Facing Off

A Simple User’s Guide to Changing Your Privacy Settings on FaceBook


Step 1: Go to Account and click on Settings. This action leads to coded instructions in the form of a detailed transcript of the 1969 John Wayne movie, True Grit, written in a secret font legible only to flamboyant cuttlefish. (Luckily I am fluent in cuttlefish, having once taken a class in Oceanic Languages as an elective when demographic knitting was unavailable.)

Step 2. Click on the information you want to change.

Step 3. Click repeatedly on the same field when Facebook denies access for change.

Step 4. Place index fingers of each hand in your ears and try to make them touch.

Step 5: Put your right foot in.

Step 6: Take your right foot out.

Step 7: Put your right foot in.

Step 8. Shake it all about.

Step 6. Swear mightily and creatively in an open letter to the FaceBook founders.

Step 7. Using the big toe of your left foot, press the power button on your computer.

Step 8. Place your head on your desk and sit quietly until the teacher says you can sit up.

Following these detailed instructions will either launch a nuclear warhead or change your privacy settings. I deleted my birthday and five pages of status updates from public view, performed a magical keystroke that changed my picture to a shot of a cunning gopher lunching on a banana sandwich, and erased the child restriction settings that prevented me from viewing old Michael Jackson videos.

My homepage retaliated with an immediate status update sent to all of my relatives, the entire population of non-English speaking countries, and the Queen of England, that said, “This user is a gopher! Lock your doors! Hide your children!”

The Queen responded by immediately withdrawing as my neighbor on University Farm Zoo City Co-Ed Island, where she had previously harvested my crop of watercolor cows with impunity. All I can say is I’ve sprinkled her sugar maples for the last time.

It’s possible that I went astray in the directions. Next time perhaps I’ll put my left foot in.

And walk right out.

My Friend Flickr

I’m all a-twitter to find out my favorite family is not available just on, well, Twitter, anymore. No, not the Hiltons; their poorer relations, Queen Elizabeth and the gang. The British branch of the family creeper vine has signed up for a Flickr account.

These days the chances are good that you can flip through the Internet like it was a trashy magazine and find a picture of Camilla ears deep in a liplock with Bonnie Prince Charlie. How’s that for a picture? Emotional Ipecac without a prescription.

But I have to wonder. How many pictures of Queen Elizabeth in Joker makeup and patent leather pocketbook does the world need? If the desire of the royals is to reach the people, they need to stock up on a few more candid shots like the ones of Diana clad in modest, but transparent, work garb that made the public fall in love with the innocence of the young girl.

Somehow a candid shot of Camilla in a see-through skirt does nothing short of making me want indulge in the use of OSHA-approved optical rinse and pop a blindfold over my mind’s eye. I’d rather see an exposé on the Queen’s Corgis.

It’s not that I’m not a fan of the Royal Family. I was up at dawn when Diana married Charles, and I followed Andrew and Fergie’s wedding like a play by play announcer at the SuperBowl.

But these days there aren’t many faces in the royal family that are photographer-friendly. So those of us around the globe who are putting our faith in the “picture is worth a thousand words” school of thought agree.

If it’s not the new princess the Royal Family is flaunting in its electronic photo album, we’d rather have a speech. So bring on Princess Catherine.

Because if all the shots are of Camilla, the Kodak Moments are going to the dogs.

The Royal I in London

Ten Reasons Why I Should Be the BBC Correspondent to cover the British Royal Wedding.

1. I have a hat.

2. I have a son named William.

3. I could help with the reception. The Queen should not have to go her entire life without tasting my wings. I also cut the crust off sandwiches.

4. I sometimes drink tea, and once had a crumpet, which I ate incorrectly.

5. I can use the word blimey correctly in a sentence. ("Blimey!")

6. I am an expert on royalty, having often been described as a royal pain.

7. I have seen an entire episode of Dr. Who. I can also quote appropriate lines from Monty Python and the Holy Grail and am prepared to do so in an audition. (I will provide my own coconuts.)

8. I would fit right in overseas as long as I didn’t have to eat kidneys. Or anything the British describe as “pudding.”

9. Beside Camilla, I would look like Princess Diana. A Diana that had to shop in the petite chubby section and wear stretchy pants, but princess material nonetheless.

10. I own a tiara. (Target. $5.99)

Happy Anniversary, Baby!

Since Bill Dear tells me that today is our anniversary, and because we’ve agreed not to buy any gifts, I thought I’d better take several seconds to reflect on the highlights of our years together. And since I’m worse off than a redneck without a rear-window gunrack when it comes to poetry, I’ve decided to create something that leans a little more toward my area of expertise: a list. So here is my Top Ten List of Adventures From Our Eleven Years Together.

In the first months of married life, you totaled both the new car and my new husband. Insurance covered them both, but it turned out that replacement parts for theToyota were easier and cheaper to come by than parts for your knee. I expected to do a little redecorating when we got married, but it would have been less expensive just to buy you a nice recliner. And if you pop me with that cane one more time, so help me you’ll be using it as a designer toothpick.

A few years later we totaled the Toyota again – this time together, which explains why the Toyota dealer turns off the lights, draws the blinds, and puts out a sign that says VOLKSWAGEN whenever we drive by.

We survived the Great Rice Krispie Treat Incident. The year I was going to make homemade goodies for Christmas gifts, you left me alone while you went for a grocery store run to stock up on provisions. When you left, I was measuring cereal into a cup. When you returned, I was covered in a marshmallow and Rice Krispie coating, my hands were cemented together like mortared bricks, and the telephone receiver was attached to my hair like a possum baby clinging to its mama. You took the blame for leaving me unsupervised, a random act of kindness I could appreciate more if every Christmas you wouldn’t bellow, “If you’re making cookies, I’m calling 911!”

We bought a Queen-sized sleigh bed. Otherwise how would we fit two boys, three cats, a Dachshund with a diva complex, and the front half of a Labrador in one place to watch Who’s Smarter Than a Fifth Grader on Thursday nights?

You joined the Baptist Church. Who else would forsake the energy and excitement of the Pentecostals and the quiet dignity of the Lutherans to spend eternity singing the first, second, and last verses of every hymn?

I lost my job. I went from a liability to an expense faster than Batman can double park the Batmobile when my office downsized, an event that affected our bank account much like the Grand Canyon influenced the terrain in Arizona. You suggested clever cost-cutting measures such as selling the children to gypsies. The gypsies brought them back, demanded a full refund, and refused to pay a restocking fee.

You introduced me to cultural events to broaden my horizons. Now that I’ve heard him sing in person, I still think Leon Redbone is missing some teeth.

We merged closets. I didn’t know that when he's angry a man’s jaw muscle really jumps like a Jack Russell terrier like the romance novels described until I suggested you put all your belongings in the coat closet in the front room.

You got a dog. For someone that lived quite successfully in a pet-free bachelor pad for eight years and the quiet company of cats before that, bringing home a big, black dog was like inviting Godzilla home to sleep on the couch--and walking him through the streets of Tokyo every night at seven for exercise.

You became a GPS for my entire family. When my sisters and I got lost trying to get home from an amusement park an hour away from home and called you, giggling hysterically, from a restaurant where we stopped to consider our plight over plates of sugary snacks, you successfully directed us home by phone. Any other man would have hung up and changed phone numbers.

Green Thumbs and Dead Mums

People in these parts are fraught with distress and alarm about the drought just because the lakes and rivers are drying up, ecological conditions are becoming unbalanced, and a bad case of static cling could start a wildfire that wipes out the entire southeastern kudzu crop. The last time we had a drought like this it looked like General Sherman was the official state gardener.

I’m just excited that everybody else’s yard looks like mine now. If it takes a green thumb to make things grow, I have thumbs the color of root rot. So far this year, I’ve murdered a fancy bamboo plant, a hearty pot of mums, and a Venus Fly Trap. To be honest, the Fly Trap was self-defense. I didn’t like the way it rubbed its leaves together whenever I ladled my hips into my stretchy pants.

Needless to say, my evergreens aren’t. My dandelions aren’t dandy. My weeping willow just sniffles and wrings its hands. And the Queen Anne’s Lace along the driveway has been demoted to Lady in Waiting’s Pompom Fringe. Even under the lushest conditions, the Black-Eyed Susans set the color scheme for my yard.

I once worked in a building that was destroyed by fire. There were two plants in my office, the kind that people always swear that you can’t kill. Thanks to my careful ministrations, these two fellas were well on the fast track to the happy flower garden in the sky. Then fire struck. Emergency crews responded, and the firefighters fought valiantly, but the building was ruined. The charred remains were enveloped in the sickening smell of smoke and standing water. Once the air cleared and the scene of desolation covered the parking lot, a large, heroic fireman appeared, gingerly carrying something he had unearthed from the rubble. As he drew closer I saw his arms were full of glossy foliage, coaxed into rebirth from the water of the firemen’s hoses.

I know when I've been beat. I’ve killed a lot of plants in my time, but I never had any that called 911.