A
FRIEND asked me. What is ethical or better--to unfriend someone or
simply wait for the person to unfriend him/herself (by quietly
leaving your list). For me, unfriending someone is pretty much
kicking that individual out of your house. Harsh. Seldom I do that
since mere presence in my house means I allowed it. But there are
times when the person starts to annoy you like a cockroach, so you
offer reminders to behave as per your "rules" since it's
your house, your unit. (Facebook owns the building.) So if both of
you mutually start to irk each other, then I unfriend. But usually I
just let the person take the initiative to unfriend themselves
quietly. It's a simple case of, if I visit a house or bar and I don't
like what's in there or what the host is mumbling about, I just scoot
out pronto. No harm no foul. Done.
I
do believe that an essentially accessible platform/venue like Social
Media or Facebook, newspapers and TV and radio--are meant to gather
people together to engage and dialogue for mutual good in pursuit of
a realizable harmony in this world and to promote good and beautiful
things (not the opposite). NOT to project dominance over the other or
to widen the cracks that divide us. So I freely invite people who
seem to be different from me. Talk. Speak. The road to mutual cool is
never easy. We will argue and fight but we may agree later. That's my
philosophy. But there are also instances when tolerance takes so much
energy and time out of you. Time and energy that should have been
used or consumed with those who are willing to compromise and
negotiate. So unfriend. That's pretty much how I deal with my life,
outside of the internet.
FACEBOOK
and the (our) Wall that we need to climb and later turn into a
bridge. Or why we can't get along? I TREAT my Facebook Wall as my
house--that dabbles as my stage, living room, playground, magazine,
porch, and frontyard. And although I share pics of my tiny bedroom, I
don't share intimate details of my personal life other than I am
Single and Heterosexual. Of course, I openly write that I am born
Catholic, believes in God but not religious, Ananda Marga initiate,
embraced Cherokee Nation, trained by a Buddhist ascetic, activist on
the Left field. And I dated a Wiccan High Priestess and Born-again
Christian and a Communist hardcore etc. Those are already TMI to
some, right? I don't mind you knowing it--but no I am not going to
tell y'all that one or two of those aftermidnight poems were written
for her or her and not her, LOL! "Own" the poem and share
it with your sweetheart, for what it's worth--that's the purpose of
my poems.
I
share family stuff and things that I feel inspire universal good but
not the dirty laundry (which is a normal in all of us, right?)
although our share of "dirty laundry" aren't really that
dramatic comparatively although I am sure dirty laundry in some of my
siblings' house are piling up, literally (especially in Alma's). Uh
huh, but not in mine or in my bro Alberto's because we are both OCDs
(I am talking about the literal, okay?)
But
this is fun, you know. Fun! My Facebook is me.
Serious-acerbic-condescending-highly opinionated. I straddle the
middle so much so that I confuse people which side of the fence I am
with or in. You gotta spend time with me to know--because the truth
is, I adjust my elastic girth as per the world/life's changes
although you can never force me to eat lots of breaded food or
tolerate nasty kitchen sinks piled up with unwashed plates and yes,
no unmade beds! I am a freakin' bedroom boy with a bedroom voice
(again, the literal kind, yup).
Cooking,
playing with Georgia (she's a Belgian Malinois babedawg) and Cyd The
Koolcat, gardening, poetry, my children and family which are REALLY
corny-funny and weird-funny, my insane affinity with the Bee Gees,
ramen noodles, old stuff, hyper corny love songs (except Celine
Dion's). I love these things. Engage me with talk about anything!
Objectivist epistemology, Camus existentialism, how Verlaine trained
and toyed with Rimbaud, history of cinema, Mexican-American War,
Hemingway's life as an ambulance driver, Lorca's Nueva York poems,
Chinese Disco and Compact Disc, South China Sea, Treaty of Paris of
1898, Brexit, the Koch Brothers, the business of basketball and
soccer, China's open door policy pre-Tiananmen Revolt and post-WTO,
globalization and low intensity conflict--I will not back down. But I
can also share redneck jokes and blonde jokes and Erap jokes and
Pinoy brown jokes--as long as you don't go shattering my joke gig
with some politically-correct yarn. I am not politically-correct UC
Berkeley dude, dig? I can also talk about the Kardashians pre-Jenner
amid-Robert, how many songs Taylor Swift devoted to her ex'es which
you bought, and why I'd love to lecture about Paul Simon's catalogue
and why Bob Dylan's "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" is his best
poetry and why Hillary's centrist/polarizing fire fits America's
global order designs, given the times.
I
can talk about Hagood The Snake and the new garden interpolator
Mickey The Bug, or why Russia's Vlad Putin is a misunderstood dude
that the Western media love to hate, or why we have to look at
immigration beyond Mexicans crossing the border and refugees from
Syria, and why kids do love my presence more than their mom (oh
yeah!) There's a lot of things to talk about other than pissing
people off with black and white and red and yellow mixed martial
arts.
My
basic thought about a human being's possible motive about me does not
hinge on whether he'd poison my already poisoned mind or he/she'll
spike my pho with moonshine or Mercury Gatorade--but maybe you will
enjoy my new lawyer jokes and you may love my super-awesome Mung
Beans Supersoup PremiumPlus+. I want to rock with your light and not
emo with your dark, feelin' me now?
Meantime,
yes this is my Wall. If you're getting sick and tired of/with my
ruminations and rants, go somewhere else where there is free-trade
coffee served via gentrification's blood, or in a locally-grown dive
that serves tea from China.
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