The Littlest Penguin

On Facebook, Politics, and Status Messages

Friday, September 11th, 2009 | internet, rants | 17 Comments

Recently I broke one of my cardinal rules: I posted a political opinion on Facebook. And now, gentle reader, you get a rant.

Not that I have issues with other people stating what they believe in their profiles and status messages – by all means do. But when I joined Facebook I worked for a college and was not often sympathetic to their official stance on certain social, religious, and political issues. The campus could be a little bit like a fishbowl, and though I had (have) very few students and faculty on my friends list, I decided it might be better to exercise care in what kind of information I put out there. Also, ideologically, I’ve been a lot of places in my short life and know people all over the spectrum. Maybe it was one part fear that kept me from saying anything that would upset old conceptions of what I think. Maybe I just didn’t want to deal with the inevitable postings calling me an uninformed lemming of a liberal. Or worse, someone ignoring me all together.

Back in college I posted on a forum called The Ooze (no, I won’t link it) that was supposed to be a safe place for discussing the Church in the 21st century, specifically the Emergent Church. A lot of nice people on there, one or two of whom I even met personally a time or two, but eventually the trolls got to me. I couldn’t handle working on what I considered a well-worded and calm post for 30 or 40 minutes just to be brushed off with a “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard all day” ten seconds later. Worse was checking back on the thread a day later and realizing that no one had found my post worth the time to respond to. So I stopped going, stopped posting, stopped asking my questions in the forum and decided sitting around with two or three friends and a chai latte or beer was preferable to sitting in front of my computer agonizing over why some total stranger didn’t think I was worth their time. I rarely posted on forums after that, aside from the Order of the Stick forum’s silly message board games. Stabbity Death really doesn’t lend itself to political debate.

Part of me thinks that keeping my thoughts to myself is a little self serving and dishonest, though. Why should I let people think I’m something I’m not? They knew me once, and they liked me enough to find me on Facebook, so why not let them know me now? So the other day I responded to a status message posting about the health care reform debate. One of the hottest button issues I could have touched. Really, I should have known better. While the guy whose status message is of a similar mind to mine, and one of my old college mates complemented me for my presentation of a view counter to someone else’s in the discussion, I ended up angry and ultimately fighting a very intense desire to make a verbal attack. But this isn’t Facebook, this is my own personal blog. I still maintain that an email from an unconfirmed source claiming to be a congressman doesn’t count as a reliable source. Even if the email is legit, we’ve watched congressmen and women distort the facts of this issue for their own gain. Do your own damned homework. It isn’t that hard. Fox News isn’t a reliable resource, either. Hell, no ONE news or information source is. Cross-reference for crying out loud. This is the digital era. If you’re on Facebook you have the rest of the internet at your fingertips, too. Bills and proposals are easily found online. Lots of respected professionals have blogged commentary on this issue. Google is your friend. If you have issues with my argument, address them. Don’t discount or ignore me because the only thing you zoomed in on was my “liberal” source and not my actual argument.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, last night I posted a vaguely political status message of my own. Now, my big thing in the health care discussion is that no one has been treating it like a discussion. All I’ve seen is a lot of sensationalized coverage of town hall meetings, congressmen and women throwing insults across the aisle, and mass emails sent from God-knows-where about how we’re becoming a Socialist state or a Communist regime. Thank you for your fear tactics, whoever you are, but could we please set them aside now and talk to each other like civilized human beings again? So my status read “Ginger listened to the president’s speech and had some ice cream before bed. Here’s to hoping Obama was able to inspire a more informed, civil discussion about health care.” Maybe the president was able, but it appears I sure wasn’t. Trog posted a very even-handed response about how Obama addressed all the highlights of his critics’ problems with the idea of health care reform. But then an old youth minister of mine chimed in saying “Giving that much to the government is scary.” He’s a smart guy, and I don’t want to discount his opinion, off topic though it kind of was, but that feels like bait to me. And I took it, some. William took it more. He didn’t give sources, which is a little bit of a mistake for folks like William and I, but he isn’t a person who does research of some sort every day like we do (or I did) and probably doesn’t place the weight we do on sources. So again, I don’t want to discount his opinion, but I do want to know what kind of info he’s working off of. Not that it matters, because he shut the conversation down. Without responding to my response trying to tease out his sources, or at least better details on where he’s coming from. Yes, William got sharp with him. No, I’m not going to censor my own husband, though I do think I’ll serve him up a nice ‘I told you so.’

I still think that in both cases I posted a legitimate question that was ignored, and that really irks me. Maybe I should go back to keeping it to the blog, though some angry part of me wants to take every stupid opinion poll and sign every petition on Facebook just for spite. Maybe I’ll just post a link to this rant on my profile.

Why Windows makes no sense.

Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 | Ubuntu, rants | 6 Comments

Next week 700+ undergraduates return to campus to begin yet another year of college. Along with them come their laptops, fresh from a summer without a firewall. So in preparation, the IT department asked us all to run Windows Update this week, even though our computers are defaulted to having the updater run by itself, automatically.

So I ran it. On all 5 of the library computers I interact with in the course of a normal day. Want to know what happened?

First, you had to download an update to Windows Update. Because for some reason it didn’t run that automatically.

Then you had to run the updated Windows Update and get an update – Service Pack 3 to be exact – and wait nearly an hour for that to download and install.

Then you had to run Windows Update yet again in order to get all the security updates (and also all the little ET-phone-home authenticator programs they like to slip in with those) that will now work because you have Service Pack 3.

Three updates. None of which downloaded automatically, all of which were supposed to be “critical” to your machine’s functionality and security. Oh, and did I mention that the whole process took about 2 hours?

Yet another factor in the superiority of Ubuntu. Automatic security updates, for real. One-click updates for everything else. Rar.

Tags: computers, Windows vs. Ubuntu

square peg

Friday, July 25th, 2008 | books, musings, rants | 11 Comments

I went to a friend’s book club meeting tonight. Which is not the wonderful intro to this post I’m searching for, but I’m a little off my game tonight. I badly needed a trip to the chiropractor today, but things conspired against me leaving work early to go and now I’m developing a headache. Ah well. Tomorrow I’ll get it all fixed.

Anyway. Book club meeting.

Edie invited me Monday night, which was kind of short warning, but it sounded like something worth trying. Lately I’ve been feeling treated a little too much like ‘one of the guys.’ Seriously. It’s bad when someone who’s known me for more than a year doesn’t believe I own a skirt, much less ever wear one. And another one of my friends wrestles with me like he would his little brother. It’s been forever since someone not on Facebook flirted with me. (And the Facebook dude was an isolated and brief incident.) So I turned down an invitation to learn how to play Warmachine, made a quick purchase of Eat, Pray, Love at Barnes and Noble, read what I could, and went to book club.

And quickly realized I have nothing in common with Edie’s nice book club friends. They were all businesswomen, most of them were wives and mothers. When I get nervous I tend to try to impress people so they like me, and the only way I know how to do that is to show that I can contribute something intelligent to the conversation. But that kind of backfired on me tonight. The way many of them talked about religions and faith was uninformed and I was self-conscious of myself around them. (And almost the whole evening centered around talk of religions and faith, or of husbands.) One of them said I must be really conservative because I knew so much about speaking in tongues! (I know nothing about that, just one weird little fact I dropped without thinking!) Some of them were well-traveled and that put me a little at ease, though not totally. I’m always afraid I sound like I’m bragging when I talk about my trips, even when it makes sense to mention them in a conversation. I just…

I dunno. I don’t fit with the guys. I don’t fit with the girls. Where the hell do I fit? What kind of niche does a theology-debating, ethics-reading, globe-trotting, food-loving, tomboy, gamer girl, sci-fi, steampunk, archives ninja-penguin fit into, anyway?

Tags: book club, books, Eat Pray Love

good and bad

Thursday, February 7th, 2008 | rants | No Comments

One of a couple of posts floating in my head today, but first because I think it’ll help me detox.

Annoying things

• Neighbors who park in the driveway
• Cats that won’t let you type
• Valentine’s Day
• Not being able to stay on pitch
• Neighbor who throws trash in my part of the yard
• Missing most of the Lenten dinner
• gamer “munchkins”

Nice things

• Tea with milk and sugar
• Cats who won’t let you type because they want to love on you
• Emails from old friends
• The final verse of next Sunday’s anthem
• Being wanted at Montreat Music and Worship Conference
• Being wanted at the Southeast Playgrounder’s Meet-up
• Liturgy in general, beautiful ritual in particular
• movie night plans

Ok, I think I feel better now, if only just a little bit.

You do not have the right.

Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 | church, friends, rants, theology | 10 Comments

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Presbytery,

Show me what in Scripture or Theology gives you the right to deny a godly man and a gifted pastor the ability to use his gifts because of how he was born. You fear schism, and schism is indeed evil. But so are theological cowardice, ecumenical bullying, and excluding someone from Christ’s table. I cannot decide whether the letter I am about to write you will be scathing or whether it will exhort you to be brave.

Random thought steming from a Tuesday conversation

Friday, February 23rd, 2007 | church, musings, rants, theology | 2 Comments

I want to know why people who enter the ministry are always looking to plant churches, and never looking to find a congregation willing to revitalize itself. Church plants usually “steal” members from other congregations at least as often as they attract the so-called “unchurched. ” Which means that Ms. or Mr. I-Just-Graduated-From-Bible-College-and-Think-I’m-Hot-Stuff is, in all reality, killing small, established congregations that just need some new blood to make them strong and willing to do the Work of the Kingdom again. But the mentality can be so selfish… “this little plant of mine needs to grow, we need talent, we need support…” No one thinks about who they’re stepping on. Granted, not all small congregations are willing to accept change, and many would rather die out than actually do Kingdom work. But I think the small churches are the best place to incite change in the Church catholic, the best place to do ministries of healing, solid discipleship, and friendship. And I’ve seen them, the ones willing to listen and change and work. They do exist! I’ve even seen congregations of different movements / denominations work and worship together for each other’s common good! So I want to know why we’re not teaching our young ministry majors that it can and should be done. Or have the bulk of our Bible Colleges bought into the Willowcreek and Saddleback mega-church models so thoroughly that they can’t conceive such an idea?

I stand corrected.

Thursday, February 15th, 2007 | landlord, rants, stress | 6 Comments

I received an eviction notice in the mail today. Suspicious timing, don’t you think?

All done with this.

Wednesday, February 7th, 2007 | landlord, rants | 7 Comments

Guess who emailed Code Enforcement about their landlord’s unwillingness to fix the hot water heater today. I hope the office ladies enjoy thier hot showers tonight, cause with any luck, tomorrow’s gonna be a really bad day for them.

getting better

Saturday, January 20th, 2007 | apartment hunting, fun stuff, landlord, rants, stress, work | 4 Comments

Well, the stairwell light is still dead, as are all the other lights my landlord pays for, but my hot water is back on after nearly a week. Yay!

The job at the university fell through, but that’s ok. I’ll keep poking around and maybe something even better will show up.

Still apartment hunting, and frustrated by delays, but I have a lead on one I can afford and the property manager seems really nice. He promised me a call once the place I was interested in comes available in the next couple weeks. And I’ll keep looking too.

And this… this is just neat.

rough week

Thursday, January 18th, 2007 | landlord, rants, stress, work | 3 Comments

Frustration with the landlord.
Chaos at work.
Delays finding new apartment.
Hard times with friends.

And there’s still 2 days left before the weekend…