Facebook City: Part 1

Cities are the result of individuals sharing common desires for limited resources (all resources are basically limited, even emotional ones.) Traditionally, cities are also large towns. Towns are collections of individuals in a geographic area. Facebook is an internet city that deals, mostly, with emotional resources. Facebook has helped me realize that I have a limited love-supply. 

Look, Facebook is pretty weird. It gives us more opportunities to love, but also proves that our loves are finite rather than infinite. Just like our bodies, our loves are pretty small. 'i hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean' -- "hope that you dance" lee-ann womack

I just can't love y'all all the same. I can't love you like I love my mom. I can't love you like you love me. I have only enough love for a few dogs, a wife, and a handful of family/friends. I can't hold hands with more than 2 ppl at once. I can't kiss two people on the lips at once. Just like these expressions, love itself is limited. The Internet has helped me understand how limited my love is.

Love is a limited resource, like whiskey and Snuggies. The Internet helps us make the most of our limited emotional resources.

Facebook City is a system of managing this limited supply. The system maximizes our ability to love as many people as we can.

Facebook's Social Efficiencies: (How to take your love to the MAX)

Yoville is the place my grandparents go to maximize their love with my aunts and uncles. Instead of cookouts or phone calls, they just 'virtually walk over' to each others homes and do charitable deeds. 

Farmville is a more agricultural game. It's all about cows and horses and dogs. In this game, you get to maximize your love for the outdoors, as well as help your peeps out by tending their fields while they are out living their non-net-life(NNL)
MAFIA WARS: idk iz weird
Poking is a way of telling people you thought about them without thinking anything about them. 

Messaging is email, but on facebook.
The Wall is like email that everyone can look @. 
Friend Request: This is how you find out if someone is a top-notch friend of yours. This is 'the moment of truth'
Status Updates:  This is how you tell other people where you are and what you are doing and what you are thinking. This is a microblog.


Despite all of these nifty tricks, Facebook continues to remind me just how limited my love is. No matter how hard I try to take advantage of its many efficiencies, I just don't have enough love for more than a few top-notch friends.

Is there something wrong with me?
I should be able to love hundreds of people at once, but I can't.
Must be something wrong with me.


The Internet reminds me of the Old West. Boom towns pop up overnight and prospectors flock there to make it rich. But as soon as systems are in place to keep order, a the town is deserted and the folks have moseyed onto a new boom.

Eventually these towns might be touristy-type destinations. Families will visit them. These visits will become ironic. Is having a Myspace.com account ironic? What about an AOL account?  Is visiting Detroit ironic?

Facebook has really been weirding me out lately. So many things happen that I can't figure out. I think I'm going to have to do some more thinking before coming to any conclusions on Facebook City.

GHOST TOWNS:

C-F: A MOON NAMED 'MOON'

NASA says this is a photo of our future home on the moon, C-F. C-F looks like a decent place, from what I can tell. This has me all excited about space. I can't wait to live there. But I'm kinda scared too. It's intimidating. The universe is 'round 93 Billion Light years across. This infuriates me.



But at least I'm alive. So much to think about, but so few thoughts.
Is the moon better than Mars? When the Mayans destroy the earth ,will the moon continue to exist?

What will it circle?

It's hard to imagine how we will think of outer space when we finally live there, but I think it will be sorta like moving to a new town. Before we get there, we have an overhead map-like view of what it's like. That's space to us now. But when we all move there, it will be more like the city we live in now.

Space is just the difference b/w here and there. 


Will we still believe in ghosts when we live in outer space? How can non-earth planets be haunted? Do aliens have souls? Would a ghost on the moon prove extraterrestrial life? Or do you think souls are confined to the planet they were created on.

There is no folklore on the moon, so we will need to adapt our myths to suit it.

The first few movies filmed on location will undoubtedly be Sci-Fi. They will usually get 40-70 on Rottentomatoes. But rom-coms will eventually be set on the moon.
Old movies like Sleepless and Seattle and Roman Holiday will be remade, but on the moon.
Sports records will come in "Moon Record" and "Earth Record."
The first baby to be born on the moon should have been Suri Cruise.

And we should probably think about renaming our moon. It's a moon named 'moon.'

It's kinda boring, basically like calling Earth 'planet.'  Or being called "John Jay"

The Last 3: movies

I'm going to rank the last three films I saw, Dirty Dancing, Terminator, and Race to Witch Mountain, based on the following criteria:

Romance: How much romance? How much love? What kindsa love?

Action: Was there any action? What kinda action?

Cultural Insignificance:  How well the film avoided tackling social issues, allowing for an enjoyable escapist "event."

1. Dirty Dancing:  

R: 10:  This is a sex movie. Dancing is used to show sex. Sex is used to show sex. The sex was divided into two categories: evil sex that gets you pregnant, and hot sex with Patrick Swayze. 

A: 2: Some people get all riled up when a girl gets knocked up. 

C: 1: Awful escapism. 1 girl has an abortion. The film tries to portray the early 1960s as a time when everything-is-about-to -change. 

2. Terminator 2: Judgement Day:

R: 4: some naked dudes @ the begining. One girl gets her clothes burned off by a nuclear bomb, but you can't see anything. John Conner and T2 have a lil "bromance."

A: 10: motorcycles and bombs and guns and robots.

C: 3: this movie says "robots can feel, and they can teach us how to love the world, because we don't, because we created nukes." can't enjoy the robots and guns and bombs and motorcycles with all that going on.

17/30

3. Race to Witch Mountain:

R: 6: The ROCK falls for some scientist and even tries to learn some of her science for her. He also finds a 'soft spot' for two teenagers who are actually aliens. The love is innocent, but real.

A: 10: they race to witch mountain and there are EXPLOSIONS everywhere!!

C: 10: This movie doesn't say anything about our society. It allowed me to enjoy it's action without telling me how bad a person I am. 

26/30

Where have you been for the last 13 Years ?

my history of the internet.

1996: entered 5th grade. chatted on The AOL. OKC bombing. username: al instine.



1997: entered 6th grade. made a bunch of new friends. talked shit about them behind their backs. started playing MLB simulation leagues on The AOL. Listened to 'Semi-Charmed Life' by 3rd Eye Blind.



1998: entered 7th grade. caught crushes on gurls. started posting on 'message boards.' played the trumpet solo in band : Apollo 13 Fanfare. Listened 2 'gone till november' by wyclef jean



1999: Entered 8th Grade. Started to appreciate fine art like pablo picasso (so weird, man.) started writing song lyrics to combat middle school. got ready for high school by buying Clearasil.  Listened to 'another brick in the wall' by pink floyd.



2000: Entered HS as a FROSH. had a pretty good time. started posting my secrets on LIVEJOURNAL.COM .  "discovered" The Beatles. my poetry advanced to include non-rhyming abstract type stuff after reading william carlos williams' poem about a wheel barrel . Posted on online poetry community. Listened 2 'we can work it out' by The Beatles.




















2001: entered sophomore year. got real in love with a gurl. 9/11 wars got started. started dressing weird/trendy. posted my poetry to Livejournal . EXAMPLE:

'and deep within the doll house balloon,
we will sing a song with your lips,
as they cream and puff to the rhythm of your spoon,
and in your eyes they pantomime the song of a mute,
who sang it with mermaids and
republican glamps,
who only saw in the color of treen.

and before you
were a memory
i spoke in winds, smothered '

Listened to 'everything in it's right place' by radiohead.


2002: fell in love with another gurl. read james joyce's "portrait of an artist" & "ulysses" realized writing was supposed to be confusing. was a 'JR' started to think about why i didn't wanna goto college. started playing guitar chords. wrote some weird/trendy songs and posted them the internet. no one listened to them. stopped using The  AOL ==>AT&T/broadband. got a lot of new music. listened to 'All My Little Words" by Magnetic Fields



2003: got to graduate high school. didn't goto college. started reading "more advanced" things like nabokov didn't goto college. used SLSK for music. moved to oregon to write movies. watched movies like kurosawa and beat takeshi and experimental west coast movies i didn't like. 9/11 war # 2 on my B-DAY. got a bad job. got to know some homos. used internet very little, mostly to meet/stay in touch with friends. got some girlfriends. listened to "little life" by Josephine Foster

 

2004: moved back home. got another bad job. started to listen to noisy music. started to read regular stuff. less concerned with trendy more concerned with cool. used internet to use myspace and share music and send emails regularly. broke up with girlfriends. got new girlfriend. listened to 'Caecilia' by Christian Fennesz



2005: got engaged. helped family business. got overworked. got some college. got country. started to doubt the importance of the internet.  then got youtube then got married. listened to 'King of the Road' by Roger Miller.



2006: moved into little apartment. got new job @ bookstore and coffee makers. hate local music. rarely attend shows. not guilted into it. start to read more and learn to be a husband (so hard.) got facebook. 'reconnected' with old friends. listened to: 'Little Brother' by Grizzly Bear



2007: started to use words like 'liberal media' and read Ayn Rand's essays. thought of myself as a 'libertarian' with a heart. radiohead gave away their music. began using the internet to see netflix. listened to 'all i need' by radiohead. what a silly video.



2008:  got a new job with my wife. lost some of my hearing. bought a house. listened to 'the way' by Bonnie 'Prince' Billy


2009: that brings us to today, basically. this year was weird and is still pretty fresh so we'll have to wait to figure it all out for a while. What a creepy 13 years of my life. I guess it's the first 13 years I've ever analyzed like this,  but I look forward to doing it again.


I guess this is what 2009 looked like: