I have been spending more and more time on Facebook, and learning how it substitutes for actually living your life.

People who hang out there are losers, like me, or else they’d be doing something out in the world. They wouldn’t need to share every thought or meal or wisecrack with a bunch of imaginary friends.

I noticed this a few weeks ago when I spent hours chatting with a complete stranger, based on a shared taste in art and books. I tried to ignore his increasing references to asses. He liked big asses. Which was fine with me, up to a point. After a while, apropos of something, I told him about Max.

He expressed dismay and then excitedly started a list of other people with dead children. He had an impressive fluency here, even throwing in Paul Newman.

I said goodbye and blocked him. But it was my own fault for buying into the imaginary friend illusion propagated by Facebook and all “social media” I guess.

Still, I enjoyed looking at the pictures people posted and I often laughed out loud at conversations with my new imaginary friends. One of them even sent me a package of vintage gloves! She is really smart and miserable: a good description of many of my real life friends, too.

I also enjoy jumping into debates, usually without much consequence.

Tonight, I was upset when one Facebook person I really like expressed his despair over a friend’s death. Lots of people commented on his ‘status’, some offering words of condolence. Others wanted to point out that they had experienced things just as bad or worse. I could see it turning into a competition. I struggled to keep my opinions to myself, even when someone posted a depressing Leonard Cohen song in this thread, as if Leonard Cohen is a good antidote to despair.

Then, someone posted a video of the song “People Who Died” by Jim Carroll. If you don’t know it, it’s a litany of the writer’s dead friends.

I stupidly commented, “I don’t think this is useful, with all due respect.”

This was greeted with righteous fury that devolved into a whole back and forth where I politely apologized but the woman got madder and madder. Her friends jumped in to call me names. One of them said “People are fucking unbelievable!” and a million people liked his comment…including the original “friend” I was defending.

Ooooooooooh, right? When a gang of imaginary people go off  on you, it’s a singular experience like no other. You can smell the feeding frenzy, which takes on a life of its own. It has nothing to do with anything you actually said or did. It’s just people feeling exhilarated by getting to gang up on someone.

I have already payed my dues with malicious strangers. But thank god something happened to steer me away from the tragic black hole that is Facebook.

Meet Cindy Jacobs, a self-proclaimed prophet and right-wing supporter of fellow moron Gov. Rick Perry.

Watch her explain how Rick Perry’s Jesuspalooza broke the curse of “Native American Cannibals.”

Cindy and other members of the Apostolic Reformation movement will descend upon Washington, D.C. with   “DC 40: Forty Days of Light Over D.C“, to do whatever it is they do.

Laugh, but be afraid.

Once upon a time, a belligerent German who I will call “Herr Mengele” decided to send out threatening letters to a large group of bloggers around the word, demanding money for infringing on his ‘copyright’. The bloggers, along with a British online newspaper, had posted an image of some Victorian taxidermy art.

Herr Mengele insisted that while it wasn’t his taxidermy art, he has the copyright to the widely seen images. He included with his overwrought letters a cheap postcard of the image. He also included invoices of up to several thousand EU. He demanded that money be wired directly to his German bank account by an arbitrary date, after which he would sue for damages.

The bloggers were stunned. WTF? Herr Mengele replied to questions with nefarious threats like this one:

With great pleasure will I take you to the Courts, and will just wait a bit longer to eventually get over EUR 56.000 from you.

So you know with whom you are dealing: my ex-publisher NaimAttallah/Quartet can tell you a story or two about me, kicking my shoe ALL UP YOUR ASS if you step on my toes. My friend Jos Smit from Art Unlimited, who prints all my postcards, normally tells people who don’t know me (yet) Fear him !   Or/and interview Henk Schiffmacher aka Hanky Panky (c/o Hells Angels Amsterdam) etc .

Herr Mengele continues to send threats to this very day, and alas, some bloggers were so upset that they actually gave in to his demands and paid him! No one wants a German boot up their ass (despite Sylvia Plath’s observation to the contrary) and who among us wants to incur the wrath of a Hells Angel who is named after a fancy lace thong?!

Herr Mengele also claims copyright to some explicit photos of people with tattooed penises, putting them where they don’t belong (according to Judeo-Christian tenets and my own finicky digestive system.)

The photo above is a portion of one of Herr Mengele’s more interesting pictures, which I have modified for the purposes of discussion, education and satire (as per fair use.) Can you guess what it is?

Gazing upon the most recent communique from Herr Mengele’s “Lawyers,” I must ask myself what David Bowie would do. I think he would say:

Wir sind dann Helden!

Questions, comments, threats?

First of all, I see that I foolishly omitted a blogger rocking the black-hat-with-shorts uniform. This one is called Stylorectic and she just had a baby. She seems to really, really love herself and that makes me uncomfortable. I think this may be the   key trigger of my disdain for certain style bloggers. No one should be so in love with their own self. Einstein didn’t love himself that much!

Then there is the-coveted imbroglio.   Here is a blogger who is an institution, whether you follow her or not. And some cunts come along and start a website with the same name.   Then, they send her a threatening letter, demanding that she not disparage them. Ha!   Let us all support freedom of expression.   Join Team Jennine.

Finally, there is the matter of a strange German man who has sent me an extremely nasty and ominous letter about posting one of “his” images, and then warning me that he’s going to give me a lesson in “RESPECT.”

I will not march to the ovens, Mister Respect! Leave me alone! No one can teach me anything, that has been proven over and over again.

I wish the world would stop trying to make me mad. Even temporarily.