Kwitter

Hello. What you've just witnessed was me taking a break from blogs for the month of January. Not only did I take a break from blogs, I also took a break from social networking sites. Oh yes. And I feel much better for it too. I knew that something had to give when I my drumming tutor told me I was becoming obsessed with Facebook. He could tell I was becoming obsessed because I was checking Facebook on my phone in the middle of a drumming lesson.
So come January 1st I deactivated my Facebook account and did the same with Twitter. The trouble with Twitter is that you can't deactivate your account without deleting it. So I did. I have to say that I don't miss it. Twitter is something that I don't feel I've ever really come to grips with. It's okay for finding out about stuff, but it's pretty unokay if you're not particularly interested in X Factor or Question Time as your Thursday and Saturday night Twitter feed will be clogged up with people quacking on about both. I believe this is called, ugh, 'sofalising'. I'd call it 'a bag of wank.' I can't pay attention to TV shows and use my mobile internet device at the same time. Sorry. So I am no longer a Twitterer, which probably comes as a great relief to people who followed me.
As for Facebook, I bumped into a friend at Forest three weeks ago who asked me why I wasn't updating my Facebook profile any more. I told him it was because I was having a break from it. He replied "To be honest, you were getting on my tits a bit." Which I took as meaning that he thought I was a little verbose and gobby. I liked his honesty, it's made me look at how I handle myself on Facebook. Although that friend has now been deleted from my Facebook friends. There's being honest and there's being a honest. If he don't like it, he can fuck himself*, just because he writes about Forest for The Observer....

I have to say it's all been rather freeing. I've watched films, listened to LPs, practised a lot more on the drums and got through tons of stuff on my TV hard drive. You should try it, and I'll definitely do it again.

Anyway, as for the blog I've decided not to blog as much and change what I blog about. I mean who wants to read another bloody blog about the queue at the bank or supermarkets or the neighbours? I don't, especially when others do it so much better than me. I also won't be blogging as much as instead of working for 8 hours a day 5 days a week, I now work 10 hours a day 4 days a week so I won't have so much time.

But have this, it's great. I wonder what they'd have been like if they hadn't spent the mid to late 70s traipsing around the stadiums of America as Aerosmith's support act but doing more stuff like this:



*Not really, yeah I've deleted him but he's still a sound lad.

Ugh, why do I do it?

Facebook, eh? Facebook. I had a load of Facebook 'friends' from work on my profile up until about ten months ago and then deleted them all off. I was getting sick of all the comments in the canteen about stuff I'd put on there. I use that 'status update' feature just to put throwaway stuff on, not anything particularly to chew over, something to keep me amused and alleviate the mundanity of my job.

Anyway, a colleague of mine was giving me a lift to work during the cold weather and he started banging on about why I was no longer on Facebook. So I had to make up this cock and bull story about deleting my profile (as it happens, every now and again I deactivate my profile just to have a rest from that whole Facebook thang) and that I'd now got a new one and would add him as a friend. I did this, much against my better judgement, but that guy had been doing me a favour all week and wouldn't let the Facebook thing drop.

So now it's started. His locker's next to mine so I have to look at him with his trousers around his ankles at 2.30pm while he asks what I've been buying in Argos (I'd made a throwaway comment about queueing in Argos), what the fuck's it got to do with him? Is he some kind of stalker who needs to know about the minutiae of my existence?

Today there's been lots of giggling and pointing in the canteen about something I'd said on Facebook about Angelina Jolie. You know it was just a joke, let it go, it's not important, get a life.

I think the fact is that most of them use Facebook purely as a means of poking their noses into other people's lives and perving over photos of them on holiday. I've had to delete a blog in the past because some nosey bastard at work couldn't let it lie that I had a blog. He trawled through Rush message boards searching for my profile, he eventually found me and the link to my blog, even though I used a pseudonym. I found the whole thing quite unnerving. Aren't you glad you don't work where I work?