In Your Face, Facebook!

I love it when scientific studies positively reinforce my choice to neglect something that is supposedly good for me.  No matter that the choice is based on laziness or stubbornness, or both, on my part.  Science. Says.  I’m right.

My sister, Crash, decided that, since I refused to resolve to do anything for the new year, she would decide what I needed to do.  Her goal for me is to join Facebook.  She informed me of this goal a couple of times, and then nagged gently prodded me by sending me an e-mail invitation to view her Facebook pictures.

If you’ve read my highly engaging and slightly entertaining post, “Don’t Hate Me Because I Don’t Like You”, then you are aware of my feelings about Facebook.  If you haven’t read that post, you are probably still aware of my feelings about Facebook, considering that: it is 2013, I am 40-something years old, my sister is trying to browbeat me into using it, and I don’t like anyone.

I was starting to crumble under the pressure.  To be honest, I’m beginning to tire of conversations that go like this :

“Hey, are you going to Selena’s baby shower?”

“What?  I didn’t know she was having a baby!”

“She isn’t.  Her daughter is.”

“Oh my God!  She has a daughter?!!!”

“You really need to check your Facebook.  By the way, are you and your husband having problems?  His latest status is ‘single’.”

Now I know that last one is not true.  Because my husband does not have a Facebook account, either.  I think.

Anyway, the point is that I was starting to feel a bit left out because people keep forgetting to tell me things in person since they figure I already know because it’s posted on their Facebook page.  I was beginning to think I will be the only one sitting in a chair with my bulldog, reading Little Women, while the rest of the nation burrows into bomb shelters – all because the End of the World got announced on Facebook instead of the Emergency Broadcast System.

And then I heard the news report.

“Facebook Makes You Fat!”

I knew it!  I knew there was a reason I shouldn’t do it.

According to the SCIENTIFIC study, Facebook makes you fat because it makes you feel “popular and happy” about your image.  More self-esteem gives you less self-control.

Ah hah!  My evil sister is trying to give me more self-esteem!

I knew she always hated me.

I introduce you to the face of my sister, Crash. She does not have self-esteem issues.  And she’s not fat.  She defies scientific explanation.

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Funerals Get a Bad Rap

First of all, let me state for the record that I love funerals.  I mean, what’s not to like?  People dressed in black, talking in whispers, singing gushy sentimental songs out of key.

My sister, Crash, claims that she hates them.  Which worked out in her favor because she recently just managed to get herself uninvited to one.  She finds this upsetting, so I just want to remind her that she is totally invited to mine when I have one.  In fact, I expect her to attend.  And, just to please her, I already have a smash-bang good one planned, with a flash mob and everything.  It’s going to put the “fun” back in funeral, I promise.

So, we’ll both sit this one out, Crash.  It’s okay.

I am totally having my funeral here. And play will not be canceled. So, everyone better start practicing. Wait till you see the 18th hole…

Angels Cross Here

My sister, Crash, texted this picture that was ostensibly taken near Appalachian State University by someone she knows.

Assuming this is an actual sign, and one of us isn’t being bamboozled, what the heck does it mean?

The guess from her friend was, “Watch out for flying, drinking, hula hooping college drunks.”  At first, I thought that was a bit redundant.  I mean, don’t all drunks hula hoop?

My take was, “Angels cross here, so don’t throw boomerangs at their knees by accident.”

Another possibility, “It’s best to walk in erratic 3/4 circles so raptors won’t land on your shoulder.”

Any other ideas?

By the way, my Spring Membership Drive is still going on.  Yesterday, I snagged one more subscription!  Only 5.988888 million or so to go to reach my goal!  I’d be much obliged if you are a new reader and commit to a subscription!

Orange You Glad There are Crashes in the World?

My sister, Crash, texted me yesterday that she had some great material for my blog.  Apparently, my niece had requested a trip to a tanning salon – which my sister refers to as “the toaster”.  Being a good mom who does not want to subject her daughter to harmful death rays, my sister suggested instead that she use the “lotion they used in Baywatch”.  I am not sure if it is the actual lotion, or has just been sitting in her closet since the 1990’s.  My sensible niece replied, “Great.  That stuff’s thirty years old.”

So, my sister decided to test it on her own hands before her daughter slathered it all over her skin.  And it turned her hands orange.

This was all texted to me with the suggestion that it would make a good post.

“Where’s the pic?” I texted back, all business.

She sent me the pic.  And her hands did not look orange.  Maybe a little.  But not the pumpkin orange that I was hoping for.

Crash's Baywatched hand

She offered to doctor it up for me.  She then sent me a picture where her face was completely red.  Photoshopped.

“I can’t do that,” I texted back.  My readers rely on me to be genuine.  I don’t want to be the next James Frey.  Although a scandal could be good advertising…

She sent me two more hopeful pics of her hand at various stages of close-uppedness.  I still didn’t see the orange.

In the meantime, she sent me a few pics of my niece, who absolutely abhors having her picture taken.  Even though she isn’t the slightest bit orange.

I sometimes question how Crash and I can be related.  She has absolutely no problem making fun of herself and is not even an ounce self-conscious.

My niece, my daughter, and I, (on the other hand that is also not orange), cringe at the thought of anyone analyzing us too closely.  The only reason I submit to photographs now is because I don’t want my daughter to develop an aversion to having her picture taken.

That truth is I’m not orange either; I’m green.  With envy.  I wish I could be more like Crash.  But that would ruin the mystique of Mrs. Cap’n Firepants, mother of Dimples, Wonderbutt, and Mrs. P.I.B. Right?

Crash - making another bid to get her pic on my blog.

Happy Birthday, Crash!

Today is my dear sister’s birthday.  She is probably hoping, as she does every year for the last decade, that I will be surprising her in North Carolina.  Unfortunately, I can’t do that again until she stops expecting it.  Do you hear that, Crash?!!!!  Anyway, I just want to say Happy Birthday to my crazy sis.  Sorry I can’t be there.  But here is the next best thing.

Crash is the cute one on the left. I am the one holding the, uh, what the heck is that thing, anyway?

J’aime ma soeur, Krach.

My sister, Crash, just got an iPhone.  The one I coveted, then decided wasn’t good enough, then coveted again when Cap’n Firepants declared he was contemplating an upgrade of his own.  iPhone upgrade, I mean.  Though he probably secretly thinks about trading me in for a better model, too.

Crash has never had an iPhone, and she is approaching this brave new world with all of the zeal of a drunken gorilla.  This is her trying to use FaceTime, iPhone’s video conferencing feature.

The big pic is Crash. People like to say she got the beauty and I got the brains. Actually, I think she's the one who says that.

So far, we haven’t FaceTimed each other yet.  Partly because I’m scared of her picture.  And partly because I enjoy trying to interpret her texts so much.

It’s not like she’s never texted before.  She has owned a cell phone.  But it apparently did not have autocorrect.  Either that or she has recently started smoking weed because I suddenly can’t understand twenty-five fifty-three percent of what she’s saying.

It reminds me of when she would call my dorm room in college and my roommate would pick up.  Roommate would say, “Hello!” then listen for a few moments and hand it to me.

“I think it’s your sister,” Roommate would say, hesitantly.  The implication being that she wasn’t absolutely sure it was not the crank caller who graced us weekly with pornographic rants, but was willing to hazard this guess because of the higher pitch of the voice and the lack of heavy breathing.

We had moved to Louisiana when my sister was about ten, and she had thrown herself into the culture wholeheartedly, somehow adopting an accent that was a combination of Cajun, Hillbilly, Southern Belle, and the Bronx.

Crash’s iPhone autocorrect appears to embrace different cultures with the same zeal as my sister.  Usually autocorrections bear some kind of similarity to the new words it suggests, and the replacements tend to be in the same language, but Crash’s autocorrections sometimes appear in another language altogether – bearing no resemblance to the original word at all.  Here are a couple of her recent ones regarding Wonderbutt’s new Zazzle store.

How in the world did she get autocorrect to put an inverted question mark?

Note the fancy caret symbol over the "a" in "hate." And "d'armure." Did her iPhone suddenly start speaking French?

It doesn’t help that even her communications that come through the way she intended sometimes have me scratching my head.  So, I’m continually asking myself if I should know what  she is talking about – or point out that she’s had another autocorrect malfunction.  This somewhat defeats the whole purpose of texting – a brief correspondence that cuts through all of the pomp and circumstance of an actual telephone conversation.  I spend more time deciphering Crash’s messages than I do on composing my blogs – which, believe it or not, is a lot of time.

Crash used to call me right after she sent an e-mail, and proceed to tell me everything that was in the e-mail.  I’m thinking she may have to do some texting follow-up calls as well.  I don’t want her to stop texting, though.  She is my human Wonderbutt.

If you’d like to read more about my feelings on autocorrect, click here😉