Maybe it's the witches that don't fit into his stove then?

Sometimes pieces of wood are too big when there's already another piece in the stove...perhaps he needs to play Tetris for a bit? But wood to big in diameter is easy to fix with an axe...chop it into halves or quarters or splinters. If it was too long, then that takes a bit more work (chainsaw or handsaw), and hardly worth it to cut a couple of inches off a log.

My suspicion is that he wants to draw attention to his wood stove--my friend with the strawbale house is always bringing attention to his insulation qualities, his wood stove (cooking and heating), his off-the-grid lifestyle, etc, and doing it on facebook. It's a "who I am" thing, I suspect. Sheesh...what's worse...idiotic facebook posts or me dissecting one idiotic facebook post. "Ohhhh, I've wasted my life..."

I'm going to post this on Facebook, and see what kind of reaction, I get, if any.

Now, this one is just bizarre.



I want to post and ask if we should call 911, but if I did, people would say that I was being a smart-alec (!). What if it was something serious, and he posted on Facebook before calling a doctor? On the other hand, if it's not serious and he knows it, why tell everyone you know about it?

I really don't get this. Does Facebook make people narcissistic, or were they always that way, but never had a forum to express it before? Don't the people who do this at least see their friends doing the same thing, and realize from that how silly it is?

I don't know this guy very well, but here's one from today, from a guy I know better:


I've known this guy since college. He's, frankly, brilliant. Not at all self-absorbed. I can only assume he's thinking "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." I wrote back:


...which is the absolute gentlest way I could think of to illustrate how pointless the comment was without being rude.

This is a problem with me, incidentally. It seems I'm either too outspoken (which people think is rude), or too subtle (and people have no idea what I'm getting at), but never seem to hit the right blend.

The above comment was too subtle. He'll think I'm just being flip or funny, but probably won't see the real point. But I don't know how I could have done it better.

Here's another example of where I think I missed the mark. The Weatherman posted an article entitled "How to Explain Gay Rights to an Idiot". He had absolutely nothing to say about the article, just spammed the link like Chess Fan used to do constantly. I wrote back:


What I was getting at was trying to steer him to the conclusion that "In that case, maybe I should internalize the lessons from this article, and learn to discuss them myself." But I don't think he'll take it that way. By illustrating the point with a joke, he's probably going to assume that the joke WAS the point. Which it wasn't. But if I hadn't made it with a joke, he'd have taken it as a personal criticism, and gotten annoyed. So how do you win this? Or do you?

I just had another stab at making the point to The Weatherman without directly criticizing him. I wrote this:



So, I've criticized the article, and said that it probably didn't make any sense, but also made clear that I haven't read it, and so don't really know one way or the other.

So, he has to figure out from this that he gave the link, and that someone who expressed no hostility to the topic itself, dismissed the article unread. So, if he wants to get his message out, he's got to think of something else, right?

Or does he? I have a feeling that I'm overthinking this, and he's underthinking it.

One from somebody I've never quoted before. Another college acquaintance, and a pretty typical comment:



What makes this one seem funny is that I know if I replied "I'm going to get up and get a Coke", it would seem sarcastic. But if I posted those exact same words as a new thread of my own, it would seem like the most natural thing in the world to these people. Go figure.

I wonder what would happen if I posted the exact same thing she did, as a new post of my own, but appended the words "I thought you'd want to know." Probably nobody would say anything at all. But what would they think?

I posted a medium sized (several paragraphs long) missive about integrated commercials in old shows the other day (i.e. the kind where the characters in the story actually try to work the commercial into the story without breaking for commercial). One guy answered honestly..



I suspect that this is one of the problems with using Facebook for communication, but people usually don't come out and say it. And granted, I can be wordy at times. But the articles that people routinely link to are longer.

I may be spoiled, from hanging around places like this for too long. In the end, writing is a skill, and not everyone has it. Even college grads may not be great at it, if they were science or business majors. Although bare links do get tossed out even here, many of the people here are proficient at laying out a detailed thought process in words, and I might have started to wrongly assume that everyone does that.

Heh, I guess Facebook's not really a communication tool in that sense, Petrosianic! I've just logged in to Facebook today after hardly using it for the last few weeks and I have to say it was good to see what friends have been up to. I think FB is a great way of keeping up links with people, but it's no substitute at all for a good in-depth chat with someone.

The thing is, you could easily use it for communication, but few people do.

If you can't write, that's one thing, but one person I know even posted today about resolving to start writing her blog again next year. You could use Facebook itself as a kind of blog if you wanted to. Post "blog" entries on your wall, and your friends are already there to see what you write without having to make a special trip to visit "your blog".

I guess you can, Petrosianic, but because of the sheer volume of information on the Facebook front screen, I certainly find it much more natural to read small snippets of information than large paragraphs. Personally, I'd rather people post links (to their blog, news items etc.) on Facebook rather than lengthy paragraphs.