Ten Reasons You Won't See Me Using the Wheel

by Ogg

1. The indispensability of the wheel is greatly overblown. My club, my loincloth, cro-magnon woman—I can reach them all from where I'm crouching, in a pile of my own feces. So why would I possibly want to go over there?

2. If I did want to go over there—and to reiterate: I do not—hello! Look at the bottom of my legs! What do you see there? Feet! They work perfectly well. I am reminded of the old saying: "We don't need to reinvent the feet."

3. It is the same shape as hot yellow thing and also not-hot white thing. By creating wheel you are mocking Great Sky Demon and basically just asking to be attacked and destroyed.

4. Have you ever seen one of those things on a steep hill? Uh, thank you but no thank you!

5. Remember "fire"? And everyone saying that was going to "change everything" and "make everything better"? But what did it end up doing? If you don't remember I will remind you. Things that were normal it turned brown and sometimes even black. And all breaky-aparty.

6. Why don't you have a conversation about where is the beginning of the wheel and where is the end of it. Menawhile i will count hot yellow thing, non-hot white thing, hot yellow thing again, you get the idea, and meanwhile hit things with club and drag woman by hair and get a whole lot done. And oh, you are still trying to find the beginning, aren't you?

7. Wheel works OK on skinny part. But on fat part—it does not work at all! That is stupid.

8. What's next, two wheels? You see what I'm getting at. It will escalate and just get silly. Three wheels. Four wheels! EIGHTEEN wheels!! Ha ha I am just joking but again, you see where I'm going.

9. They say there are no more dinosaurs but do you really want to take wheel way over there and—whoops—find out there are still dinosaurs? I know I don't.

10. Has anyone thought that maybe with a flat edge it wouldn't roll around so much? That, maybe I would use.

Ten Reasons You Haven't Spotted Me On Facebook

1. The indispensability of Facebook is greatly overblown. Off the top of my head, I know that my brother, sister-in-law, son, mother-in-law, father-in-law, next-door neighbor and work supervisor don't have accounts and none are likely to anytime soon. To reach any of these people, I either have to take a very short walk or pick up the phone. None of these people seem to be unduly suffering as a result.

2. My social networks fit into fairly distinct compartments. There are close family, not-so-close family, music friends, orienteering friends, work friends, college friends, grad school friends, faculty friends, neighbors. Mixing them all together would be completely incoherent. (If there are ways to create different access levels so that content is visible to some kinds of friends and not others, then this may not be an issue. But I have not heard any reference to this feature).

3. The thought of being contacted by someone who sat two seats over from me in geometry class in the 1980s holds no appeal whatsoever.

4. I am already easy to locate on the web. Having a unique name helps. Pleasantly, this has not resulted in my being contacted by anyone from my geometry class, and I think it's because of the slight extra effort required to do so.

5. Facebook fosters an annoying bit of innumeracy, namely: as the number of accounts approaches the size of the population, the entire population must therefore belong. Instead, it seems to me that most new accounts are for products, businesses, events, and multiple accounts maintained by the same person, perhaps as a way of dealing with #2 above.

6. My band did have a MySpace page, but having my content surrounded by blinking ads for weight-loss products was so depressing I soon stopped logging in. Maybe Facebook doesn't have any blinking ads, but how could it not?

7. I'm optimistic that eventually, never having been on Facebook will make me an object of envy.

8. A friend of mine was telling me about her Facebook experience - how she connected with an old college friend who broadcasts frequent and detailed updates of, among other things, everything she eats, but how it would be rude to "unfriend" her.

9. The Dear Prudence advice column (to cite but one example) is filled with stories of people who have decided to mess up their lives and their families' lives by deciding to try and reconnect with their prom dates.

10. My job entails fair amounts of data-crunching, database programming, writing scientific articles, and communicating with co-workers by email. All of these things involve typing while looking at a lit screen. When I get home, I seek out - even crave - activities that do not involving typing while looking at a lit screen.