Love it or leave it

What's that smell? Can you smell that? Does anyone else smell megamarketing? Anyone feeling like a marketing tool? Or simply a tool?

At the risk of sounding cynical, I submit to you that most everybody is selling something on Facebook. Their brand, their personality, their view of the world, their passions, something that says something about who they are and what they're all about. That's fine by me. But from the very beginning I've felt that Fb is something someone created in their own image and everybody else has to adjust their image accordingly. Fit the circumstances, make do. It's the Fb way or the highway.

Now the highway is growing in width. It's growing in reach and going places it hasn't gone before. And we're being taken along for the ride. For a ride. At least that's how many users feel like. That if it's been hard to control your privacy from the get-go, it's becoming almost impossible. Will every page you visit somehow connected to Fb soon follow, record and telegraph your every move, automatically, unless you take certain steps to prevent it from doing so? What if you forget? Forget to log out, clear cache, cookies, history? Exit browser? Switch browser? Switch computer? It makes me feel quite paranoid just thinking about it.

Will all be revealed? I don't know of a soul who would want to share every single click with the rest of the world. What's the matter? Got something to hide? Oh everyone has their guilty pleasures and morbid fascinations. And everyone has a right to privacy. And yes, some have connections, secrets and associations to safeguard. They shouldn't be public by default. My toys aren't your property even if you own the playground.

I probably got it all wrong. Misconstrued poor Mark, misunderstood the altruistic intentions, blew the marketing thing way out of proportion. But you know what I'm thinking? If it's not like that, why does it feel like that? Should innocent fun and sincere networking make you uneasy, feel like this much work, like trouble? Wanna know what else I think? I'm gonna say it anyway. That bearded German might have missed the mark every now and then but he was on to something with the reification stuff. We'll not only sell our brand on Fb. That ship has already sailed. We'll each and every one of us be a fleet marketing an armada of stuff without thinking twice about it. (I for one can't stop thinking about it). And we're gonna do it for free.

Nude and improved

Disneyland, or World, he couldn't decide, so maybe it's all over the place, ooh, that would mean Disneyland Paris, too, just around the corner, is not just for kids anymore, if it ever was. 

To ramp and vamp it up, there's a new adult ride, courtesy of Ellora's Cave, my alma mater of erotica, as seen in The Huffington Post.

Moebegone

Have you heard the news: We're all gonna die! No? No wonder. There is a whole industry out there, several actually, to negate the reality and inevitability of death. Mortality is still at a steady one hundred percent, but you wouldn't believe it watching and listening to the Merchants of Eternity. For the sake of brevity, I will call them Moe.

Why the sudden moebegone? My firstborn was very quiet after a visit to the cemetery. Then: "I don't want to die, Mom, and I don't want you to die, or Dad to die." Without going into a deep philosophical discussion, I tried to explain that I'm afraid we'll just have to, but if we take good care of ourselves and each other (and if we're very, very lucky), we'll all still be here fifty years from now. I didn't promise not to die anytime soon and I'm glad I wasn't asked to.

That calmed my child some, but we spent the rest of the car ride in silence. Back home the kids started playing all business as usual. They're children; they're gifted that way. They don't wallow in a past they don't yet have, they don't trouble themselves much with a future they cannot envision. As for us adults...

You're not doing yourself any favors thinking about dying, not all of the time. But avoiding the issue altogether may be even worse. It's bad for you, but it's big business for Moe, and he'll do everything in his power to convince you that you don't have to go. Death and taxes; remember that ol' maxim? If you can evade and cheat on the latter, why not on the former as well? Moe wants you to give it a try, to give it everything you got.

So we embalm ourselves alive in the hopes of taking ten years off. Wear what our daughters wear and giggle at the 'Sisters?' nonsense. Drive at 50 what we dreamt of driving at 15. We'll still be fifty, but who's counting. We certainly aren't, and we wish everyone else would stop crunching numbers. They're only numbers, right?

Your back and knees start suggesting you might be mathematically challenged, but there are all kinds of ways to shut them up. Medicine, religion, science, philosophy. Pick one, pick each and every one, have a field day, throw in a parade, and Moe will try to see it doesn't rain. Keep pushing those clouds away and ten years from now, or fifty, when you know you're a goner, you'll find yourself standing in the receding tide watching as the mother of all tsunamis approaches.

And you'll be pissed. Think about the last time you went all-out two-year-old and multiply it by a thousand times. That is how pissed you will be. You will feel cheated. You purchased all the antidotes your money could buy and it didn't make a lick of difference.

No use calling Moe at that point; he won't be in. He's cashing in on the new crowd. They haven't heard the news yet: We're all gonna die!