Facebook - Now that is Scary.

Facebook - Now that is Scary.

Okay, so I tried to get into my old facebook account to shut it down.  I figured that if I’m not ever going to use it again why confuse people?

I made a typing misstep and got all caught up in their newer security measures.

They asked for my cell phone number.

Great, there is no cell phone number attached to that account because I didn’t have a cell phone back when I got on.

I try to get around the question.

Surely with all the people out there on facebook others have not filled in that particular blank or like me had no cell phone number at the time they started their account.

I tried further.  Thinking that, like other sites, I would receive a reply via email with a way past this mess.

But no.  What they then wanted was my Social Security Identification number.  What does facebook want with my SSI number?  Why are they even asking?

Yes, it is good that facebook has security measures in place but why use that kind of personal info.

If facebook ever gets hacked a lot of people are up a creek without a paddle.

But I won’t be one of them.  Lady E never gives her real birthday out, ever!

Let me know if you find a place with similar games with no friends attached.  I just love those collection and expansion of lands with little or no battles, where I can put the houses and stuff anywhere I want.  But I don’t love them enough to risk the jokers at facebook with giving them my personal info.

One trip down ID theft was more than enough for me.

For you who want out of this madness.  The ways to delete your facebook account are here.

I Won!!! I Won!!!!

I won the Halloween contest over at Goth Gardener.

It was for a Shovel related posting for Halloween.

I wrote a story titled 'The Shovel' over at Thrill or Shiver.

Vain bugger that I am, I took bragging rights for a prize.

I don't need anything else right now.  Well nothing that can be but in a box and sent through the post.

Health and friends can't be put in a box.  And who can't use more of both of them.

I'm going to sit on my winnings and smile the day away.

By the way I wasn't the only winner.  Lucretia's Reflection won for her pictures of Shovels in a Halloween way.  Fun stuff!

Looking forward to more fun again next year.

About This Facebook Game Thing?

So a nice neighbor let me try her Royal Story game on facebook.  She hadn’t played it in so long that even she was lost as to what was going on.  Apparently she had been playing Royal Story with her grandkids one summer when it first came out, but it became TOO time consuming and they all deserted it for fun in the sun.

I worked on the game for about an hour and liked some of what was going on.

The available land was so crammed full of apparently necessary stuff that it wasn’t easily workable.  And it didn’t look good either.

There was a machine I needed but I couldn’t place it for lack of available space.  So that quest was put on hold.

It was a lot of hurry up and wait stuff.  Hurry make this thing and wait 3 hours for it to arrive finished.

Also much of what needed to be done had ‘get it from friends’ attached.  And as there were no friends left to get anything from.  I was stumped there too.

The advertising was in your face.  This is obviously a ploy to make money off of the game addicted among us.  (We will frustrate you until you give us money to start the cycle all over again.  Rinse, lather, repeat.)  I’m not spending one dollar, one dime, one penny on a game that is trying so hard to get me to do so.

They also want you spending all your time on facebook playing.  Morning, Noon and Night!  (Hang with us and you will receive wonderful prizes in just 16 hours, 3 minutes and 47 seconds.)

But these are virtual prizes and meant only pull you further into the game.

I have a life.  I can and will only spend a few hours a day playing games on the computer.


Yet, still it intrigued me.  I do love this kind of collection/expansion game.  For a few hours I was really thinking about getting back on facebook again and playing some of those games.  But I’m not out to spending my days frustrated on games that are just using me to try to make money.

So I’m asking you.

Should I take the time to make a new profile just for gaming over on facebook?

(Say, something like; Spider S. Webb, Black Widow, Freak N. Stine, or Shadow E. Corners.   I got a million of them.)

Do you play Facebook collection type games and which ones do you suggest for me?

Am I asking for trouble if I do try facebook again?

I really do want your opinion here.

Daylight Savings Time

I have a love hate relationship with the concept.  And I still haven’t caught up with it a day later.

For those of you who do not know what it is, I’ll explain.
In the warmer months people wanted to have more daylight time after work to have fun and get things done on their off time.  Changing the schedules of every work place was far too complicated.  So if all the clocks were to be set ahead one hour, everyone would be on the same page and happy.  In the colder months of the year we can go back to the time set about by our rightful place on the imaginary grid covering the earth that rules these things along with the rest of the planets people.  (Longer version here.)

Sounds great!  More time for fun in the sun.  Right?

I am not a sun worshiper.  In fact I hide from it most of the time.  And making me move my natural rhythms messes me up quite a bit.  This also refers to my pets; a dog and cat who like, no demand, to have their meals on ‘pet’ standard time.

I have trouble with time as a whole.  It doesn’t comply with my wishes.  It speeds up and slows down at the most incontinent opportunities.  It puts undue pressure on me.

And on two days a year, one forward and one back, I have to change the time on no less than nine clocks in my house.  (Not counting computers and other devices that fix themselves.)

Yes, that does sound excessive for a seven and a half room house.   But time escapes me if not kept firmly in my face.

So I spent much time changing and dusting off, (I was there already so why not kill two birds with one stone.) the many time pieces in my house yesterday.

But still it gives me hope.  If a society can manipulate time… I may some day get the hang of it or mould it to my will.  Ha, ha!

Well the dog got me up at 3:00AM this morning.  He was protesting the time change on the food schedule with an excessively early nature call, I think.  I was too tired to care as I let him out of the door.

Maybe I hold up false hope.  Time ‘is’ and I must accept that I’ll never get the true hang of it.  Time will tell…

Clarification

Okay let me clarify something here about my last post.

My mother doesn’t tell me what to do or how to look.  (She does express what she likes in her quest for her version of a perfect world.)

I am technically a senior citizen myself.  I have defiance down to a science already.

Truth be told (and I know that you don’t really want to hear this) you reach a time in your life where its not all about yourself anymore.

Your parents are getting older and you know that they won’t be around forever.  You want to make them happy in their last days, weeks, months, years… what ever… of their lives.  (They have enough troubles in their lives already in bodies that are running down.  And don’t get me started about their friends getting sick and dieing off in droves.)

So toning down the Goth stuff when I visit them just to make them happy doesn’t feel like a big thing to do.  (And besides that I’ve ruined way too many of the family photos moments for them in my life already putting my happiness first.)

I’m a Mother and Grandmother myself.  I’d like to have the Addams Family version of a family portrait.  But I also wouldn’t dream of insisting that my parents, husband, kids and grandkids be dressed in a manner that wasn’t themselves.  I just don’t live in an Addams Family type of situation.  Few Goths do.

So: you win some, you loose some, and you let other win sometimes just to see them happy.

I have the rest of my life to do what I want in.  And when you think about it, most of my hours are devoted to my comfort and Gothiness.  The people around me benefit from my happiness in my Goth state.

And those that don’t appreciate it have lost out on what I can give them to enrich their lives.

So I hope that my parents appreciate what I do for them in love and kindness.  And that they also know in their hearts that a loving Goth daughter is what I have been.  And I will always be Goth on the inside, no matter what the outside looks like.  I just don't have to be in your face about it all of the time.

Sorry about that facebook friends

Okay I get the facebook thing.  A little.  But I am not there.

I mean I am there, I have a page, but I never go there to check out my page.

It’s not you, its me!  I am not gathering friends there.  All those many friend requests that show up in my email box end up in my spam folder because I set it so that anything from facebook ends up there.

I am not ignoring you.   I’m not there on facebook to friend you or anyone else.  I don’t even remember my password.  (And I can’t get the old one from facebook because I can’t remember what I put in for security question answers.  I tried.
)

I was on facebook for one day many years ago.  And it took me days to finally come out from under the bed.

And I still don’t get this “Friend me” stuff from strangers that didn’t like my Gothy self but just wanted to win the game of having more friends than their neighbor.  I felt like a dented ping pong ball, always going off to the side.  (Go somewhere else to play and leave me alone!)

And than there was the hate thing.

Personally there were family issues that played into it.  Enemy issues too.  And my mother hit the roof because some family members threatened to out me as her daughter on her page also.

My family doesn’t get the Goth thing.  They stopped waiting for me to out grow it and just let their disapproval show full strength all the time.  They also don’t know about acceptance and forgiveness.  But that is a different subject.

My mother loves me and has a ‘live and let live’ attitude about it most of the time.  But still doesn’t want any negative feed back coming her way.  Her church friends don’t approve.  (Mama says, ‘Isn’t that nice dear, but just leave it at home please.  You can show it to me when I come there.’)

(And yes I am an old lady who still has a mother.  An older old lady.  And Don’t even think about saying it its cute.  I‘ll bite you.)

And what is it with people thinking they can ask me personal questions?  And dissing me if I don’t give them an answer that they like.  (Like, I don’t know you and most of my friends don’t know this stuff about me.  And guess what?  It is none of your business what my sex life is like!)

I didn’t go on facebook to tell all my dirty little secrets either.  (So go away already!)

I did want to get into some of the games there.  Collection and land expansion without the war stuff.  But it was soon obvious that what facebook wanted was my money to keep it going.  And you just can’t get those types of games anywhere any longer.  The makers of these games make way too much money for their games on those social websites.  I still wish that they did sell single player versions for people like me also.

So save yourself some time and stop friending me on facebook.  I’m not at home there.

Someday I may go back and try again with a new page.  But for now my enemies live there and I’m too old to want to deal with that in your face trash anymore.  I have better things to do with my time.  And besides you can visit me any time you like here at my blog if you have something you want to say to me.  I’m here and I’m listening to my accepting friends.

Serious Discussion on the Scary Side of Goth.

I should have put this up before Halloween, but now is better than never.

I’d like to discuss scaring children with your Gothness.  We don’t want to scare them away.  (Well, not always.)

If I’m going to be at a place that will have kids when I’m all Gothed out, I like to be prepared.

Remember: Kindly smiles at them doesn’t always work.  Some see it as ‘I think you look delicious. Can I bite you?’

And filling your pockets with candy for them is not appreciated by the parents.  (And don’t forget the ‘Don’t take candy from strangers’ rule.  Few things are as strange as Goths.)

At times I do have trinkets/toys in my bag to hand out.  But I only give them after asking the parents first.  (Plastic Spider or Skull rings, Fun/spooky stickers, or things like that.)

But talking to them in a calm soothing voice about ‘not’ scary things seems to work best.  But be prepared, questions will soon follow.

Questions like “Why do you look like that?” can be handled in a lot of different ways.  And answering with, “Oh, did my [Insert body part here.] fall off again.  Help me look for it.“  might sound like fun in your head.  But…  Joking works better with adults.  Kids don’t always get the gag.  And confusing them only adds to their fright.

Questions and Answers (Your choices may need to be age appropriate.)

Q: Why do you like scary things?  (Besides the obvious, Why do you like the things you do?  Come back. Most kids hate that one.  They want to understand things.)
A: Some times its fun to be scared.  Having fun with something makes it a lot less scary.  Or.  I have decided to make friends with what scars me so it isn’t as scary anymore.  Or.  Fire Trucks can be scary, but they help people and you’ve learned not to be scared of them.

Q: Why do you like scaring people by how you look?
A: I don’t like to scare others if they don‘t like it.  I’m sorry if how I look scares you.  Or.  On the inside we all look the same.  The outside doesn’t count.  Or.  Even scary monsters are nice sometimes.  Or.  The Fire Trucks thing if you didn’t use it before.

Q: Why do you look so scary if people don’t like it?
A: I like it.  You like other things and dress the way you like.  And the way you dress might be a bit scary to somebody else.

Q: Doesn’t anything scare you?
A:  Yes, of course I get scared too.  We just get scared of different things.  (You can also admit to something that scares you here, but that can open up a whole new list of problems for you.  Pay back maybe?  Kids like to have the power to scare others, but should be old enough to use discretion or someone could get hurt.)

Of course there are also the questions about contact lenses, piercings and tatoos.

Be honest, but not too descriptive.  This child could be a future Goth in the making.

And remember never to suggest that they should get some.  They have plenty of time to make those decisions for themselves later when their parents won’t blame you for it.

Making it fun for them helps a long way toward having a population that accepts our differences and a lot less Goths will be beaten, mocked or ridiculed for their looks that way.