1. I am friends with the Pope. Pals. Buds. Homiest of Homies. On…uh… the Sacred Spacebook 
so, I’m his North Star, and he’s my Cardinal Effort (I’m not really, but that would be really pope-dope, and I grew up Catholic so I get to make jokes because I come from a long tradition of doing so and I can use the Church for object lessons. This is a Cautionary Metaphor. I humbly offer it here for the ben-a-dict-efit of all (#boo #aStretch).
2. Anyway, I posted this status update and the Bishop of Rome commented on it in a way that made me look a little Vroom-Vroom. Nothing I couldn’t banter back. Just a little zoomzy, you know, kinda a bit racy..? #nervouslaughter
3. but it just so happened that my friend David Beckham (not THE David Beckham…this is ANOTHER Mr. Beckham. I have not linked him because he’s very shy and he said I could use his name but not link his page) …wellll – Mr. Beckham “liked” the post. So I hoped that our dear Pontiff’s good natured and spicy fun using me as humor’s sacrificial lamb wouldn’t be taken amiss. I don’t want anyone thinking I’m a silly filly. Also notable was an additional “like” by Mr. Beckham’s friend Arthur Miller (not the playwright – he is no longer with us, but Mr. Miller the distiller is).
4. BTW, the post was something random concerning gardening, or life on the farm; like about Oats or something. No. Not my friend John. As an aside, I don’t talk about John anymore because we got into an argument about copyright infringement so I put Mr. Oats in one of my filtered groups (not Mr. Oates, he’s AWESOME!). Mr. Oats ALWAYS has an opinion and so do all his friends and frankly; I am CONSTANTLY getting sucked in and it’s a TOTAL time waster and before you know it, sure as donuts make your keyboard sticky, you’ve ka-spacebooked away your practice time.
5. Well, if you add all your Squa-squa-networks together, it just ka-escalates … so don’t go thinking that things are any better on The Google or Twitter or anything. It’s not. You have to show some restraint. Which brings me back to my story.
6. My friend Michael Jackson (no! not THE Mr. Jackson, although I know how it would be easy to be confused, because my friend has a warped sense of humor and posts profile photos of THE Michael Jackson and Inspirational Quotes about just looking at ‘…the man in the mirror’ before judging others. All that so that you can get your guard down and then he ruins it by posting some gross haiku like: do you wanna see, what I can do, baby girl… to your P.Y.T. ) – yeah … this friend got pretty bad himself in my post. His Holiness (or “Eggs 16,” as we call him during bowling) had already started the ball rolling and back and forth we went about me “sowing my wild oats” and then the ante was up when Mr. Jackson had to say something dirty about a plow and then all hell broke loose. I think friend pope made one more comment, and that was all good old MJ needed! Thank goodness no one made a dirty comment about Mr. Oats!
7. But see, I’ve been hoping that David Beckham would interact on my page for forever! So I was in panic about the post going in this snurly direction. I mean, I like saucy references to farm equipment as much as the next person – but you can’t go back and re-filter posts! Privacy Controls at the Sacred Spacebook are CRAP! I think it’s some kind of Advertising Related Conspiracy or something, although Mr. DJ Ranger Den (that’s my Old Man) thinks I have the paranoia. But I am sure you, oh Fair Fourth Wall, do get it about wishing your friends would be on Better Behavior and consider that like Mr. Miller the distiller seeing and liking your post because of Mr. Beckham’s news feed – you have a friendship with people like His Holiness as well. God can totally read your comments.
8. But on I go with Damage Control! I say “ha ha… I kinda shut the barn door on all THAT” or “we could argue about this till the brown-chicken-brown-cows come home” or something silly-yet-jokingly-validating to Lighten the Mood. It would have worked with Eggs, because he gets Family Values and would have reassessed my concern for the whole congregation of Postal Participants. Usually, I can trust MJ too. But something was off with him today and he kept going WAY over the line, taking the post in The Wrong Direction. And by then I was fearful that I was Offending People.
9. Example. I’ve been worrying for months about my great-great Aunt Berniecey Telulah McMegaphonezalo (not an actual aunt. She might know the pope though). I had concern that she and perhaps other members of my family would see some of my more unsavory friends posting Heavens-Knows-What on my page or making Unsavory or Controversial Comments. And I feel bad, like I am ashamed of my friends. How dare me!
10. In support of a dear friend of mine, Winslow, I liked the International Alliance of GLBTNinjas (this page blogged about here for Entertainment Porpoises only) page a couple months ago. I was afraid of Raised Newsfeed Eyebrows, but did it anyway – because we should be proud of our friends’ and support them when we can. But I feared conservative family would sanction me for my interest and support of “alternative” lifestyles – although I have to say, for the people living them, alternative to WHAT? Alternative to being yourself? But then there is the counter-fear of offending my friends with The offense of the Offended, therefore offending people who just want to see LOLcats and Gangnam Style (you know you wanna watch this again ……).
As well, if you tell people you’re into Ninjutsu, then are you, really, in fact, truly interested in Ninjutsu? Or are you just interested in it like hipsters are interested in the Zombie Apocalypse and flash mobs? Are you just jumping on a bandwagon to say, “hey I’m cool because I support THAT…”? Such things prey on my mind. But I know that even with a light sneeze, I am sure to offend someone merely by being ill and posting about it – as I am in this meta-metaphor being an attention seeking sneezer who is not sensitive to people with REAL illnesses and people may come to Question the Path I may take to the recovery of my common cold. And really, what makes MY cold more common than YOUR cold?
11. All of my friends, however, were included on my innocent post discussing farming. It was actually intended for the interest of David Beckham (again not the football star and I also meant Mr. Miller the distiller, not the playwright) and my ex-boyfriend’s old uncle who actually is an Amish farmer and ventures onto the internet sometimes (he isn’t an orthodox man, and who are you to judge what people do in their spare time??). But it felt weird to worry over what these two might think of the degenerating morality in Michael Jackson’s comments (how could I possibly “like” a person like MJ when he made such RUDE comments? What was wrong with me?!). AND to worry about a wide cross section of people varying from my ex’s Amish uncle (who I shouldn’t even be CONCERNED with, OMG! why am I even FRIENDS with an ex anyway???), to Auntie Telull-lie, to poor David Beckham, to a Mr. Oats who probably wouldn’t even see the post but if he heard about it would know I had friends of “Questionable Nature” AND that I was filtering him!
So I deactivated my account for the good of everyone and the good of Farming and the good of Family Values and Progress and indeed, America and also World Peace too – and the children and all things green and Lasting; and when I decided to creep back onto the Spacebook, I deleted the post Post-haste-ily even though I was upset about doing so because it started out with such an interesting cross-section of people liking and commenting Upon it … and at the beginning I was successful at bringing it out of Yucks-ville. I was proud of that. I haven’t posted again until recommending an album for a friend (that’s the truth!) and I live in fear that someone will ruin that for me (also true…)
But at least some of us are mutual friends with the Pope. My goal was that as diverse as is our audience, we “get” that just because we are engaging in microbloggery, we do not need to act like we are raised in barns. Which is rather funny because as you have probably gathered, you cannot trust that Human Nature will not escalate these problems even though you can Wholly See that some conversations are really meant for more Private Eyes.
