Author Archives: arlynnpresser

January 6, 2011

face to facebook friendship requests

By arlynnpresser

mike castagna came over to the house yesterday.  he saw the index card system i’ve devised to keep track of my face to facebook new year’s resolution.  he had one piece of advice:  do not accept any new facebook friendship requests.  but i couldn’t help myself.

darrell’s style shop in kearney, missouri is my newest friend–i wrote a history of kearney, missouri which is where jesse james was born and where he was buried.  and reburied.  and reburied again. . . . still, i’m sorry, mike–i want the free manicure/pedicure that i’m sure to get when i visit kearney!

so there are 327 facebook friends, mike being number three.  when i first joined facebook, i automatically confirmed every request because i assumed that the person knew me and i would be rude to refuse a hand held out in friendship.  like somewhere there’s a kindergarten teacher who’s prepared to lecture me that we don’t want people to feel left out!

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January 5, 2011

mark zuckerberg and rena’s marriage: a face to facebook cautionary tale

By arlynnpresser

i wake up to rena leonard every morning.  she sees me without makeup.  she knows exactly how i like my morning caffeine drip.  that’s more than i can say about anybody else amongst my friends.

rena works at the caribou three blocks from my house.  i pick up my coffee, i go lift weights, i come back home and turn on the computer.  so i can go several days in which i don’t really have any personal contact with anybody besides rena.  oh, and lisa from where i lift weights.

but i don’t know much about rena outside of seeing her at caribou. . . and being facebook friends with her.  so yesterday, we spent a few hours together.  she did my hair because she’s a hairdresser with her own salon in the city. there were some surprises–

43,869,800 people changed their relationship status to single during the year while 3,025,791 changed it to “it’s complicated.” Another 28,460,516 changed their status to in a relationship, 5,974,574 to engaged and 36,774,801 to married.  Rena doesn’t list herself as any of the above.

 

 

 

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January 4, 2011

my first and favorite face to facebook friend*

By arlynnpresser

eastman returns to oberlin.  he is my first and favorite facebook friend.  i bought him two cartons of marlboro reds and a lighter for christmas.

when i started using facebook, i sometimes went through his friends list to make sure there were no sexual predators stalking him.  after he hit a thousand friends this became impossible.  i am not allowed to post on his page even when i see him tagged doing odd things.  like being passed out on someone’s sofa with a bottle in his hand.

now i will totally mortify him. . .

*tied with joseph, his brother.  there are five great loves of my life and joseph and eastman are two of them.

here is the third try–i am not very good at making videos. . .

next up:  rena tortures my hair!!!! and she blames mark zuckerberg for the demise of her marriage. . .

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January 3, 2011

face to facebook methodology

By arlynnpresser

the index cards are piling up. each card represents a friend and each stack of cards represents a road trip.

but while index cards are low tech, there’s an aspect of this that has been intimidating: buying a flip camera at best buy, figuring out how to upload and download things. i have so much to learn!

and one of the things i learned is that i’m not really friends with elmore leonard. i thought i was but his facebook page is administered by his research assistant greg sutter. does that mean i’m really friends with greg sutter?

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January 2, 2011

face to facebook challenge 324 friends plus one

By arlynnpresser

this morning i received a facebook request from julianne couch who lives in laramie, wyoming.  she is friends with the inimitable and quite dead Mr. Clark (don’t tell him he’s dead, it just makes him fret).  in any event, i asked her if she understood that i’d have to meet her this year if we became friends.  she agreed and allowed as how she might be moving to iowa to make seeing her easier.  what a sweetheart!

this week–

1.  working out with winston chang–this west point grad is show this old lady how to make good on the new year’s resolutions (those five pounds) that i’ve never managed when they were really my resolutions.

2.  my hair done by rena leonard.  she’s a barista at caribou and i get my coffee there every morning. . . but i’ve never spent any time with her at all.

3.  running with lisa jarvis.  i see her every morning at the winnetka community house fitness center.  but maybe we should really be friends.

and i’m mapping out the grand midwestern tour. . . . i leave in a week and a half.  what happens if i don’t recognize people because i haven’t seen them in so long?  i think i have to develop a nice, vague pretense of being farsighted.

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January 1, 2011

face to facebook new year’s resolution–

By arlynnpresser

in order to make good on the new year’s resolution to have an in person interaction with every one of my facebook friends, i have to learn to use (sigh!) more technology–so i made and posted my first ever video to facebook.  so far, nobody has defriended me.  i actually have been rather frightened of that.  

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January 1, 2011

the face to facebook project is underway!

By arlynnpresser

it’s january first and i have just 365 days to meet 324 friends!  i sure hope reggie gholston does not get redeployed to baghdad!  i hope i can get over my natural aversion to aeroflot airlines!

 

step one:  index cards.  i’m a big believer in them.  i’ve been going through my friends and each friend gets an index card.  i’m trying to organize them by geography so i can consolidate.  some surprises:  jeffrey cokefair has apparently disappeared off the face of the earth and steve ware has moved to brooklyn.  also, i’m friends with two newspapers–the winnetka current and the winnetka talk–as well as phototronics*.  i’m not sure how to have some quality time with those last three friends.

step two:  set up an itinerary!  i already have a grand midwestern tour in mind.  a stepdaughter, a bartender, my son joseph’s best friend from high school, a guy who writes operas, my best friend from high school and his wife, and a curious couple from kankakee.  it will take three days minimum for the road trip.  one of the reasons why i think this project is good for me is that i’m agoraphobic.  i don’t like to leave the house and can sometimes go for days without actually talking or interacting in an “actual” way with anyone.  i can sometimes go several weeks without actually crossing the borders of my town.  i wonder if facebook allows agoraphobics to give in to their natural impulses but at the same time think of themselves as very social.  it’s certainly done that for me!

 

*facebook told me that phototronics is having a birthday today.  i wonder if i’m supposed to send an e-card to a photo processing store!

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December 31, 2010

the face to facebook stats 2.0

By arlynnpresser

There are five hundred million facebook users and the average number of friends any user has is 130.  Fifty percent of active users log in every day and I do it before I brush my teeth or even get out of bed. I don’t know how many friends Mark Zuckerberg has but his facebook page lists 2,381,043 people who like him.

Oprah Winfrey says that many people want to ride in the limousine with you, but a true friend will take the bus with you when the limousine breaks down.  And it is the playwright Plautus who said that nothing is better than heaven itself than a true friend.  This is the year I will meet every one of them.

 

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December 30, 2010

the face to facebook project stats 1.0

By arlynnpresser

I have 323 facebook friends.  Two of them are my boys–Joseph and Eastman–and I’m not allowed to comment when they are tagged passed out on someone’s sofa with a bottle of Beam.  One of them is my stepdaughter who is the coolest mom ever.  My father Justin and my sister K.C. are friends.  I have no idea who InDa Loop is–nor do I recall how I became friends with Robert Thater, Aubrey Yates or Brian Brethauer.  I have several celebrity facebook friends–Elmore Leonard, Gilbert Gottfried, Libby Hellman, Alex Beh, MC Kato, Vince P.  and news anchors Joan Esposito and Steve Sanders.   One of my friends has been dead for more than a century, but somehow, we communicate just fine.  Most of my facebook friends are in the Midwest but I’m going to have to do some traveling to Mumbai, the Philipines, Wales, Italy, and Lebanon.  On a personal note, Reggie Gholston, please don’t go back to Baghdad.  I don’t want to have to visit you there.

p.s. it’s actually 324 friends.  Welcome, Nabil!

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December 30, 2010

face to facebook

By arlynnpresser

my new year’s resolution is to meet every facebook friend i have. some are friends from college (gulp, thirty years ago) that probably don’t remember me. some are folks i’ve never met at all–including several people i am certain i don’t know at all. some are people in my hometown that i see every day–yeah, that’s you, lisa. i will have to travel to wales, mumbai, vietnam, korea, and mexico city. i hope federico will make me pizza in sienna.  i want to snow mobile with christy in alaska.  i want azanthiel moon to play music for me.  i will face foster siblings, former employees, old boyfriends, two former girlfriends of my ex, and then there’s all the friends of my kids who have asked me to be their facebook friend without realizing the consequences. . . . .

how many of your facebook friends do you see on a regular basis?  isn’t it weird to find out that someone’s relationship is “complicated”, that they had fish tacos for dinner or that they really like Justin Bieber–and then realize that you know a lot about someone you don’t really know at all?

mark zuckerberg promised me popularity and privacy.  i’m not sure i got either–but he also said i have friends, he said all of us have friends, he said he’d keep me in touch with my friends.  now i’m going to go one step further–and meet my friends.

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