I had a nice little text chat yesterday afternoon…

Unknown: Its up 10
Me: Great! I’m selling it all.
Unknown: You should !its chris Did you get my pic
Me: Nice to meet you chris. I did not get your pic.
chris: What your age
Me: I’m legal
chris: Whats your name
Me: You don’t already know? I’m hurt.
chris: Just tell me
Me: I don’t think so.
chris: I know this the wrong number now but are you woman or dude
Me: You first.
chris: I am a men!!
Me: I’m glad you added the exclamation points. Otherwise I would have had doubts.
chris: What about you
Me: I’m a man, baby.
chris: You be cool ok ! Have a good week

I commend Chris for being a good sport and apologize for not being a woman.

I never did get the pic.

Photo by: daryl_mitchell

This is reason #2394801928 why I hate Facebook: They spam me, then they rub salt in the wound by making it extremely unpleasant for me to stop receiving the spam. They do allow me to stop receiving the spam, but at the cost of alienating myself from my Facebook-using friends. The details:

I am not on Facebook. I joined in the fall of 2007 and quit on May 5, 2010. (I’ll spare you the “Facebook is evil, kill your account now” rant.) I even went through the complete permanent account deletion process. I have *no account* on Facebook. (If you can trust Facebook to actually follow through, which is a rather big if.)

So, I’m not on Facebook, but pretty much everyone I know is. And these people schedule events on Facebook. Some of them even want to include me. Now, Facebook conveniently allows you invite people not on Facebook to a Facebook event. This is actually handy. It allows people on Facebook to include me on their Facebook event invites without having to send me a separate invitation. But, like most everything else, Facebook abuses this feature. Facebook considers adding the email of a non-Facebook user to a Facebook event as an invitation from the event organizer to the non-Facebook user to join Facebook.

[Now, I never used this feature. Perhaps Facebook tells you that by adding an email address you are inviting the person to join Facebook. They probably do. But, do they tell you all the ramifications of this action? I bet not.]

An invitation doesn’t seem that bad. However, this is where Facebook decides not to play nice. If you (God forbid! What are you thinking??) decide NOT to join Facebook after receiving an invitation, then Facebook sends you periodic reminders via email that someone has invited you to join. (Surely you must have just forgotten to join 9 month ago!) Note that this is an opt-out feature, not opt-in. I get reminder emails because someone else provided Facebook my email address. An unrequested solicitation to join your website is spam in my book. (Though it is legal). So with that event invitation, my friends are really signing me up for Facebook spam. Lovely.

It gets even better… If there is a conversation about this event, Facebook helpfully sends you (the non-Facebook member) all the comments via email. Again, this *is* actually a helpful feature. But! Again! Facebook abuses this. Facebook treats these comments as an invitation to join Facebook from the person who posted the comment. Now you get periodic email reminders from Facebook that friends of friends have “invited” you to join. People I don’t even know. People I’m pretty sure never intended to invite me to Facebook.

Now, Facebook allows you to opt-out of this nonsense. There’s a helpful “If you don’t want to receive these emails from Facebook in the future or have your email address used for friend suggestions, you can unsubscribe.” message in the fine print at the bottom of the email. (Thus making the spam legal. There’s also a “Learn more about this email” link. Clicking on it (http://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=17151) lands you on a page with a “There was a problem reaching the FAQ you requested.” message. Nice.) But note that “or” clause. That’s the source of this particular grievance with Facebook. You can opt-out of getting these invitation spam emails only at the cost not being able to ever receive event invitations or friend invitations from anyone, ever again (see details below).

Now, I will not be re-joining Facebook, BUT I do want to know if someone wants to connect with me or if someone is inviting me to an event or is tagging me in a photo. By linking the “don’t send me invitation reminders” with “don’t send me any email through Facebook at all”, I have to choose between complete Facebook silence and getting reminder spam.

While complete Facebook silence is appealing, I’m not willing to cut myself off from well-meaning friends, so…I’m stuck with the spam. Thanks, Mark Zuckerberg.

Fun side note: One of the reminders I get is “from” someone who I’m pretty sure would be happy never to see me again. Now I find this amusing (though the first time this happened I thought it was puzzling until I read the email), but in other circumstances I might not want to be randomly reminded of certain people. The only way to not get these random trips down not-so-happy memory lane is to cut off communication from all people through Facebook. The all-or-nothing option here could be more than just an annoyance.

tl;dr: Facebook sucks.

For reference, here is the text you have to agree to in order to unsubscribe from the spam invitation emails:

Receiving Emails From People Through Facebook

From time to time, people may send emails to you through Facebook. Examples include when they invite you to an event, tag you in a photo or add you as a friend. If you continue, you’ll no longer receive any of these emails. Also, Facebook will no longer use your email address to generate friend suggestions for you and others. We’ll still keep a secure record of your email address so we can make sure you don’t receive these emails.

Ban Facebook graphic credit: David Harthcock via Gizmodo.

On Craigslist.

Craigslist is still a bizarre place (both people and interface), but despite that, it works. I’ve found the last two places I’ve lived via Craigslist. Both were/are awesome.

So there. Craigslist doesn’t always make me cry.

Now…Weird Al:

I am using craigslist.

This happened.

Me:

I’m interested in some more details on the house for rent you listed on craigslist. Most importantly, where is the house located?

Thanks,
Aaron

The response (4 days later, red was their color of choice):

Hello Crane,
Thanks for your interest regarding our House. The 2 bedroom is still available for rent, we renting this house to a responsible and neat person family who has the fear of God that can take care of the house as his or her own. Well our house has been for sale before my wife advices me to put it out for rent that’s why we put it out for rent.do get back to us just for me to know the level of your interest.
Best Regards

Indianapolis, September 2010

Indianapolis, May 2010

4/10/91
I don’t think I’ll ever write a novel. I am too brief and succinct. Essays, short stories and poems but no novels. I hope that will change because that is really what I want to write. It is interesting my interests. I say I want to major in chem, math/computer [science], physics but then I want to write poetry. [[Unintelligible sentence redacted]]. But I guess I’ll never major as a writer. That seems to me to defeat the purpose. Writing is from the soul and heart and experience not a grammar book or even a book of poetic techniques.

What about women – [[list of specific women (girls) redacted]]?

Thus says my almost-17-year-old-self, and my almost-36-year-old-self laughingly agrees and wonders how I have changed so much and so little and wandered so far.

What about women, indeed.

 
Mari Evans, from Nightstar 1973-1978

The audience:
                    (dog, God)
         you

My dog is bored
God already knows
And you,
              you aren’t even
   here

But the words
  they can’t be kept
             in
They fall out
                   again and again

Perchance you hear
Feel the vibrations
Despite                   distance

Entanglement—
                the quantum
                                  bond

I’ve told you
                    my
          life
One hundred times over
Walking              round
           my house

Indianapolis, March 2010

But I am but a score and fifteen,
Not yet old.
I can see you just fine.
I whisk you away despite your resistance.
For now…I win our battle.

Indianapolis, January 2010

But as I got older, snow meant long commutes, and shoveling became work that hurt my back. It wasn’t fun anymore, and I stopped looking forward to it.

But now, I don’t have a commute, and my shoveling responsibility takes me ten minutes if I really stretch it out. When I realized the downsides were gone, I wanted snow again. However, it wasn’t shoveling that I looked forward to now. Now, I wanted to create snow sculpture.

Snow fell in January, but it wasn’t good snow sculpture snow. I was disappointed. However, the latest snowfall was perfect: wet and heavy. I had my chance. I just needed to figure out what to make.

Back in December, when I had my snow epiphany, my first thought was a HUGE snowman. I was thinking seven or eight feet tall. Something with real presence. But I changed my mind after seeing the snow duck photographed by Kirsty Hall. I wanted to make something different.

I didn’t really have any good ideas though, so I did what any modern, social networking-savvy nerd would do: I asked Twitter and Facebook. Here are the ideas in the order received:

Snow pin-up girl
Oscar Meyer Weinermobile
yellow snow penis
skull (referencing a Dude Craft snow sculpture)
a Calvin & Hobbes tribute (see this, which is awesome)
snow plow
René Magritte
Leonardo da Vinci
snow columns topped with either other snow art objects or found art

I was still considering a snow duck, and the Magritte suggestion inspired an idea of a snow pipe with a sign saying “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” Not a bad list.

I rejected the first three because I didn’t want to be that neighbor. Skulls really aren’t my thing. A little too morbid. And while a Calvin & Hobbes tribute would be fun, it’s fundamentally just more snow people. I didn’t want to do snow people. I loved the “snow plow out of snow” idea, however. That made the short list. Sculptures of real people, especially the apple in front of the face, seemed a bit too ambitious for my first effort. So René and Leonardo were out. I liked the idea of snow columns and the potential for placing a snow duck and my snow shovel on them. So that made the short list as well. As did the pipe, since I love that painting so much.

Instead of choosing, I decided to try all three ideas. I started with a snow column. I had a bit of inspiration with this one and changed the plan. There is a small, plucky little tree sapling in my front yard. It had gotten bent to the ground with the weight of the snow. I gave up on the idea of the column being relegated to a mere pedestal for some other piece of art. Instead, my snow column would prop up my friend.

I figured a snow column would be easy: a shaped pile of snow. That’s why I started with it. I was wrong, so wrong. Snow columns are hard. My snow column ended up not being very tall or all that column-ish really, but I like it nonetheless. Here it is propping up my little tree friend, the friend who resisted winter so fervently he never even let his leaves fall:

Lean on Me

At this point, I decided to pass on the snow pipe, but I was still determined to make a snow plow. The snow plow was easier than the column. I improved my technique. I made a big pile of snow slightly bigger than the size of a plow (there was shoveling after all!) and then removed all the snow that wasn’t part of the plow. In contrast, I created the column by adding snow. Pro tip: removing snow is easier than adding snow. Next time, the column will be revealed instead of being assembled. I am pleased with how the snow plow turned out. Here it is in all its glory:

I hope you enjoyed my Mighty Snow Sculpture Extravaganza of 2010 as much as I did.

Natchez Trace, Tennessee, May 2007

Ft. Lauderdale, December 2009

Cotton pressed to skin
Desire filling the air
Smiles sharing a start

Indianapolis, October 2009

Ft. Lauderdale, December 2009

Nashville, April 2009

Indianapolis, November 2009

However, as I re-read the poem, I saw that the last two stanzas were different. They were separate from the rest of the poem. In fact, they were the “real poem.” The poem that came out of me in spite of my efforts.

Those lines came differently. They flowed out of me. There was no effort. There was no trying. I just wrote down what came into my mind.

Even with that, I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the last two stanzas. Some tweaking was needed. So I tweaked, and here is the result, the real poem…the better poem:

A Start

Rays of light drifting across the floor
Morning advancing through cottage glass
Golden light in golden hair

Cotton pressed to skin
Desire filling the air
Smiles sharing a start

Indianapolis, October 2009

Looking at the cover art of Paul McCartney‘s 1982 album, Tug of War, something just leapt out at me.  See if you can see it:

Tug of War cover art

That’s right! Those are tetrominoes on the cover! This Hipgnosis-created cover pre-dates Tetris by two years, but for anyone whose played Tetris, the shapes are obvious. They are even in a vaguely Tetris-like stacked arrangement. Of course, the L-shapes aren’t long enough and neither are the I-shapes.  A non-Tetris plus-shape even sneaks in.  But the T-shape is dead on!

Perhaps Alexy Pajitnov, the creator of Tetris, was a Paul McCartney fan?