Lent (again)

Next week Lent begins... remember I gave up the 'F' word last year, well I can tell you there is no fucking way I am doing that again. I am open to suggestions though, as if I've posted enough for any of you to have an idea what is my weakness this year.

MySpace

So apparently MySpace has some sort of subliminal tactic they use or something. A few months back there was a big stink among the adults from a group that my daughters belong to, seemed that several of the other members from all around our region were putting up MySpace pages identifying themselves as members of this group and then also providing details about their personal lives that by adult standards were less than sweet and darling or moral and ethical for that matter. I'm a fairly laidback mom when it comes to some of that, kids will be kids, but it's a huge lesson to learn that you can be one kind of kid in one environment and another kind of kid in another (apparently some of these kids think that is akin to hypocrisy... of course it isn't if you are actually two (insert #) different sides of yourself and you don't actually scream loudly about people who drink beer in one personality and do keg stands with the boys in the other... not that an old person like me has had any experience with keg stands or even knows what they are... so these sweet young ladies (with pierced tongues and tattoos and crappy rude little attitudes shocked the adults when the adults read their my space pages and found out they had been drinking and shoplifting (gasp). I don't condone shoplifting or teenage drinking, don't misunderstand, I do remember being 16, I do remember saying I had done things I had only actually just heard about, and I do remember doing things that I knew a helluva lot better than to actually put into writing (my mother always said, if you don't want it on the cover of the Rocky Mountain News, don't put it in writing [this caveat includes photos]), and I do know that while there are girls with pierced tongues and tattoos and are rude little bitches that are perfectly moral sweet darling girls that the majority of girls who are going to the trouble and pain to pierce their tongues at least want the image of a bad girl... and they are going to do other things to promote that image (including publicly questioning their sexual orientation, not opposing group encounters, and claiming to have been "so shitfaced I don't remember" - [oh yea that's another post for another day] - these adults apparently either skipped all of their own adolescent years or ran into Will Smith with his little flashy light thingy that erases your memories and haven't got a clue... okay anyhow I've turned what was supposed to be a short little background set up into a rant... lets get back to my topic... so those several months back, of course some of the adults mentioned this to me, so I got curious and I went to MySpace... my gosh the things those little tramps were putting up, apparently their very sweet involved parents were clueless dolts and allowed them to have a computer in their room and stay up till 4am talking to pedophiles, juvenile delinquents, and their other friends who haven't decided what shocking road they will take... probably in the name of "homework"... and the parents probably never thought to look over the shoulder of their sweet daughter who's email is (paraphrased for privacy) fallenfromheaven028734092@commondomain.com to see what crap she was posting, but I did, I snooped and I looked over their shoulders, and my favorite part of this short forray into myspace was that the parents who were screaming the loudest had daughters who were posting about what a bunch of invasive judgemental sticks in the mud the "adults" of this particular group were. I of course responded that the lesson to be learned is to seperate the pieces of your life for the majority of your audience... know your audience, and know that in myspace your audience is every breathing creature that has the ability to operate a computer mouse. These screaming parents insisted that you cannot see the myspace posts if you are not a member of myspace (bullcrap, I didn't have a myspace, why would I, I already had this blog which I neglect), and a "Friend" of the poster (ditto). So... months later w/o having thought much about myspace since, except to tell my kids "no"... the news starts carrying on and screaming about how perverts can get in and get all kinds of personal information on these little nitwits (boys and girls) who are too naive and cocky to think a pedophile could possibly do a simple puzzle and then also come after them [at least our little half blinded group was ahead of the rest of the city]. In amongst these OMG aint it awful news reports, the newscaster states that they typed in "DipShit High School, Colorado - 17 year olds" and got 8 bazillion hits (actually I think it was closer to 200, but anyhow). And I'm thinking, hey, you can search by school... my previous foray was accomplished by putting in the questionable email address that had been distributed to every parent/member in the state and then going from her friends list to their friends lists, etc. - you know like the old Breck commercials. So I go back to myspace, and I try to search by school, well apparently to search by school you do have to "join" - I have a hotmail account, what the hell... I joined (btw, my myspace page is completely empty and boring) and not 20 seconds later I had some freak on my "friends"... that was creepy... then after a little clicking here and there I found the "browse" page (this is where you can try to find married men between the ages of 16 and 100 (or a segment thereof) that are interested in swinging and are bi-curious and jewish and have an athletic build and vegan diet... yes I was supremely grossed out)... but nowhere could I search for ABC High School like I had wanted. Eventually I found it and I started reading all of the myspace pages for the kids who go to my kids' school - or at least the ones that list they go there... you don't actually have to provide that, but I think most kids do, because most kids WANT to be found. Most of the pages were actually much nicer than the "nice girls" from the other organization... though a few of them were just plain idiots... and most of them (they are supposed to be at a "smart school") were careful about their entire identity... however I had this list by school... there's one id factor, and by age (I chose 16-20) another factor, and then the username might be "kitten", but somewhere in there it would usually say "my name is Kathryn, but my friends call me Kat or Kitty or Kitten" and then amongst the pictures or posts would be "Ms. Smith, you are looking very great today"... so now I know that Kathryn (Kitten) Smith is a sophomore at ABC High and lives in Anytown, Colorado and drives a white Jetta (cuz she has a picture of it on her site). I also have a picture of her, she's blonde, blue-eyed and loves to run cross country... man, Kitten is an easy target. -- If you're wondering at all... my renewed MySpace answer to my kids is NO. And I happen to know kittens parents and all the other stuff about being christian and not having been kissed and not having drank, is probably true, and her parents are probably monitoring her to some extent, but not enough to keep some creep from following her from school in her cute little white jetta to some remote park where she is going to go for a run....ewwwwwwwwwww creepy. Oh so the point of the post, the subliminal thing on MySpace... I am almost 40 years old, have no desire to stalk or id myself to any of these kids, nothing beyond a little parental curiosity (are my kids' friends sluts/nice girls - drunks/teetotalers), and I surfed myspace for hours last night, I wasted almost my entire night, my kids were not even interested in their friends pages, after I went through their school, I looked up alums from my own HS, then after that current students b/c I know some kids that go there (nephews, nieces, friends of my kids)... and then, I finally realized I had become a MySpace Zombie and I turned my computer off and went to watch television, b/c at least a television zombie is less frightening somehow. I think I will have to lock MySpace off of our entire network, it's not healthy, but not until I look up the boys from the baseball team - see if they are creepy little delinquents or nice smart kids, lol. I'm telling you if you want to blog, stay away from MySpace it will suck you in like a black hole in Space... and it's very hard to find your way out!