What’s this all about?

I have decided after much deliberation to kill my Facebook account. We have all thought about it at some point and some of us have even DONE it, to varying degrees of success. Whether it be the raged out “Fuck him/her/everyone!” method or the more common casualty to the constant privacy settings adjustments, we all have our reasons.

I have seriously considered this many times over the years, but what usually stops me are the people who I communicate with exclusively through facebook. I wondered “but what about what’s his nuts or who’s her tits that I used to hang out with?” and how many good times said individual and I had over the years. How would I carry on without my worktime chat buddies or my endless supply of friend minutia that is the news feed? But then…I thought about it again.

What about all those 3am drunken chat sessions, embarrassing posts, and ofcourse the friending fests that come only when one is surveying the human wreckage that is their social life. I probably wouldn’t miss those. I am not one to worry about what future employers think about what I put on facebook, as I work for myself. But as time goes along and the less interwebs savvy become hip to “that there facebook thing” I have gathered some family members, clients, and people I generally prefer to communicate with in controlled circumstances, not willy-nilly as the FB allows. This on top of the privacy lunacy (like there is such a thing as privacy on the internet!) never ending political flame wars I prefer not to see, and certainly the TMI moments we get just about everyday from people we are “friends” with. Nope. Fuck it. It’s too close for missles, I’m switching to guns.

So here is my plan: I have exactly 200 friends as of today (4/2/11) and I am going to unfriend one friend a day for the next 200 days. I will write a little post about said friend and post a screen grab of their profile page (obscuring any relevant stalker info for their “privacy”) and then ceremoniously shit can our FB relationship. I am not going to set up an order for who gets canned in what order other than that the last person on my friends list will be Drew, my faithful Hetero Life Partner and fellow evil-doer. Other than that it is up to my mood and discretion, which if you know me at all is a wobbly, wobby mire o’ muck to predict. I will be posting a link everyday to the next casualty (on the day after) on my newsfeed, so those who are getting unfriended can have the added benefit (or dismay) of reading what I think about them and maybe hit me up with some contact info if they want I should talk to them still.

As a beginning I will post a link to this blog entry to my facebook, so that those who might not wish to be subject to this can opt out (see FB I learned something from you, always Opt Out, never opt in!) that being said I may not actually have 200 friends by the time I start this, all the same 200 days is my deadline.

OK! I appreciate you reading and if you made it this far you maybe one of the last ones I let go. Comment if you please, I won’t expect it, but it is always an added bonus.

Cheers,

Curt “your soon-to-be-ex-FBfriend” Fitzpatrick

Slapshot fatlip

Dear Kristie,

Man it has been years. I keep meaning to get out to one of your fights or atleast touch base with you but I think I am suffering from acute social retardation. I know you are a freakishly busy lady as well so that doesn’t help. I am sure it will happen at some point, just a matter of when.

I can’t remember exactly when I first met you, but I am willing to bet it was shooting hockey pucks on the street. The first thing I though was “is that a girl out there shooting?!” the second thought was “holy shit, that broad can skate!”. I was always a fairly terrible skater and puck handler, like Frankenstein on wheels. But I remember playing around with you pretty much forced me to be better. I also recall living vicariously through your hockey play exploits as there was no way I could play given my lack of experience in the game. I remember us working on your wrist and slap shot, not to mention shooting hoops, chopping wood, tossing a baseball around, pretty much any kind of sport like activity. It was a pretty good time from what I can recall.

I think I pretty much lost track of you in highschool. We moved, and then I started to go to central a lot. Then I graduated and ran from Parchment like it was on fire. BUT, I did follow you from afar. Even though the internet was just really getting wide acceptance I remember one of my first searches in google (after I gave up on altavista) was for “Kristie Tafil + Hockey”. I think you were playing in Minnesota, and I remember being surprise that you weren’t playing for the men’s team. The way you used to make those kids fall over at the Annex made me fairly certain there was no way you weren’t going to do the same to them at the higher levels. But well, sexism being what it is, I kinda knew that it was unlikely. Frankly, I think it was kind of unfair to the other ladies you were playing with. If you could push a guy my size on his ass that easily, one shutters to think what would happen to a 5’ 120lb lady. I talked a lot about hockey and sports because I cannot think of them without you being part of that thought.

I know it probably all sounds corny, but after talking to you recently I had a pretty big sense of pride in you. After all the shit you have been through, and all the millions of hurdles in your way, you have become quite an admirable person, though I think I never doubted that would happen. It seemed very fitting to me that you now work for KPS, and I remember when I was heading through parchment one day, and I was certain I saw you in a squad car, my first though was that it probably wasn’t you. But then, I though OFCOURSE it was you!

We have chatted a little on here, but I assume unlike me, your live is busy doing more meaningful things than hanging out on fb. In either case I am going to send you my email address, and badger you for yours. One way or another we will get together and play the remember when game, and you can fill me in on all the cool shit you have done over the years.

Today was a great day, but tomorrow our FBfriendship will end,

Curt

MiniMonkey HO!

Hey Zach,

My ol’ minimonkey assistant. You are probably the youngest friend I have on here, and a guy that is rather savvy on the interwebs, so that means a few things. One: even when I unfriend you if you wanted to track me down I could not escape even if I were so inclined. Two: You are constantly meeting oodles of people so one friend off your facebook profile will have very little effect. And finally 3: I met you earlier on in your life, so I may have done just enough damage to your brain to give you a hankering for it for the rest of your days.

You being young also makes it difficult to tell how smart you are. I mean you pick things up like you have been doing it for years, and you talk and carry yourself in much the same manner as friends of mine who are twice your age. At this point I just assume that is how they are making kids, well one half of them anyways. That is the other thing, so many kids I meet lately are morons. I mean the level of brazen stupidity amongst the kids I encounter makes me want to move into the woods and build a bunker to avoid the inevitable apocalypse that will happen when one of them gets elected to higher office. On the bright side it makes you look like Einstien/Dalai Lama. Which may be accurate, I guess we will just have to see.

I know you are like in the jungles of Thailand right now, doing your thing so you may not get this, but I will probably see you on gchat and give you the link anywho. I am already following your blog and keeping up with stuff there, and obviously you are ever-present in my gchat, so yeah. You get the boot, but well you know where I be.

Today was a great day, but tomorrow our FBfriendship will end,

Curt

It's a Jersey thing

Dear Ann Marie,

You and Matt are gittin’ hitched! Now I have to admit when I first heard about this my reaction was “aren’t they already?” this is not because I haven’t been paying attention, but more that I just assumed marriage had happened while you guys were sleeping or something, like by osmosis or some such.

When I first met you I was uber apprehensive. Matt means a whole hell of a lot to me, and I have a tendency to be disliked universally by my friends girlfriends. I guess it is mostly due to me being an asshat, so I just had to kind of cross my fingers and hope.

I will say first off that it wasn’t a true test of my abilities as your accent immediately disarmed me. It’s funny when they do Jersey accents on tv they are grating and annoying for the most part. But yours was just pure charm. I know that is a rather shallow thing for me to say, but I am willing to admit I have a weakness for accents, and I assume most people do.

That being set aside, the way you reflected in Matt. I have known the guy for a spell, and with the time he had been gone I had kind of crystallized his memory in my head, so when I saw him again with you there was a noticeable tint to his personality. I was already pretty sold on Matt, but the softening in his character wears well on him.

You are incredibly funny, and also in possession of a great character…not to say you are a character, but I am fairly sure you played off some of that character for the little spell I got to hang around you. You and I never connected on here really, but since you are getting all hitched to my buddy, you are irreparably linked to me for the foreseeable so, unfriending is no biggie. All that said, I loath me some weddings, but I am going to try my damnedest to get out there to see you guys get it done. Even if I do miss the chance I will definitely be visiting you all sometime in the near future, I need to try me some more NY soonish, after all, you guys are there, and there is pizza everywhere.

Today was a great day, but tomorrow our FBfriendship will end,

Curt

Swashbuckled

Dear Sarah,

I am pretty sure you are the only member of the Lee’s Honor College to speak to me, ever. Not that the rest of my friends are stupid, far from it, but one would expect a person of you education to have better sense when it comes to choosing who you talk to. I have to admit being in class together was a pretty big bright spot for me. It was kind of like talking to someone from another country. I know that sounds weird, but your personality, diligence, intelligence and candor coupled with your freakish interest in honest-to-goodness nerdy stuff blew my mind.

Girls claiming to be nerdy has become so pervasive that memes have sprouted up mocking the trend. But you my dear, you are a nerd in the best possible sense. You are smart and dedicated to your studies and potential career. Your interests include; dressing up in fancy garments, helping out illin’ varmints, and climbing faux summits. You like sci-fi, you wear functional clothing, you laugh and smile with abandon. These things to me put you in the highest order of nerd, which is a distinction worth respect.

I was pretty damn nerdy myself growing up, sadly I have become far too traditional these days to still lay claim to the title. But its meeting people like you that give me wonderful flashes of what it was like, and make the posers with their ironic shirts, huge glasses, skinny jeans and sissy hair seem all that more ridiculous. I will greatly miss following your news feed as I have enjoyed many of the items you have posted, but hopefully we can find another way for me to steal some of your awesomeness.

In anycase I assume someday your maker movement personality will take over and you will be building and curating some massive collection of the worlds coolest shit. This is obviously not to mention the skills you possess as an artist, which as always are rather stunning.

Today was a great day, but tomorrow our FBfriendship will end,

Curt

Rawrrawr...er hem.

Dear Sarah,

Whup Dude! SO, way back in the school days, I remember distinctly seeing your drawing of a spider, and one of a Marlboro pack. They were dark, and aggressive, and pretty awesome. Much like your cohorts of the Coven, you are fairly impossible to nail down for any significant amount of time. You out in public life seems such a strange contrast from what I remember in school. You almost always seemed about half asleep, and barely present. Now knowing a little about your social life, it all becomes clear. But back then I just assumed you were the typical, apathetic, gloomy art student. Your work seemed to back this up, at least the gloomy part.

You have this kind of dynamic energy to you. Obviously these are just my impressions, which are admittedly limited, but here we go. I think first of all most of the magnetism your personality displays has something to do with that aggression in your art work. When you talk and interact you are fast and sleek, quick with laughter, but it always has a kind of hidden meaning to it. One never quite knows if you are laughing with them or at them. That kind of uncertainty tends to draw me in. I like a challenge in conversation, and more often than not you seem more than fit for the task of verbal combat.

I have probably spend more time seeing you float around a room than actually talking to you. You tend to sprinkle the room with conversation, like a permanent hostess to a party that is everywhere. I know I will be around this again and again, but it never really stops being entertaining, if not occasionally frightening.

Our Facebook interactions have been fairly tame as can be expected in contrast to the IRL talking. I like seeing what the coven is up to and as you are the last on my list of the group I will no longer be privy to all your various escapades. I guess this means I will have to go out more to witness them in the first person, and I am pretty ok with that. I fully expect the entire Coven to show up at the Unfriending Party in October, since given the rather pedestrian nature of most of my friends we will need a little spice to the mix.

Today was a great day, but tomorrow our FBfriendship will end,

Curt

Flutterby

Dear Caitlin,

While immediately I am not too worried about removing you from my Facebook because I see you fairly frequently, I know it is probably only a matter of time before you quit this town and disappear. This gives me pause, but all the same, everyone has a time, and yours is today.

I first saw you when you used to come in to the café in the am. I am now assuming this was before class. I never spoke to you because you always seems so immersed in your work. I thought at the time that you were just really diligent in your studies, but as you have now informed me most of the time it was cramming, which endeared you to me a little more.

I didn’t speak to you until I saw you with Sarah, so I had an excuse to be cavalier about meeting someone new. If I remember correctly its was a brief encounter, but the tone was set, and now I was free to nod at you to my heart’s content whenever I saw you around.

You are a hard one to sum up. Everytime I have come into contact with you, you seem like you have somewhere to be, as if you are constantly in high demand elsewhere. Conversely, you always seem eager to converse, and when I am talking to you, you seem 100% engaged in the conversation. For a guy like me it’s a flummoxing experience. I am the type of guy who gets all butt-hurt when someone answers their phone while I am talking to them. As antiquated as that feeling might be these days, I can’t really help myself. The overall effect of this is that I never quite know what to do with my hands when I am talking to you. I fidget, and talk in spurts of babble, and oneliners as the next moment you may have to rush off somewhere else. What this ends up meaning is, when we see one another it is just a download of random information and pleasantries, then it is off to something else.

The impression I get from you is that you are a fiercely caring, and warm person. You clearly put others before yourself time and time again, and your world view is of the “most people are inherently good” vein. When I have managed to corner you for a more dedicated conversation, the feeling I get is that I am the only person in the world, and that you are honestly interested in what I am saying, and what that means. It is sort of intoxicating as conversation goes, kind of makes it tough to walk away from when all is said and done. I have stretched out conversations with you that I should have let die, because you had somewhere else to be, it’s embarrassing for me to be that interested in talking, but I am ok with it.

In either case it has been interesting, and I am sure that I will continue to see you about town for the time being, now I just have to make an effort to actually talk to you in a manner that is more conducive to my method of communicating. Perhaps flash cards?

Our facebook interaction has been more or less the typical “hey whattayadoin” half drunken nonsense I have come to expect from myself, so I assume we can both live without that. I have other means of contacting you, so the loss is not too traumatic.

Today was a great day, but tomorrow our FBfriendship will end,

Curt