Francine

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Facebook Addiction

Today at the gym I decided that I was going to give up Facebook. Not permanently, of course, but I felt that my compulsive status updating was becoming a problem that I needed to get a handle on. I figured if I couldn't stay away from Facebook until 5pm this Friday then I really do have a serious internet problem.

Of course, here I am sitting at my computer, blogging away. It's like morphine to ease the pain.

I thought it would be easy to avoid after a couple of hours but then I realized it was a friends birthday today... I thought. I wasn't sure if April 1st was really her birthday but I remember it being posted on Facebook. I could go on and check but I stopped myself. I ended up emailing her and asked if my birthday wishes were on time (which they were). On a side note, she is one of two people I know who were born on April Fool's Day - how unfortunate.

I was working today, editing at home. This can get tedious and boring at times so mid-afternoon was feeling pretty lonely in my little, home office. Emails were not being responded to and I wasn't getting the response text messages that I have been waiting for. Then, a friend wrote and asked if I was on Gmail chat. Wha? I had seen that little box in the corner of my screen but I never paid much attention to it. Wow, this could SAVE me! Within minutes I had 4 separate chats going with friends also bored or stressed with work!

Clearly, there are plenty of ways to waste time online. I had also decided to give up MySpace (which is not difficult because the userface SUCKS!), and Googling my own name. I wish there was a way to find out who is Googling my name because apparently various people have found pictures of me that I was not even aware of... scary. I would go and find these images myself but, again, I banned myself from doing this until Friday.

I was tempted a few times to go on Facebook again. I even typed in FlickR.com but immediately closed that window as I realized its power as a gateway social website.

Things were okay until now. I came home after a shoot to edit and I discovered that, like snacking, going on Facebook is particularly tempting late at night when you're tired. There's no one left on Gmail chat, everyone's gone to bed and I've even lost hope for that late-night, drunken text message.

So here I am, waiting for my images to process so I can burn them to disc, wishing for some entertainment other than another Friends rerun. I think I am going to have to have an extra long session at the gym tomorrow...

Monday, March 31, 2008

March in Summary

March started off a bit slow and dull. I came back from Zihutanejo somewhat refreshed and very tan. Things seems good but boring and then....

My friend died, a loved one got diabetes, I was assigned to shoot a musician for a magazine which then declared bankruptcy, I met a ton of people at a photo reception where I got hired to shoot a party at SXSW, I went home to Boston for the funeral and met with old friends, I flew to Austin where I worked and partied hard, got some pictures published on rollingstone.com
http://www.rollingstone.com/photos/gallery/19395688/sxsw_2008_bands_and_fans_descend/photo/17/large/
and elsewhere, met some rockstars (who I didn't know at the time), stayed up all night at the Blender party before my flight back (via Denver!) at 7am, slept in a really awkward position the whole time, slept, slept some more.... then I went out with some Massholes to drink hard liquor before, on and after St. Patty's Day, met a real Irish drunk who kept saying "fer FUCK's SAKE!", had a slumber party with my friend passing through from London, saw another friend pull off some fantastic standup comedy with a big high school reunion to follow...

(inhale)

...then I came back to New York and got hooked up at a Knitting Factory show where I picked up the hard drive that I had WON at SXSW (!), shot a casting, had a rockin' night at the Crystal Castles show at Studio B, hung out with a hot basketball team and looked at local celebrities at Todd Barry's birthday party, went to an AA meeting with a friend just for fun, had a college reunion brunch, went to Queens and danced with an inflatable man which led into dancing at a UCB dance party which turned out to be yet another acquaintance's gigantic birthday party, had a kick-ass photo shoot with the Orion Experience and then shot the Diffa event where I ran into another photographer that I worked with years ago.

Oh, and my high school's drama teacher found me on Facebook. No, its not like THAT. He was always buds with the kids and we now have 14 friends in common - he was a COOL teacher. I love Facebook.

Now I am home editing and wondering what April will be like. I wonder...

Now I have to ask, those of you who found this blog by Googling, "white girl, fat ass", is this really what you wanted to find? My post titled, "White Girl with a Fat Ass", is a reference to my friend's blog of the same name which is geared towards weight loss and charity fund-raising. Just curious. Let me know if you came here looking for porn and still found this entertaining.