not a book after all—it does not get dog-eared and taken from the shelf to be read again on a rainy night. And the internet is not Barnes & Noble. In cyberspace everything is free and everyone is a writer. Including me. It’s just not the kind of writer I ever dreamed of being.

A 23 year old with big hair, a spray-on tan, and no discernible history of ever having to actually work for the riches she’s received will be signing books while I’m rifling my car for change to buy my next cup of coffee. If dreams could be stolen, Simon & Schuster would be guiltier than Snooki could ever be. They’ve shamelessly contributed another piece of shit to the cultural cesspool that places even the most perverse kind of fame over talent and experience.

The only fitting punishment would be if no one bought Snooki’s book, but given the popularity of reality TV, with its blight of spoiled kids, teen moms, and rich housewives I’m sure Snooki’s novel will do far better than it should in any rational world, although perhaps not as well as the book Lisa Vanderpump’s Pomeranian is sure to write one day soon.

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After Michael Jackson died, all the usual suspects came out of the woodwork to inflame, speculate, accuse, defend, and memorialize.  Media vultures like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Gloria Allred took their well-worn places, along with ex-attorneys, autopsy specialists, and professional pundits. Hundreds of thousands of Jackson’s fans filled the internet with glowing praise and sad goodbyes.  A handful of people questioned the lofty praise being heaped upon a man based almost wholly on his entertainment value rather than the whole of his character, which was, at best disturbing.

At my neighborhood coffee shop, the young barista was crying as she wrote a Michael Jackson trivia question on the chalkboard.  She was upset that other people were not sharing her sense of loss.  “He wasn’t a child molester,” she said to me vehemently. “All those people, they just lied to get money. He was found innocent.”  Curious, I asked her how she would feel if a man in her neighborhood regularly invited pubescent boys to sleep in his bedroom — would she give the same benefit of the doubt to him?

She defended Jackson by citing his lost childhood, his purportedly abusive father, his inability to escape the chokehold of fame and its attending entourage of shady people.  My question wasn’t answered, but the implication was obvious — Michael Jackson wasn’t just a man, but an icon. A disfigured Peter Pan whose existence was warped in pain and wrapped in love.  Someone  so ethereal that he couldn’t possibly be expected to be bound by earthly rules.

I’ve known many adult survivors of childhood abuse, and even extreme poverty, who didn’t suffer the chokehold of fame, but rather the crush of invisibility.  Their lives as children, coming home to molesters and abusers, or rundown apartments with empty cupboards and absent parents, was surreal.  They watched the world as it existed outside their immediate boundaries, and couldn’t grasp the reasons for the disparity or the divide. They felt inferior, ashamed, and largely disconnected.

Most survivors entered adulthood with striking disadvantages, and far fewer resources than average, leaving them to hardscrabble their way through college or the workforce, expanding their sense of being set-apart. The gritty details of their childhoods were not memories they could casually share as others did. Instead of their feeling of  “difference” being lessened as an adult, it was heightened by the stories told by peers.  Happy tales of close families, holiday dinners, camping trips, and other fond memories can evoke a range of responses in those who were abused or neglected as children, but most often they hit a tender spot. . . an aching space left behind by the child whose prayers and wishes went unanswered, but who never stopped hoping.

Yet, unlike Michael, most survivors of childhood abuse and neglect could not build Neverland-like sanctuaries in an attempt to relive their childhoods, or to assuage the growing pains of adulthood. Some survivors, like Michael, had a difficult time being “normal” and were ostracized or labeled as freaks, adding more trauma to an already challenging life. Yet there were no walls they could hide behind — no team or staff they could call upon for protection — and most of all, there were no acceptable excuses.

Get over it, get on with it, leave the past behind, think positive, it’s not what others do to you it’s how you choose to feel about it, lift yourself up, be strong, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. . .

There are thousands of bromides spoken in the direction of everyday survivors, but there’s very little real interest or understanding shown in their lives, their struggles, or their sense of outsidedness.  The few stories told about their otherworldly existences are those that have big, splashy, feel-good endings.

Success-against-all-odds stories are popular, but in reality they are rare. Unfortunately, the pervasive messages in such stories leaves society with less understanding of lives on the periphery, not more.  And, of course, more bromides follow — if you want something bad enough it will be yours, if you try hard enough you will succeed, no one but you can stand in the way of your dreams.

The actual successes of most adult survivors tend to be much quieter, far less grand, more challenging, and many times more excruciating than the stories or the aphorisms tell.

Talent, charisma, opportunity, education, circumstances, looks, connections, resources, personality, geography — these are just a few of the factors that can effect any person’s success. Adult survivors often start at a deficit in a few different categories, and it can take years to catch up. For instance, I saw a young woman the other day, about 19, who had terrible teeth. The damage was so pervasive that it could only be attributed to years of childhood neglect.  I had a flashback to one boss of mine turning an otherwise qualified candidate away because of her mangled smile. He said, “if she can’t take care of her teeth, how can I expect her to take care of my business?”  I could only wonder about the number of social and employment opportunities this young woman would miss, and the vicious cycle she might face — the inability to get a higher paying job due to her appearance, leading to not being able to afford the dental work she needs to look more presentable.

Many such cycles exist, especially in poverty. The poor pay more for everything from their power deposits, to phones, to the car tires they have to put on buy here-pay here credit. A minor crisis, such as a broken arm or blown transmission, can set off a chain of events with months-long, even years-long, consequences.

I understand having sympathy for Michael Jackson –  not because he was an entertainer, but because he was a human being who was obviously troubled and in need of help he never received.  I believe his story speaks to so many things that should be more vigorously questioned than they are. Should public figures, especially when they are  minors, have the same right as non-public others to a reasonable amount of personal space — should California’s proposed “buffer zone” law be adopted nationally? Should sexual molestation cases involving children be allowed to be settled privately? How much non-material privilege should wealth be able to buy? Should parents of non-biological test-tube and surrogate babies be screened as adoptive parents are?

On a more personal level, what is to be said about parents who knowingly let their children sleep in the same room as an adult male because he was famous? What about America’s seemingly incessant hunger for sensational (and often untrue) tabloid stories?

Why is it that so many in society will extend empathy to the famous that they wouldn’t extend to others? Why do we so often scramble to make excuses or provide justification for the bad acts of celebrities when we wouldn’t do the same for our neighbors?

Michael Jackson will remain an icon, likely for decades after his death, just as Elvis Presley did. His albums are now topping the Billboard charts again, and his music and his style of dance will live on in many tributes, to be revered and copied by at least another generation.  He was, without question, an extraordinary talent.

My question is, how extraordinary are we as a society?  And if we’re not as outstanding as we know we should be — if we are not seeking to give our best thoughts, empathy, and support to every deserving human being, regardless of their wealth or fame — then shouldn’t we try a little harder?

This article is also on the Huffington Post for those who would like to comment.

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As I was gathering materials and enough righteous indignation to bring you another WTF Friday, a light bulb went off.  Surely, I thought, there’s a job out there for me reporting nothing but meaningless trivia.  Plenty of  people seem to be making their livelihoods this way, and I’m sure I could write a compelling two paragraphs about Angelina taking her daughters to an art store.  In fact, I could probably cover that, plus Pamela Anderson’s naked ass, and Lindsay Lohan’s consumption of a Big Mac before noon — which would leave me plenty of time to write about something meaningful — like how a sleazy gossip site like TMZ managed to get a picture of Rihanna’s battered face from the files of the LAPD.   Or the sense of entitlement that goes along with deciding to  re-victimize a woman, and make a few bucks by exploiting her pain.  (No link provided, because I think it’s disgusting, and that a couple of people need to lose their j-o-bee’s).

This edition of WTF Friday doesn’t aim to ask any deep questions, though. Taking the lead from some big, popular publications, we are instead going to ponder the inane and irrelevant with all the lightheartedness we can muster in a world where puffed-up provocateurs like Rush Limbaugh make more in a month than many of us will earn in a lifetime.

Oh yes, I know, my kindred American dreamers.   It’s all about working hard, keeping our noses clean, and paying the bills.  The working-class ethos of my ragtag childhood are ringing in my ears at this very moment.  There’s no such thing as cheap Oxycontin, a free lunch, or a free ride.  People with lots of money work really really hard and make wise decisions.  Just ask newly-minted millionaire Dustin Dibble, age 25.

Dibble had to work (the bottle) really hard in 2006 in order to get drunk enough to fall into the path of an oncoming subway train.  He lost part of one leg, but was so inebriated that he doesn’t even remember falling.  A New York jury recently awarded Dibble 2.3 million dollars after his attorney convinced the jury that the conductor was 65% at fault for not stopping in time.  Dibble stumbled onto the track when the train was about 180 feet away.

Elaine Hess of Florida also recently raked in the big bucks — $8 million of them — because her chain-smoking husband died in 1997 after a forty year habit.   8000 other Floridians are standing in the same lawsuit line, waiting for their slice of a $145B class action award the State won from big tobacco several years ago.  Never mind that these billions could have been used to fund actual health care costs, cessation programs for smokers, and prevention programs — all of which were originally part of several State’s cases against big tobacco.   Instead, let’s make a few millionaires, buy some golf carts, hire a dogcatcher, build a museum… because.  Well, didn’t we just talk about shit garden economics, and the vegetables it grows?

The question on everyone’s mind though should be What Really DID happen to Anna Winthour’s Thumb? If you don’t know who Anna Winthour is, then we’re pretty much on the same page.   I didn’t know either, but my fashion is pretty much limited to tatty sweaters and faded jeans.  In the world out THERE, where the super-riche and fashionable people live, Winthour is the editor of that thick pile of ads otherwise known as Vogue.  The mystery in the fashion world this week wasn’t why women can no longer find jeans without lycra in them, or why Vera Wang designed such hideous clothes for Kohl’s, it was why Winthour was wearing a Band-Aid on her thumb.  This incredibly important story is complete with a slide show, and the relieving news that Winthour miraculously healed — even if the reporter’s emails to Vogue did go mysteriously unanswered.

It might also behoove you to know that “Hillary Clinton’s Glasses Make Rare Appearance in Seoul”.  And yes, thank God, there’s another slideshow.

My point is — we seem to have missed the gravy train, people.  As far as I know, there is not one paid reporter of meaningless news, or multi-million dollar lawsuit winner among us.  WTF? I think some of us may have taken that whole work-hard-keep-your-nose-clean-American-dream thing a little too seriously.

So how was YOUR week?  Any WTF’s you’d like to unload?

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In the last couple of days, I’ve read more negative rants about Facebook’s 25 Random Things About Me meme than I’ve read actual lists of 25 things. Writers from the New York Times and Time Magazine jumped on the anti-list bandwagon, as did writers like Tod Goldberg, who spared no vitriol in his version of the meme, 25 Random Things I Hate About Fucktards On Facebook I Don’t Know In The Least But Who, Nonetheless, Are My Friends.   Judging by the comments on Goldberg’s site, and the number of anti-25 Things diatribes that are now being posted on Facebook, it would seem that many people agree:  List writers are fucktards.  Or, as the New York Times more dramatically stated, “A chain-letter-cum-literary exercise called ’25 Random Things About Me’  is threatening to consume what little remaining free time and privacy we have.”

Apparently, some people take their social media a little too seriously, likening it to an unpleasant necessity, like watching American Idol or taking out the trash.  They seem to forget that things like Facebook are voluntary and filled with choices — like who you choose to include as friends, and whose notes you choose to read.   It’s not as if 25 Things lists pop up out of cyber-space and grab you in a choke hold until you’re forced to know who likes whitey-tighties and who likes to dress in drag as Madeline Albright on Friday nights.   No, in order to read those personal tidbits, readers have to click on a link.

I’m not fond of memes, but I don’t fear that they’re going to “consume” my private life or enslave my being. I think it’s ridiculous that the subject of social media irritants even makes the news in major publications.  Then again, I also think it’s weird that photographers fall all over each other to snap Donatella Versace’s bikini-clad body or Britney’s every gas station outing. I think it’s so freaky that I don’t buy those rags — but I totally admit to being a supermarket aisle voyeur.  And people who take issue with Facebook’s 25 Things should admit that the only reason they’re irritated with the lists is not because they exist, but because they couldn’t resist the urge to read them.

Maybe they felt ripped off when they learned that some of their internet friends were boring, un-gifted, pathetic, or perverse.  Maybe, like Tod Goldberg, they were surprised to learn that the people who liked them, and sent them friendship requests, weren’t necessarily the smartest or brightest people on the internet.

“I hate that sometimes I read your updates and think, Man, if this person is a fan of mine, I need to stop writing books. Because apparently only complete fucktards read my books.” – Tod Goldberg

It seems like the quest for internet popularity often works against common sense. The ability to have thousands of “friends” on Facebook (or followers on Twitter) gives the illusion of interest, often without any interest at all, or at least not the kind that is mutual.  Public figures like Goldberg may use Facebook or Twitter as a way to keep fans in the loop, but more commonly, social sites are just that — social.  People generally join to communicate, share their thoughts and work, and learn about others with similar interests.   Others, of course, join hoping to cross-sell their business or blogs by gathering as many internet friends or followers as they can, wanting nothing more than their links to be spread by Facebook sharing, or Twitter “re-tweets”.  These are the people that tend to complain the most.  They have no interest in the lives or projects of others, but will send out and accept droves of friendship requests in order to bolster that bottom line number that indicates popularity.

It’s amusing to me that the list writers have been called narcissistic or self-obsessed for sharing some odd facts of their lives in a voluntary forum.  It would seem to me that the most narcissistic people aren’t those who wrote the lists, but those who damned them.  It reminds me of the Marlon Brando quote — “An actor’s a guy who, if you ain’t talking about him, ain’t listening.”   So in defense of the list writers who wrote their 25 Things in the spirit of sharing or friendship, I offer my list of Five Reminders for Snarky, Pompous, and Overzealous Facebook Users:

1.  Facebook is voluntary. I think that bears repeating.
2.  You don’t have to friend everyone who asks.
3.  You can de-friend anyone who bores, annoys, or doesn’t interest you.
4.  If you only want a fan page, get one.
5.  If you don’t want to read something, don’t click the link.

And if you ever really feel that Facebook is “threatening to consume what little remaining free time and privacy” you have, it might be time to shut off the computer and write a list of 25 reasons you’ve gotten totally ridiculous.

This article also appears on the Huffington Post.

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INTRODUCTION

We live in a world of instant everything. Every human situation, it seems, comes attached with cliches, platitudes, bromides, stereotypes and parodies. There is, conceivably, a box to place every person in, and a label to slap them with. There are also socially created barriers that inform perception, determine response, and decide opportunity. As society evolves, so do these barriers.

In the 1970′s, for instance, it was not unusual for job applicants to lack college degrees. Today, four year degrees are required for almost every corporate position, including those that are considered entry-level.

Throughout history, but even more apparent in today’s political climate, the have-nots have born the brunt of social stereotypes, bootstrap philosophies, and feel-good bromides. They’ve been romanticized in songs and novels, damned by social critics, and sacrificed at the altars of law and politics.

The pride and strength of the working poor is legendary — their clothes are old, but never dirty*, their love for each other overcomes all, and they’re only poor if they choose to be* — because it’s love, and not money after all, that makes a person truly rich. They bear drudgery and ridicule with hearty stamina, and sing and dance their way through meager lives filled with hardship, always hoping, always praying, and never losing sight of what’s really important.

At the same time, there’s something wrong with those people — something inherently flawed about them, like their character, their ambition, or their intelligence. It can’t be about any of the “isms” because, as we’ve all come to learn through the example of the rare exception, the -ism’s don’t really exist. After all, if Loretta Lynn can work her way out of a coal mining town in Kentucky, and Oprah Winfrey can become a billionaire, then anyone can. It’s just a matter of really wanting to achieve, and working hard enough to find success. And since there’s no such thing as luck, unless you’re talking about the kind people make for themselves, there are no logical reasons for failure, only excuses.

Last night, engaged in a conversation with a new friend, I had cause to revisit some of my darkest days as a young single parent. My husband had managed to get a divorce from another state, with the Navy’s help no less, stating that he had no children. He left while I was pregnant and had a one year old daughter. His legal maneuver left him off the hook for child support but still gave him the legal rights of a father. There was no legal recourse for me since at the time my state, Nevada, did not cross jurisdictions. It took twelve years to find even the minor relief of terminating his rights. He never paid child support, and never saw or expressed interest in seeing the children.

I worked two jobs, while struggling to pay daycare and rent. One job wouldn’t cover both, much less buy groceries, and I was evicted twice, and had my power shut off several times. One of the lowest points I remember was a cold day in October, when I washed my cocktail waitress uniform out in a dark bathroom, with cold water, because I had no electricity. No heat, either, so the babies were bundled in snowsuits and covered with blankets. We had no food in the house to speak of, and when I woke up to go to work, my uniform was still wet. I had to hop a bus to daycare, then to a casino where a poker player fried my leg and my last pair of nylons with the tip of his cigar. I broke down crying, and was promptly fired.

In those dark days, hope was tinged with desperation and need, and I drove myself past exhaustion, while at the same time trying to be the kind of mother I always wanted. One who was essentially happy, loving, and present. It took years, an incredible amount of energy, and living through multiple traumas to make a life that wasn’t desperate, or teetering on the brink of disaster. It wasn’t even a middle class life — there was no home in the suburbs, 401K, or college fund — but it was a life that covered the essentials.

I know poverty because I’ve lived through its varied realities, from the grumbling hunger to the bone-chilling coldness; from the pain of infections I couldn’t afford antibiotics for, to being robbed because I lived in a bad neighborhood and was an easy target. I’ve suffered from the policies and punitive measures that steal hope, time, and money from those who can least afford to lose anything.

I know bootstraps and bromides. The romanticizing of poverty, and the damnation of the poor. In this series, we’ll discuss economic realities and policies, as well as the emotional cost of being poor in America, the richest country in the world.

Excerpted from songs:
*Stevie Wonder, Livin’ for the City
*Dolly Parton, Coat of Many Colors

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I recently had cause to remember The Year that Blew My Mind. It wasn’t mind-blowing in a good way – the oyster of the world didn’t open up and reveal any grand pearls of wisdom – instead, my gray matter was challenged to find reason for the unreasonable, and causes for the inexcusable. The resulting implosion left my mind scattered across a parallel universe, in which people made no sense, and reality could shape-shift like Play-Doh. In that world, people could mold their own blobs of facts and opinions without any regard for the actual truth or evidence of a thing. They could believe that Elvis is still alive, the Holocaust never happened, and that George W. Bush was a great President.

One of the blobs I recall came from a philosophy class, in the form of a particularly stubborn student who sought support for his shapeshifting opinion. “Reality is all just what we believe,” he said. “If I didn’t believe this Pepsi can existed, then it wouldn’t exist.” No matter how others argued that the Pepsi can was a material fact that existed independently of his thoughts – that it would exist with or without his belief in it – the student persisted in a type of egotistical thinking that left him in charge not only of objects in his own path, but that gave him the God-like ability to change matter into non-matter.

Outside of that class, I had never run across people who were prone to believe that a Pepsi can – or any objective fact – couldn’t really exist without their permission. They may have had differentiating opinions and beliefs, but they were based on some part of reality, even if cherry-picked to meet a personal need, belief, or preference.

For instance, I once had a neighbor who was enthralled with Tammy Faye Baker. For reasons that escaped me, he just adored the heavily made-up Queen of PTL and religious scandal. When I brought up issues like 24K gold bathrooms, “seeds of faith”, and vulnerable, workaday investors, he didn’t deny the facts – he simply hand-picked which ones were more important to him. She was funny, and charismatic, and he thought she had paid enough for her crimes. He chose beliefs that best met his personal concept.

And we all do that to some extent, particularly for people we love or admire, or even hate. We often magnify either the good or the bad, until the good is shined to a heroic luster, or the bad is blown up to villainous infamy. Reams of poetry are written for new lovers, who are coddled in the glow of novelty, while scathing diatribes are written about former lovers, who became stale, hurtful, or disappointing in some way.

In the world of shape-shifting reality though, Tammy Faye Baker might be Mother Theresa in same-sex drag. Maybe those tears she shed were really the sweat of Jesus and his twelve drag afficionados.

Lovers, past or present, may be wiped from existence with the stroke of a new memory. Maybe that drunken one night stand didn’t really happen. Maybe people just woke up naked together because they were recreating Rodan’s The Kiss for artistic reasons when they were suddenly felled by the sleeping disease African trypanosomiasis. Maybe, too, the lover in question wasn’t really a human being, but a sex-starved ghost like the one who visited Anna Nicole.

After living through The Year that Blew My Mind, I gathered up my gray matter to ask a singular question about the shapeshifters: Why? The singular answer that came back to me was Motive.

As complex creatures, we are connected to each other not only by DNA, but by story, opinion, and belief. We lack no opportunities to hand-pick facts and beliefs that best fit our individual paradigms. We can overlook bad traits in those we love because their love makes us feel great, and feeling great is more important than finding fault. When the bloom falls off the rose, and love lessens, then the bad thing we once ignored suddenly overwhelms everything else. The wet towels left on the floor become a symbol of disrespect – the forgotten anniversary becomes evidence that he or she never cared in the first place. Opportunities to connect or disconnect abound, and are most often reasonable, even if often exaggerated. Wet towels and forgotten anniversaries are annoying, and can be symptomatic of a larger problem.

The question in the shape-shifting world, though, is why people seek to change material fact or create whole new matter altogether. The answers are as varied as the motives.

Recently, I heard a story about two friends who had a private conversation. One of those friends then went and shared that conversation with another friend. That friend then made their conversation public, and a joke was taken wildly out of context and used as ammunition against friends #1 and #2. People formed strong opinions based on misunderstood third-hand evidence, but no one – not a single person – thought to question the motives of friend #3, whose actions had a rolling stone effect of harm and damages. There’s little doubt that she knew it would, as the resulting fallout proved, yet the major role she played in creating strife went unchecked. Motive? To create drama and gain attention. Mission accomplished.

Closer to home, The Bastard continues to make up rules as he goes along, leaving devastation and despair in his wake. His motive is to feel more powerful, and to exert what power he does have in ways that buoys his flagging ego. Mission accomplished.

Bush, Cheney, and Company continue to reorder matter and facts in their Invisible Pepsi Can world, where an “axis of evil” exists against the backdrop of the All-Mighty, All-Good, All-Powerful capitalist structure of America. WMD’s exist, then they don’t. Soldiers die, but it’s not all that sad if they hide the coffins from public view. It’s not about the oil, but then it is – oil companies who haven’t been in Iraq for 36 years now have no-bid contracts. The mission is really, finally accomplished.

Those of us who believe in objective truth can’t let ourselves be undone by those who believe that the world spins on an shape-shifting, make-believe axis. The truth of both fact and matter will eventually bear out, no matter how many people choose to create blobs of something else.

The shapeshifters are frustrating (and even frightening when they hold power), but by examining their motives – by asking just that one question – we can better understand the world they live in and avoid getting caught up in their crazy-making blobs.

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