Facebook – Kathy Waller

Facebook, Serendipity, Alec Guinness, and a Cat

Posted on May 12, 2016September 9, 2016 by M.K. Waller in Uncategorized

What is Facebook good for?

After several years’ pondering, I have the answer:

Facebook is good for

pictures of animals; and
serendipity.

Français : Mon chat Guinness. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) By Jeanjeantende (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I wrote about #1 in an earlier post. If I could remember the blogger who prompted the generalization, I would give him credit. Unfortunately, when I wrote that post, his name had already leaked out of my brain.

Such leakage happens with increasing regularity.

Anyway, the reason for #1 is that pictures of animals make us happy. Videos of elephants rolling in mud, a sloth petting a cat, (a long video because sloths pet slowly), a hamster wrapped in a blanket and eating a carrot–if these don’t lift the spirits, what will? Facebookers who share them aren’t empty-headed or cretinous or inane. We’re compassionate, caring, and kind. We have senses of humor.

Number 2 on the above list, however, I worked out for myself. Facebook exists for serendipity.

I first heard that word when the Serendipity Singers sang “Don’t Let the Rain Come Down” on the Red Skelton Show. That was a few years back.

Serendipity is the faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident. Horace Walpole coined it in a letter in 1754.

Walpole’s source was a Persian fairy tale: A king fears his three sons’ education has been too “sheltered and privileged,” so he sends them out into the world. On their travels, “they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of …”

This morning’s serendipity was an article about Grace Kelly and Alec Guinness. A picture of Grace Kelly is like a picture of a cat: it makes you feel better and possibly lowers your blood pressure.

But a picture of Alec Guinness is even better. Alec Guinness is the god of my idolatry.*

Recently, in another bit of serendipity, I came across a video of Guinness’ movie The Ladykillers on Youtube.** “Professor” Marcus, portrayed by Guinness, rents rooms in the house of sweet little Mrs. Wilberforce, telling her that other members of his string quintet will visit regularly to rehearse. Behind the closed door of the Professor’s room, while chamber music plays on a gramophone, the musicians plan to rob an armored truck and use Mrs. Wilberforce to transport the lolly. They don’t reckon with Mrs. Wilberforce’s parrots, her friends, or her penchant for serving tea. Or coffee, if they prefer.

The movie is laugh-aloud funny on several levels, but my favorite part is watching Guinness’s face as his expression changes from moderately crazy to deranged verging on maniacal. I’ve studied and still can’t see how he does it. A slightly raised eyebrow, a slightly lowered eyelid, an almost imperceptible change about the mouth?

Guinness was a chameleon. Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai, Japanese businessman Koichi Asano in A Majority of One, eight distinctly different characters in Kind Hearts and Coronets, Star Wars’ Obi-Wan Kenobi–none of these characters could ever be mistaken for another. It’s not because of makeup; it’s because of what Guinness can do with his face.

If only I had access to more photographs, I could prove what I say. The best way to check my facts is to watch the movie for yourself.

Unfortunately, the “full movie” version of The Ladykillers on Youtube lacks the very beginning and the very end. There are also versions available for a fee. I’m going to order a DVD, however. Old technology, but I want to watch it over and over, binge style.

And here’s more serendipity: Kiri Te Kanawa and Jeremy Irons–My Fair Lady in Concert. I hate to say it, but Jeremy Irons makes as good a Henry Higgins as Rex Harrison did. Te Kanawa? Loverly.

###

*Shakespeare wrote “god of my idolatry.” I’m just borrowing it.

**Not the version with Tom Hanks. The Tom Hanks version would not be serendipity.

Addiction, Facebook, Doctors, Pigs, and Zombies

Posted on October 2, 2014September 12, 2016 by M.K. Waller in Uncategorized

I confess: I’m hooked.

The computer is a Kathy magnet. It wasn’t so bad until 2008, when I replaced a forty-hour work week with a laptop and my husband installed wi-fi. The Internet brings so many fine blogs and other attractions into my living room, where I sit with my feet up and examine them all; email can take up an entire day, if I leave it open while working.

Doubters would say that what I do isn’t working. I disagree. Negotiating the web is fatiguing. Commenting draws a lot of energy. I don’t want to write something that will be misunderstood; I don’t want to leave typos or incorrect punctuation; I don’t want to sound stupid.

Example: The previous sentence initially read, I want to sound stupid. It’s easy to mess up online.

Political posts on Facebook leave me just wo-ahn out. There’s the writing, of course, which is draining, but there’s also the emotion. Righteous indignation requires energy. Restraint requires more. After exercising restraint for several months, I stopped logging on. But there are friends and acquaintances–no, they’re not all friends–I want, and need, to keep up with. I like knowing how my great-niece’s first year of school is going. I like knowing that in the doctor’s waiting room when she was four, she suddenly came out with, “DOOOOOOOOOMED. We’re all DOOOOOOOOOMED.” Her fourteen-year-old brother wasn’t impressed, but I was. Her pronouncements remind me we’re not all doooooooomed.

Anyway, I logged onto FB today, discovered a post about a remark a sexist pig made on a pseudo news program, and was moved to share the post and a rousing Jeremiad of my own.

I didn’t address my remark to the sexist pig, nor did I call him one. I saved the phrase for this post. I merely suggested that his comments reinforce the ignorance and the bigotry of listeners who agree with him. Plus a couple of other salient thoughts.

Then I copied my remarks and pasted them into a Word document for future publication somewhere, perhaps here. They were scathing, simply scathing, but reasoned and polite, and they deserve a wider audience.

Another example: I’m getting all het up here just recalling the incident. Molecules of emotion surge through my body. I am giving the sexist pig power over me. That isn’t good.

Yesterday I heard a segment of a call-in program on NPR about the downside of computer technology on the culture. I’ve seen one of the effects on medicine already. When my former doctor’s practice installed computers in examining rooms, he stopped looking at me and started looking at the screen. So, to a lesser degree, did a specialist I consulted. They were excellent clinicians, and the latter possibly saved my life by doing surgery that only she and I thought I needed.*

But there’s information to be drawn from faces as well as from words, on both sides of a conversation. Eyes transmit confidence and sympathy and a number of other messages. With the Party of the First Part looking at the side of the Party of the Second Part’s Head (or, as once happened, the back of his white coat), and the Party of the Second Part looking at a screen and typing away, I wonder whether the two Parties make sufficient connection.

The internist I see now has no computer in the examining room. He taps here and there on a Palm Pilot (or something; it has a light on it for closer examination of funny-shaped moles, plus, it appears, an entire pharmacopoeia; I hope it’s not an iPhone). But he sits near me and looks me in the eye, and I reciprocate, and we get along very well.

He also asks at every visit how the writing is going, thus allowing me to infer he remembers something about me that isn’t in the file. It probably is in the file, maybe scrawled inside the cover of the folder, but as long as I haven’t seen it, it isn’t.

One day I’ll walk in and find myself looking at a 17-inch flat screen. It’s inevitable, and, all things considered, it’s a good thing. But when the time comes, I shall tell the doctor how to conduct himself while interviewing patients, just in case he doesn’t know. I’m old enough to be his mother and I taught high school English, so I’m not only entitled, I’m an expert.

But enough of doctors.

I’ve been thinking for months–years?–about the power I give technology over my life: I don’t move as much as I used to, or get out of the house as I should. I don’t read as much as I did–I read much less, in fact, and this is the first time I’ve been able to make that claim.

I don’t write with a pen and paper as often as I used to. I’ve always enjoyed putting words onto paper with a good pen, not an expensive one, but a pen that fits my hand.

And although he hasn’t said anything, my POSSLQ** might be as tired of seeing me staring at a screen as I am of seeing the doctor do the same.

So. I’ve decided to pull the plug nightly by 7:00 p.m., and to work backward towards 5:00 p.m.

To do so, I’ll have to write everything I want to write during the day. For a nocturnal animal whose brain

starts functioning about 9:00 p.m., the change won’t be easy. But it’s the right thing to do.

In my new spare time, I will read books and write in my journal with the pen of my choice. POSSLQ will follow his tradition of reading every word in the newspaper and in several magazines. We might converse.

I will go to bed at a decent hour and wake at a decent hour, in time to get a table and an electrical outlet at the BookPeople coffee shop, and there I will write–write meaning to write stories and novels for at least one hour every day. I will do it because I promised author and editor Ramona DeFelice Long that I will.

Giving away your power isn’t a bad thing as long as you know the person who receives it has good motives.

Note that I write I will, a construction implying determination, resolution, perseverance.

If I absolutely can’t help myself, I’ll toss off a blog post now and then. But only outside that sacred hour.

It hasn’t escaped me that the BookPeople part involves using a laptop and wi-fi. I can’t write what I need to write without the laptop.

But as I would not be a Luddite, so neither would I be a Zombie. And I’ve had it on good authority that computer addiction leads right down the primrose path to Zombie-ism.

###

*The subsequent biopsy agreed with us. Thank you, Dr. Carla Ortique, who now practices in Houston. I wish you were here.

**1) Person of Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters. 2) An affectation. We’re married. 3) See in its entirety “My POSSLQ” by Charles Osgood. A darned good poem. Here’s the first paragraph:

“Come live with me and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands and crystal brooks
With silken lines, and silver hooks.
There’s nothing that I wouldn’t do
If you would be my POSSLQ.” . . .

###

True Poet

Posted on January 4, 2013January 5, 2013 by M.K. Waller in Uncategorized

Despite all the time I’ve wasted scrolling through Facebook, I’ve received more from the site than I’ve lost. It’s allowed me to reconnect with students I taught thirty years ago.

Last night I was chatting with a member of the class of 1982. She gave me permission to link to her website. She didn’t give me permission to comment, but I will anyway. What can she do–flunk me?

I want to make it clear that I never taught Judy anything. I couldn’t have taught her anything. She already knew what she needed to know. She was a writer. A poet.

She entertained us periodically with essays describing her part-time job at a nearby country club. I have vivid memories of long, furry tendrils reaching out and wrapping themselves around her legs while she was cleaning out the walk-in refrigerator. Those memories, and others, told in nauseating detail, made me laugh even as I vowed to avoid that particular dining room.

In her junior year, Judy placed in a poetry contest at a nearby college. One of the judges said she’d wanted to place the poem higher, but it was too short. The next year, she won the competition with another poem–the same length as last year’s. I memorized it and later, when I was teaching at a local university, posted a copy of it on the door of my office.

After Judy graduated, I found her mentioned in an article in the Austin newspaper: UT student Judith Edwards had appeared at Eeyore’s Birthday Party in Pease Park wearing a python draped across her shoulders. The accessory seemed to me entirely appropriate. Her goals had never included conformity.

Here’s a link to Judy’s website: http://www.judywords.info/

Browse through her poems and stories. You’ll get an idea of the pleasure I had being her student.

***

P.S. I hesitate to add this–I mean, I hate to give readers who live outside the United States such a…truthful…view of Texas, but if you have a mind to, read Judy’s story “The Big Texan.” She didn’t make it up. I wasn’t there, but I know it really happened.

Day 13: Kangaroos and blessings

Posted on November 13, 2010September 21, 2016 by M.K. Waller in Uncategorized

Someone sent me a kangaroo.

It may have been the person who sent the squirrel yesterday.

All I know is that, when I looked at my Wall this morning, I saw three notes that said I’m sending squirrel requests. I also learned that I’m sending bless my online friends requests.

Five minutes ago I discovered–the Wall again–that I’m now sending kangaroo requests.

For the record, I am not sending kangaroo requests or kangaroos themselves.

When I read that someone had sent me a kangaroo, I clicked to see who it was (not that I expected to find out, considering yesterday’s experience with the squirrel).

I didn’t select any names.

I didn’t check out Giftie Credits.

I didn’t click Send or any of its synonyms.

I simply attempted to satisfy my native curiosity.

For this one indulgence, I find myself libeled.

On the other hand, after I clicked, I saw the kangaroo. That’s more than I can say about the squirrel.

For the record, however, I’m sending neither squirrels nor kangaroos. I hope that doesn’t disappoint anyone.

I’m happy, however, to send blessings. I am at this moment directing harmonious vibrations to all my friends.

But look for them to arrive in the traditional, low-tech manner. If I try sending them via Facebook, someone’s sure to receive a kangaroo instead.

******

“Kangaroos and Blessings” appeared on Whiskertips in 2009. Again, finding myself no mood to compose anything new, I’m recycling.

Day 10: Squirrels and seduction

Posted on November 10, 2010September 21, 2016 by M.K. Waller in Uncategorized

Someone sent me a squirrel.

If I wanted to know who sent it, Facebook said, I had to send squirrels to sixteen other people.

I have more than sixteen FB friends, but I wasn’t sure they wanted squirrels. In fact, I was afraid they might be offended or, worse yet, think I was trying to attract undue attention. Or, worse than that, think I wanted them to send me a squirrel by return click.

I didn’t want to be unfriended over an unwelcome rodent.

But I wanted to know who sent the squirrel, so I tried to outwit the system. I clicked on three names–teenagers I thought might like being singled out for the honor–and sent them squirrels. Then I clicked on the link promising to identify my benefactor.

The resulting page complained that I hadn’t followed instructions. “Sixteen people” means sixteen people. I was thirteen short. Until I sent squirrels to those thirteen, my squirrel-giver would remain anonymous.

A footnote, however, contained an out. If I didn’t want to bestow squirrels on the majority of my friends list, but still wanted to know whence mine came, I could do so by acquiring Giftie Credits.

Curious, I pursued this option.

Curiosity waned when I discovered that Giftie Credits come with a price.

I could get 160 Giftie Credits for ten dollars.

Or I could perform certain actions:

subscribing to a DVD service would bring me 317 Giftie Credits;
participating in a trial of green tea would bring 455 Giftie Credits;
ordering a trial something-or-other designed to allay my fear of wearing a bikini next summer would net 380 Giftie Credits.

Because I get DVDs from Netflix, don’t care that much for green tea, and don’t own a bikini, I declined those offers.

The “FREE Slim Seduction Trial”–408 GCs–sounded interesting but didn’t seem practical, so I passed that up as well.

Instead, I slid the pointer up to the toolbar and flew to my very own Facebook Home page, where commerce does not dwell.

When I joined Facebook, I intended to keep up with family, friends, and my old paralegal school. I wanted to make professional contacts. I thought I might get in touch with former students and co-workers. I expected to read about piano recitals, graduations, and book signings.

I didn’t expect the squirrel.

And I still don’t know who sent it.

In fact, I haven’t even seen the little devil. I’m sure he, or she, is as cute as a bug, probably a lot like Perri on the cover of the Disney LP I had when I was eight. But I don’t know where he is or where he came from.

Not knowing isn’t acceptable. I want answers. I don’t like to be left hanging.

I shall try to be patient. Perhaps in time the craving will dissipate.

But if it doesn’t–if the desire to know becomes unbearable–I might be forced to check out the Slim Seduction Trial.

With 408 Giftie Credits, I could send a lot of squirrels.

*****

“Squirrels and Seduction” appeared in Whiskertips in 2009. An updated, revised, and corrected version appears here at the request of my most ardent fan, who does not want to write a post from scratch tonight.

*****

Image by Dave-F, used under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license, via flickr.com.

Day 8: Connecting

Posted on November 8, 2010September 21, 2016 by M.K. Waller in Uncategorized

My high school English teacher read the Day 7 post, the one in which I wrote that she told students we had important and relevant things to say.

That is the problem with blogging. At some point, you make a remark, a perfectly innocent remark, and the person you remarked about happens across it and reads it and calls you on it. Especially if you link the post to Facebook, and that person is one of your friends.

Anyway, said English teacher (who taught me in grades 8, 10, 11, and 12, so you see what we were both up against) asked whether she really said relevant and important, or whether she said, “Hush up and write.”

I admit it. “Hush up and write” was more her style.

And I really went overboard with relevant. I don’t think anyone I knew said relevant. It was one of those television words, ubiquitous and meaningless. The curriculum wasn’t relevant. School wasn’t relevant.

Relevant isn’t complete in itself. It needs something more. Relevant to what? And in whose opinion?

The 60s didn’t get to my part of Texas until late. And being as contrary then as I am now, I rebelled against the rebellion.

According to my husband, people should never send e-mails they wouldn’t want Ted Koppel to read on the air. David is correct. That goes for Facebook and blogs and all media, I’m sure.

Although I agree with his policy, however, I don’t follow it. Anyone who has read this blog knows that.

My one hope is that any potential employer who googles me and reads my work understands self-deprecating humor.

In other words, I’m neither as dumb nor as ditsy as I portray myself. Fiction is fiction and fact is fact, and in between there is irony.

If hired, I will be on time, work through breaks and lunch and do overtime, meet deadlines, take a personal interest in my work, and play well with others. I will spell correctly and use the serial comma. And I will not write about you on my blog.

I’ve been thinking about starting every post with that paragraph. Especially the post about my hereditary tendency to burn toast.

Although I write about my flaws, or pseudo-flaws, I am a private person. I want to choose what I tell and when and to whom. I don’t appreciate Facebook’s rabid desire to help me extend my social circle. I really really don’t appreciate Facebook’s sharing my information and not telling me, or making it difficult for me to lock down information I don’t want to share with people I don’t know.

There are days when I would like to close the account completely–as if that were possible, given FB’s determination not to delete it–but I’m in too deep. Closing out of FB would be like disconnecting both the telephone and the television. I don’t use either appliance very often, but giving them up would put me completely out of the loop.

No more pictures of Kenna wearing her little pink hat and grinning.

No more surprise messages from students I haven’t seen in years.

I’ve had the good fortune to “connect” with two women I first knew when they students. They were back-to-back winners of the Writers’ League of Texas Manuscript Contest, Young Adult Division. One has signed a book contract with a publisher. The other recently signed with an agent.

When their books come out, I’ll be jumping up and down.

I hope the high school from which they graduated will honor them by inviting them back to speak to current students. I hope the elementary and middle schools do the same.

I hope the school district makes a BIG DEAL of their accomplishments.

Let me say that again.

I hope the school district makes a BIG DEAL of their accomplishments.

Not for the writers’ sake, but for the sake of children who need to see that telling stories is important, that publishing a book is an event to be celebrated, that kids who once sat in those same classrooms grew up to be writers.