Sanpixee The Alien: Facebook’s Crappy New Design

March 19, 2009 at 7:03 pm (Social Networking) (, , , , , , , , )

It may be for the advertising dollars, it may be for the ease of of programming and managing data, whatever it is – it is not user friendly. Many of us hardened facebookers joined when we were idealistic college students intent on connecting with our friends. We drank the mostly user generated content like kool-aid and seamlessly integrated facebook into our daily routines like coffee and late night snacks. It was a new and improved version of its predecessor Friendster, more organized and relevant then Hi-5 and was free of the overcrowding of creepy, tasteless, bathroom pictures of MySpace.

Over the years the ‘book has been tweaked and prodded with numerous cries of anguish and lashing outs and groups formed to organize boycotts. All backlash did nothing to hinder Facebook’s Blob-like ability to gobble up more and more users from different countries, income brackets, ethnicities and persuasions.

However, the most recent overhaul has destroyed Facebook’s appeal. The new Facebook that premiered in the last week is Twitter-esque in layout and is structured in a way to prod, push and force users to view and comment on content which is way too structured and streamlined for a generation used to control what theuir eyes see, what their ears hear and when and what they type. This updated layout is too neat, too slick and too organized for a go-green-all-for-equality generation.

All in all, it smacks of corporate America. With this new layout’s glossy sheen us users are crammed with more people’s inane thoughts than video, pictures etc. This new facebook is boring and many users are complaining that it is not a layout which encourages anonymous exploration. This ability to anonymously explore and manipulate data is a key component of facebook’s popularity and its addictive quality. By taking away the user’s drive to explore to click and hyperlink their way, ooohing and aahing throughout the information labyrinth that is Facebook, it is fast becoming just another social networking site.

I could say bring back the old interface, but I am a user, with not so many rights. I am not an advertiser and I am using faceboook’s services for free.

But heck I will try it anyways – Bring back the old interface!…. please?!

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Sanpixee the Alien: Rape

March 17, 2009 at 3:37 pm (Mature) (, , , , , , )

The very word scares me…..

There is something so dull and so hollow and so final about that word… like the ripping and tearing of some unmendable thing. There are very few women who are lucky enough to never have been raped or abused. For a woman, with our delicateness and flimsy protection of the ancient treasure which rides high between our thighs, we often fail to acknowledge violations of our trust and womanhood in our pasts.

Have I been raped? I don’t know. My comfort lies in that I am not unique. In my youth I frequently wanted to detach my vagina as one would a retainer or spectacles and place it on my dresser, or better yet in a bank vault for safekeeping. That way I would be safe from the unmendable darkness, for being the only feeble soldier given the responsibility of keeping watch over the Hope Diamond in the middle of a slum.

Have I been raped? Rape as being defined as saying no, then having your “no” tuned out or magically rationalized and fashioned into a “yes”. Yes I have, and this in turn led to me rationalizing and fashioning the act into a circumstance, something that just happened to everybody and everybody had their way of dealing, and if this circumstance were to break me, then what then could I live through, as this could not be the most challenging situation I had to live through.

Mine was in no way as violent and as traumatic as many of my vagina bearers, but is has broken the unmendable – a wound not so fresh, but one that has reached many tentacles over my soul and closed my inner being into a tight fist.

I like sex but do not have it often – pretty soon they figure out that it is my only trade. I want to keep my life to myself, my space to myself, my thoughts to myself – I would rather give than share or trade than share. Sharing is an emotional act and it is easier for me to become emotionally bonded to fictional characters, safely distant characters than to emotionally bond with a living breathing human being. If I have failed my soldierly duty at protecting my temple from insurgents then I must maintain my soul – keeping watch always – and act through a cloak of hugs and smiles.

I hope others share their stories – step out from behind their shame and embarassment – only then will we all realize that we are not unique in our experiences and we have lived and it is only through acknowledging it, that we can heal from it.

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Sanpixee The Alien: Solo

March 17, 2009 at 3:11 pm (Mate-Finding) (, , , , , , , )

Chris Rock once said that we choose to be either single and lonely or married and bored. Having grown up around long married couples and all my friends being on the nexus of single and newly married, this statement has been ringing in my ears. Maybe we can even go a bit farther to add on and question that statement – that being single and lonely, and over 40 – are you a genetic dead end? Are your genes not fit to be passed on? Because the art of finding a mate is an art, hardwired into our beings – independent of looks and book learning – and when the epiphany comes that we have passed up many opportunities to find a mate, then comes the realization that you got lost on the journey, got distracted and the fittest genes – the genes fit to carry on the human race – will continue to survive and perpetuate while the genetic dead ends wither and fade out.

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