a vain non facebook procrastination leads to discovery of hidden talent

Today I learned that I can gurn, like really well, possibly to championship level. It makes me sad that this talent of mine wasn't discovered earlier - I could have entered competitions as a youngster and won trophies for my outstanding facial contortions.
It also made me think that could be my superhero character - Gurn Grrl ! Her special power would be overcoming objectification ( sexism, and then eventually, as she became a more accomplished superhero, all forms of power heirarchies)
What Gurn Grrl must do first is face her own inner demon (a particularly vain demon) which prevents her from performing her special gurn power.

Tonight

Tonight I considered some feminist action regarding Miss student body. I am now watching attack of the killer tomatoes.The tomatoes all have russian accents. A blonde character just called them bogus veggies.....
I am starting to miss facebook a bit....

Face to Failure...

Ok so I failed to acheive face to facebook tonight, and possibly will fail for the rest of the month. Sincere apologies if anyone turned up but I am currently at maximum stress, largely as a result of my inability to prioritise as i think more or less everything in my life is of equal importance.

Seriously though, I have a ridiculous amount on at the moment. So much so that just going to the supermarket tonight to buy some food for tea was nothing short of a horrifying ordeal. I must be studying too much modernist literature, but I was listening very carefully to my own stream of consciousness whilst I was buying stuff.
It went like this.

Going to Tesco, damnit I really need the toilet, I should have gone before I left the house, well it's too much hassle to go back now, I can always go to the toilet in the pub on the way if it gets really urgent. Maybe I should just do that anyway even if it isn't really urgent, then again that's a bit rude what if someone says something? - though I do know where the toilets are in Beirex it wouldn't be that difficult, well I am nearly there now better just go and get the falafel quickly. Falafal falafal where the hell is falafal, oooh reduced goods, marinade for seafood that looks nice, and it is reduced, I shouldn't really buy that with my flatmate's money, I'm sure she won't mind though - perhaps I don't have to tell her, I think she owes me £3 anyway. Cucumber, pears, really need the loo, where the hell would falafel be. Should it not be with hummous and other poncy salad type foods? that would make sense, nope, what about other food you just shove in the oven. No it's not there. Fuck why the hell is this basket broken, well I'm not getting another one, shit now the handle is caught in my poncho - I just can't deal with this, too many other things to do than have basket handles stuck in my poncho. I should just ask the dude where the falafal is, I can't though, I can't be that person, someone in a poncho in tesco metro asking where falafel is. He will think I am the biggest most predictable cliche,well I guess that predictability is the definition of cliche, well ok, so I can't find it anywhere and I have been here ages now. What are these two guys doing they just seem to walk around the supermarket aisles slowly,exactly infront of me, about 2 paces ahead.Don't they have any sense of urgency? I really need the toilet. Oh well, no falafel, but wait a minute who needs falafel when you can have 2 chocolate puddings for £1.60!!!......... My flatmate. Chocolate puddings don't constitute dinner, or tea even. I will buy them anyway. I can't face this, I just can't think of anything else to eat for dinner - oh well better ask this guy - but how to phrase it in such a way that doesn't make me seem like a poncho vegan hippy sterotype ' Umm I have been sent out for falafel, is there falafel?' very good, you almost sounded like you don't know what falafel is, with the Yorkshire accent you will definately counter the poncho effect of the middle class vegan hippy sterotype. Do you think he really cares?! - how self absorbed. The last packet ."That's really great, thankyou so much" way to thank, you sound like he just saved the life of your child by offering up his bone marrow and all he did was find falafel. Still though - damn this stupid basket.
Self serve, I hate that machine but the que is shorter, unexpected item in the baggage area!! I have too much to do and I put it in the fucking bag, I don't even want a bag - bet you didn't expect that you stupid machine. This marinade is only 20p cheaper that really isn't a good saving at all. Finish and pay - yes for fucks sake I said yes I will yes.


Joyce eat your heart out. My apologies for the failure of face to face book but my life is very stressful just now, though writing that nonsense was indeed theraputic.

Face to face book - now at meadow bar!!

Just to point out that face to face book will now be at meadow bar from 9pm, not Dagda as previously stated. They seem to have a pub quiz on tuesdays which represents just a little too much organization of fun for my liking......
9pm - 11pm - be there, or be somewhere else...

Friday night in without facebook

Tonight as a result of having to work, being tired and being broke I didn't go to Glasgow on a fun night out with my friends, I stayed in. In this time I did not use face book. I did however eat this.

Face to face book, BORING POST, IRELEVANT VIDEO

Firstly my apologies to anyone who went to face-to face book at dagda only to find me not there. Turns out tuesday is pub quiz night and the place was full, so we headed to the meadow bar. I did put a sign outside dagda, but I think this means a possible re-think of where/when to have face-to-face book.
It was a fun night, we played a variation of upwords called 'up yours' where every word has to be an insult ( it can be any word you just have to explain how it insults other members of the game)
I was very tired so mostly sat in the corner, but it was still better than being on facebook.
I have little facebook related news as I have been so busy that I haven't really felt the impact of my lack of social networking!
To compensate here is an Elliott Smith video, just because he was wonderful, and buying an Elliott Smith T shirt made me particularly aware of targeted advertisments.

Face to face book fear

So tonight is the first face to face book! Without facebook for a tool I start to wonder if people have remembered. Will I be sat alone in the pub with a bunch of old men feeling foolish? Is it cheating to text some people as a little reminder? Will anyone who doesn't know me all that well turn up?
So many questions....

Today I read an article a friend had written in the student paper about a sexist drink which is being agressively marketed, I wanted to say 'way to go',without a wall my only option was an email. It took a bit longer but it felt much better than writing it on a public space, somehow more like an actual conversation.

In other facebook news I have the following status updates from my time in the library

'Liz has had her belongings virtually stolen by the president of opportunistic theives. She or he is obviously not deserving of their title, either that or they figured out that I don't have anything worth stealing.'

'Liz just ate a snickers next to the sign that says 'don't take any food or drink beyond this point' she then walked past it. Maverick'

'Liz now actually likes the library, for some reason.....'

Photos

Last night I was excluded from my first conversation. Some night out photos I haven't been able to look at, I am apparently missing out on some hilarious poses on my friends drunken faces.....
I got my essay done more productively than I would had facebook been in my life ( even factoring in some considerable window time....) I am currently still happy with not being on facebook, though when I was in the library I kept thinking of potential status updates, which are not in my head now but I can assure you they were pithy as...

Snow Temptation

Today I am in the library with my English essay. With a deadline rapidly approaching and little other distraction this would be prime facebooking time, but so far I haven't really even been tempted. Largely I am cross with myself for not properly saving the 3 hours of work I did on my essay earlier this week. So far I have been replacing facebook with staring out of the window, which it turns out I also have a great capacity for - particularly when it's snowing!

1 day cold turkey....

So I have nearly gone 24 hours without facebook ! I thought about going on it at work, thought is the wrong word, really it's more a natural reflex of my fingers to type www.fa....
I stopped myself though. It hasn't been too hard today, mostly owing to a hangover and general sociable busyness. Tommorrow I will attempt to write my English essay which may be testing...

Are you sure you want to delete this information?

Today I deleted my profile information. I thought this was going to be a difficult thing, like deleting a bit of myself - but it actually felt quite liberating. There is still a bit of me there and I haven't god rid of photos yet. I guess the fact that I write a blog is very much indicative of how much of a nerd I am.

I also created 'face to face book', because I so much fear disconnection with people, it will involve me being in the Dagda bar Edinburgh from 9-11pm on Tuesdays, and anyone who wants a relaxed chat coming down, I will bring upwords and an exciting card game called bang.It was also a bit of a shameless way to get people to read this blog....
A friend who i like very much, but have only met a few times (and she lives in the states) wrote to me today to make sure I didn't disappear off the face of the planet. This made me feel all warm inside, and also made me realise that facebook is really good for maintaining links with distant people who you really like. It's also probably why I will continue to use it after this month is over.

In myspace style - current mood, optomistic looking forward to being liberated. I also have a pain in my hand from typing too much, this is not good.

Incidentaly I will also be abstaining from myspace, if I went on that it would be like giving up fags by smoking cigars (hmm lots of smoking analogies, I hope I am not subconciously about to replace one addiction with another...........)

Penultimate Paranoia

It's 12:40 am and here I am up on facebook, penultimately. Today I read a conversation 2 of my friends were having on their walls about God and Richard Dawkins, it was interesting. Even though reading it was a bit like spying it also made me feel in some way connected. Wall to wall is like being part of a conversation, but not being the speaking one. I start to feel like giving up facebook is giving up 'connectedness' - no one will post on my wall, I won't be able to make jokey comments, how will I know what people are doing? Will i be forgotten about, left behind? I'm not sure if it was Dawkins who talked about genes and memes, that we either want to leave genes behind, or bits of ourself in the form of art etc. Now we are able to leave bits of ourselves all over the internet. Jokes that we make become permenant, we can assert our opinions all over the place, but it's in this weird world of the semi-real.

On a less ' duude it's 1am and I feel deep man' note, another friend offered to be my secret facebook spy for the month. To let me in to look, but not act. I declined this offer ( though I very much appreciate its generosity;)
Having a spy would be like trying to give up smoking by going outside to sniff fags, or licking the bottoms of ashtrays - undignified and bound to lead to a relapse.

I have preserved the anonymity of my friends and hope that people don't mind being written about, but if you do just comment.

2 days to go

So there are 2 days left with my virtual identity intact. I thought for the purposes of experimentation I should go on it A LOT (yup - to a CAPS LOCK extreme) in the last few days of January.
It is working and I think I am actually getting bored of the social network.Does that mean that facebook is less addictive than heroin or alcohol? or could it be that blogging is the real shit, the hard stuff. It is more anti-social, more attention seeking... could I just be going from one geeky compulsion to a worse one?
I guess only time will tell.

Why?

I decided to give up facebook for a month for quite a few reasons. There are plenty of scary privacy invasion/ marketing things which you can read about here:-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook

When I read that article I thought that it was time to get rid of facebook, so I went to delete my profile information and I found that I didn't want to. I liked my own flattering constructed identity, I wanted people to know that I'm a feminist who loves gorkys. I wanted all my 'oh so endearing' quirks displayed and veiwable.
I wanted random acquaintences to know what sort of music/films/books I like because, you know, they might like the same music/films/books, and then after some thorough poking we would type our way into the sunset .....

Facebook allows us to represent ourselves so that information that would usually take a little while to find out is instantly accessible. I think my virtual self is simoultaneously more and less me.
I would never put one of my interests as 'Routing through charity/vinatage shops for clothes' because it is not part of the 'me' that I want to represent (too vain/shallow too much conforming to indie girl norms). It is something that I do ridiculously often though...
I include amusing quotes rather than serious ones - feminism is much farther down my list of interests and activities than is actually justified, really it is not me. Then again it is - I have difficulty taking things very seriously, I do like music and films a lot. If I delete my profile, am I deleting a little part of me? When I write that I think , god that's ludicrous, but really I mean the internet is definately a public space which people exist in, and 'networking sites' form the main medium of this interaction.

The fact that I didn't want to get rid of this made me feel as if perhaps, I was too attached to my 'virtual identity'. Also I go on the damned thing far too often because I like people watching. I always have enjoyed looking at people and wondering things about them from the way the walk/dress/appear and facebook totally encourages this. Looking at profiles is just like people watching only you find out a lot more, and you can do it anywhere or any time ( particularly when you are supposed to be writing essays or going to sleep)

So I have decided to give up facebook for a month and to find out if this increases my productivity/sleep and maybe even the strength of my friendships ( hopefully I won't lose touch with too many people). I decided to write a blog about it because I still want people to look at me on the internet. I also really like writing, and without television I am not sure how I would fill my procrastination time !!

Anyway it promises to be an epic journey filled with powerful insight into 21st century interaction. Or something. Thanks for reading - comments are very welcome :)