FB and Me, reconciling with Facebook

Early Infatuation

My relationship with FB began with an initial addictive phase, kind of like getting your alumni magazine and looking up your class news—what are all those people I haven’t kept in touch with doing these days?

I, myself, never send in class updates. This is because for most of my life I hadn’t really “done” anything. And then, when I finally reached a point of my life where I had done one or two things, I felt like notifying people I hadn’t kept in touch with would be in rather bad taste--on par with the writers of The Obnoxious Annual Christmas Card.

Then followed a phase of relative disenchantment. After overcoming my initial hesitation about being in The Book, due to the fact that I’m not currently enrolled in high school or college, there came a period when The Book was discovered by many more people....

The inflation/devaluation of “friendship”

Not being a particularly socially-needy person, and someone who, throughout her life, has viewed friendship in terms of quality rather than quantity—many second-degree friend requests surprised me. If you have more than 400 Facebook “friends,” there is word for you: friendwhore.

One of my friends, who hesitated to join FB, used the following rationale—if you are my friend, chances are I’m already in touch with you. She’s right, but she's missing something.

The good? There are people in our lives that we have lost touch with, have interacted with on a limited basis or “second-degree” friends--with whom we may have a personal connection. We may not have the time or energy to call or email these people, but it’s nice to be able to keep in touch on a limited basis—thus the success of the Facebook portal approach and 140-word status update.

The bad? FB offers so many new opportunities for social awkwardness. My two FB etiquette moments and personal lows are

1) The friend request from somebody who not only WASN’T a friend in high school, but was really obnoxious and belittling back then, but now wants to sell you their investment “opportunities.”

2) Getting a friend request from somebody you considered a real friend, being excited about being back in touch with them, writing them and they never write back. You realize, so and so never really was your “friend” but just wants to offer you some portal into their life and up their friendwhore quotient.

Slippery slope to Twitterwhore?

Lisa Nova’s video offers a funny take on this tendency.

Now that I am dealing with many people, some of whom are not, strictly speaking my “friends,” won’t inundating them with the inane details of my daily life only confirm what I always suspected—that X (from high school or my circle of acquaintances) really does think I am a loser? And, shouldn’t I be above caring what X thinks of me in the first place?

The FB updates I see tend to fall in these broad categories (feel free to suggest more in comments): navel gazing, “Mom,” industry/field of interest updates, and Don’t you wish you were me/I have 140 words to convince you that a crumb of my daily life is more interesting than your entire existence.

I thought about my own updates and decided they tend to fall in the Mom and navel-gazing category—most likely because 1) I am psychologically predisposed toward navel-gazing 2) my “Mom” existence currently prevents me from doing much more than navel gazing.

Don’t You Wish You Were Me!!!

This category tends to comprise the majority of FB offenders. Now I cannot compete with Pretentious Git, who “is in Bali hanging with Bill (Gates) and Timothy (Geithner) solving the global financial crisis.” On the other hand, ZenMom, who “is enjoying a transcendent moment of motherhood” might particularly grate on my inadequacies/insecurities, since my particular experience of motherhood at that moment might be Nathalie Mason-Fleury “is up to her elbows in shite.”

Has moved beyond categorical statements

More recently, I simply appreciate Facebook for what it is—as much or little as you make it, superficiality, inanities, second-degree friends and all. Yesterday, I was scrolling through the “News” section and smiled to see that many of the people in Atlanta were writing about a thunderstorm. Now I’m Atlanta born and bred. There have been spring thunderstorms in Atlanta for as long as I can remember. There was something comforting about reading homey details such as “is happy that the storm has not delayed their flight” (yet…) or “is planning to celebrate the storm with New York strips and a bottle of Shiraz” As long as it doesn’t cause a power outage, there is nothing I love so much as a good gully washer. It feels like home. For a moment there, I felt connected.

I receive my French citizenship

I dropped by the French consulate in Madrid today and picked up a sheaf of papers informing me that I have acquired French nationality. This included a welcome letter from President Nicolas Sarkozy "Madame, Mademoiselle, Monsieur..Vous êtes désormais citoyenne ou citoyen de notre pays," the Déclaration des droits de l'Homme (Declaration of the Rights of Man), extracts from the Constitution du 4 Octobre 1958, and a copy of La Marseillaise.

I suppose it's fashionable and convenient today to collect citizenships, but somehow I was touched. My maternal grandfather was Franco-American and grew up in France (as did my maternal grandmother). However, due to American politics immediately following the second World War, American naturalization required that he renounce his French citizenship, because of his service in the French army.

When I was a child, I first wanted to learn French because this was the language spoken by my mother's Irish-American/Colombian/French family. I was certain that only my failure to decipher the French language lay between me and exposure to many fascinating adult conversations and secrets. Every Sunday, my mother and her five siblings, their spouses and children were expected for a leisurely, alcohol-infused lunch, the kind with irreverent, salacious conversation, punctuated by multiple courses, ending with salad, cheeses, desert, coffee and brandy. My grandmother was an excellent cook--would whip up stacks of crêpes for Mardi Gras, baked her own bread, croissants and cakes, made her own jellies, candied fruits. She also cooked a lot of dishes that, to a McDonald's-loving American child, were frankly horrifying, such as frog legs, tongue, and bouillabaise.

By the time I was ten, I drank water mixed with wine at these lunches and sucked on sugar cubes dipped in coffee, afterward. While I didn't learn French until middle school, what I did learn, growing up with a large and boisterous extended family, was that you had better speak louder than everybody else or say something clever, if you wanted anybody to pay attention to you.

My mother's family owed much of their financial stability to my great-great grandfather, the child of Irish immigrant parents, who found success as the owner and operator of a string of bucket shops in New York City. Unfortunately, the only inclination his son, my great-grandfather, showed to follow in his father's footsteps was an affinity for drinking and gambling establishments. Other than that, he chiefly occupied himself spending his father's money. Just before the First World War broke out, he went on a European Tour. In Paris, he was introduced to and, soon after, married the daughter of a French count. This was my great-grandmother, whom I knew very well. She came from a family that had actively supported the monarchy (and been punished for this) during the French Revolution.

My great-grandfather eventually died an early death from alcoholism. Meanwhile, my grandfather grew up in Paris, living with his mother, his grandmother and his step-grandfather. Vacationing in Switzerland, my grandfather met and fell in love with my Colombian grandmother, who also grew up and lived in Paris. However, before they could get married, World War II had started. My grandfather was drafted into the French army, fought during the brief time the war lasted for France, then became a prisoner of war in various German camps.

My grandfather finally escaped, but the experience left him with lasting psychological scars--what would be described today as "post-traumatic stress disorder." After the war, my grandparents got married and moved to the US. My grandfather had ambivalent feelings about France, the War and the Occupation. I think he viewed the United States as a new start, a place distant from the painful experience of the war years.

From my grandfather's prisoner of war stories; to the great-grandmother, whose childhood memories included the black crêpe with which her family shrouded the windows of their home, every 14th of July to honor their Royalist forebearers put to death during the French Revolution; who, in later life, proudly sewed a line of red thread on her few formal dresses to commemorate the Légion d'Honneur she was awarded for her work in the Resistance; the very foreign-ness of my French-raised maternal grandparents to me, as a child growing up in Atlanta, Georgia in the 70s--a jumble of personal associations accompany this new, official sanction of the French part of my identity -- and, finally, the thought that, in my marriage to a Frenchman, whom I brought back to my hometown, and, our formation of a family and a company together, I may have closed the circle.

Madrid Blog--We get sued

...for having children

If you are a foreigner and move to Madrid, do not, necessarily expect a warm welcome.

Yesterday, we, or rather

Don Mark Fleury and Dona Natali Manson

***note to Building Association of Serrrano XX, before you lawyer up, do your research. My husband spells his name "Marc" with a "c." and my first name is spelled "Nathalie;" not to mention that my honest English stone mason forbears would cringe at the misspelling of their last name to confound with that of the notorious 20th century serial killer.

received an official communication from the Juzgado de Primera Instancia de Madrid, from one Don Ramiro Blah Blah, President of the Building Association of Serrano XX, a building of exactly 12 units, half of which were owned at one time by his father in law, in which it is alleged

1) "Mark Fleury and Natali Manson" have four children

2) these children own bicycles

3)and roller skates

4) and scooters (Nathalie comment: nope sorry to disappoint building association president man, the Fleury children do not have scooters in Madrid)

5) that these children get up in the morning (Nathalie comment: yep, at 7am during the week, in order to catch the bus--per state-mandated law that my children be enrolled in secondary education)

6) that the Fleury children have been known to run, jump and shout in the aforementioned apartment

7) that the combination of the above results in an indiscernible mix of noise reflecting a most scandalous and bothersome comportment on behalf of the Fleury family

8) the residents of Serrano XX have manifested to the doorman the Fleury family's unlikeliness to modify their troublesome lifestyle due to their "American nationality and customs"

9) If these activities persist, the building association in conformity with article 7.2 of la Ley de propiedad Horizantal 8/1/1999 will begin judicial proceedings to deprive the Fleury family of the occupancy of their apartment.


To the residents of Serrano XX: Have any of you opened the window or walked outside the front door lately? Because Calle Serrano is only being gutted and subjected to extremely loud construction noise from dawn 'til dusk due to the street's two-year municipal remodeling project.

Entrepreneur Diaries I - Pet Psychic

To entertain old friends and colleagues and “épater l’industrie"…An entirely scabrous and fictional picaresque narrative chronicling the adventures of Case, a serial entrepreneur who falls victim to almost every fad in the tech industry.

…At some point in his life, Case decided that he was an ideas person. As such, he sought his fortune in the late twentieth century tech gold rush, with its promise of riches beyond belief, for enterprising, entrepreneurial fellows, such as he.

____________

In 1999, a chance acquaintance with a hippie chick at a bar gave Case the idea for his Dotcom. She was cute and he had nothing better to do. So, the following afternoon, he accompanied her to a seminar at the Mind Spirit and Body Center for Holistic Animal Health.

The seminar was led by a large muumuu-clad Earth Mother type—a pet psychic, or “animal communicator” as she preferred to be called. The incense was getting on his nerves and Chase was sure the animator was on to him, when she asked him why he seemed troubled during the group meditation. He had to think fast to come up with an alternative to the actual horrifying image he'd conjured up--that of being smothered in muumuu woman's ample breasts. However, just as he was planning his exit, she read a testimonial that piqued his interest.

Dear Gwendolyn:
During our session on October 5th, while talking with my cat Gandalph, you said that his spirit appeared as a Christmas tree. I couldn't believe it. Christmas was Gandalph's favorite time and he often slept under our tree.

One year, he brought in a mouse he had hunted and put it under the Christmas tree with all of the other presents. Because he loved Christmas so much, I put up his very own miniature Christmas tree on my nightstand in the bedroom.

Shortly after Gandalph's passing, the lights on the tree began burning so bright one night they actually woke me up and I touched one of the bulbs, burning my fingertip. The lights went out before I even unplugged it. I replaced the string of lights that evening. Thank you.…

As it turned out, Gwendolyn and her colleagues were eager to take their message to the Internet and Chase succeeded in borrowing money from his family to hire the two coders who responded to his ad on Craig’s List--Duane and Sanjay.

This was 1999, talent was scarce. Recruiting wasn’t exactly an option. You had to take what you could find, and even they might be picky. You had to sell them on the dream.

Case: So let me see, Duane, you actually worked at Pets.com, Wow! How was that?

Duane: Yeah man, it was great. We were gonna rule the world.

Case: So why exactly was it that you left?

Duane: My manager and I had differences of opinion about the strategic direction the business should take.

Case: Umh?

Duane: They wanted me to actually show up, Dude. Fucking slave drivers, can you believe it? Always on my back checking my code logs during my telecommute time. I’m a creative type, inspiration comes in bursts. You can’t control that man. I’m sure your psychic would know that.

Case: She’s a pet psychic.

Duane: Yeah, well whatever man.

Case: [meekly] Well, I’ll want you to show up.

Duane: It’s 1999 man, there’s the Internet. Heard of it? We telecommute. Anyway, that’s what’s on the table. Take it our leave it. [Breaks out a joint, lights up and takes a drag]. Want some?

Case: Er, no thank you.

Duane: Come on man, it’s very important to me that my employer understands my lifestyle. [Case reluctantly takes the joint, puffs and coughs]. If you don’t cough, you don’t get off.

Case: [turning to Sanjay] So Sanjay, do you have any questions about our business model?

Sanjay: Does your business model include an H1-B visa for me?

Case: Um yeah, sure.

Sanjay: I am not com-for-table with our target market. In Bangalore, nobody would pay to talk to their pet.

Case: Listen, Sanjay, this is America. There is an endless supply of fruitcakes out there.

Sanjay: What has this got to do with the Internet?

Case: Many of them are beginning to penetrate the online space in search of their own kind. The online human psychic market is pretty much cornered, but many of these people have pets. I tell you, the animal psychic market is ripe for picking. For the right person, that is. The kind of person who has the vision and the cojones to go out there and stake a claim.

PR at JBoss

A little shout out to Chantal Yang who, along with Laura Kempke and Sarah Conway, was one of my main point people and the "professional" side of PR at JBoss.

For a little background, JBoss began a concerted effort at professional PR at the beginning of 2003, with what was a significant monthly retainer for us at the time. These three women worked for us, while at Schwartz Communications, where Laura Kempke has remained. Laura was the head person on our account for the duration of our contract and Sarah and, later, Chantal were our account managers. Chantal stayed with us until the end, even working for a year at RHT post-merger. Sarah and Chantal are now at Page One PR. I could not have worked at JBoss part-time and raised three children during my tenure there, without relying on the help of these three very capable women.

In this post, Chantal shares her opinion of what it was like working for us, and some of the factors that made PR a success at JBoss. She doesn't say it directly, but I'm sure she and her colleagues got plenty of "I can't believe you let them get away with saying that." The irony is we engaged Schwartz Communications based on one reference and one reference only--Miguel de Icaza and Ximian, which was getting a lot of publicity at the time (2002) for their OS project Mono, which Marc felt was completely irrelevant. Back then, you couldn't open a trade or business publication or read about an industry award without seeing Miguel's smiling face and an accompanying halo of flattering elogies--"diplomatic", "takes the high road," "Wants OS to succeed to help the third world," "Linux Savior"...and so on. We decided that we, too, wanted the "Miguel" PR treatment :)

It will take a PR genius to give to give you a product and a "voice" if you haven't got one, however, based on your project and community's maturity, the right PR team can do a lot towards analyzing and amplifying your message, and taking it to places you might otherwise not be able to reach.

Madrid blog--Marc and The Guardia Civil

My husband has a known tendency to voice his opinions, without consideration for tact, preferably when this will incur negative reprisals, but this time he outdid himself. Marc had a run in with the Guardia Civil--Spain's federal paramilitary police. Although there's no US equivalent, Marc's experience would be familiar to any American who has driven through a rural county (as a non-local) and come upon the local state trooper welcoming committee.

The incident was banal enough. Marc got stopped for driving without his headlights on in the fog. Only, instead of taking down his name and address and sending him the bill, which is the normal procedure. The Guardia demanded cash, offering him a discount for “on the spot payment.” Since Marc was in the middle of nowhere, this entailed a drive to the nearest ATM machine in a village some kilometers away. The machine did not, however, dispense the exact change for the 105 euro fine. When he came back with the money, the Guardia told him they did not have change, and that he would have to drive back to the village and change his bill at a store. At this point, my husband lost patience, and decided that he’d rather give up 15 euros than waste any more time. He called the Guardia a “payaso” (clown) and handed over the 120 euros saying: “propina” (tip).

The predictable happened. My husband was handcuffed and driven to the sergeant, who eventually released Marc, writing up a citation for “insult to authority”--resulting in Marc’s court appearance today.

It turns out, poor as Marc’s judgment was, he wasn’t far off the mark. When the Guardia write up an official citation, resulting in a bill that you get in the mail, this money goes straight to “El Tesoro” the Treasury. However, your more enterprising Guardia can insist on cash and conveniently forget to mail in the official citation. Foreigners represent a convenient target for this income-enhancement operation. Due to the difficulty of collecting payment, they can insist on cash. However, by, denouncing my husband’s disrespect for authority, and sending a notice to Marc’s Madrid address, for his court date, the Guardia had to give up the cash and send it to “El Tesoro.” At the same time they opened themselves up for a parallel denunciation for improper protocol, since my husband is a legal resident of Spain. At what price honor?

In the end, Marc had to pay a 60 euro fine for “disrespect for authority,” which his lawyer argued down to 30 euros “due to his client’s unemployment.”

This was a lot better than my mother-in-law’s dismal prediction:

Mamita: “I don’t deserve such stress in my advanced years.”
Marc: “What are talking about?”
Mamita: “You’ll get AIDs.”
Marc: “How exactly is that going to come about?”
Mamita: They’ll throw you into jail. “Te van a dar por culo” (some "Deliverance" imagery), and you’ll wind up with AIDs!”

The moral is, if you legally reside in Spain and are the victim of one of these shake-down operations, insist on your right to mail in your fine and threaten to denounce them for improper procedure. Otherwise, regardless of where you are in the world, probably not a smart idea to insult a man with a little wee-wee, when that man is called “Authori-ta,” packs a gun, wears a uniform and you’re a foreigner.

Cult of the Damned, Vampires, Children and Literature

Why put up with high school and family life when you can live in eternal bliss with your demon lover? This is the question posed by Stephanie Meyer’s "Twilight" series, which apparently is very popular among teenage girls—and their mothers.

My friend Abby has read it and offers the following critique: “I'm on book Three now, basically like watching crappy TV: a relaxing waste of time. The heroine, Bella, falls in love with the school bad boy: Edward, a vampire who is bad, but good at heart (albeit controlling and dominating). He is perfect at everything and she is human and flawed, but bless his little heart, he loves her anyway. Isn't that nice? It's so nice that Bella quickly decides she needs to become forever damned herself so she can leave her human life and be with him forever even though this sets a whole bunch of things into motion (four long books worth).

Stephenie Meyer clearly has read the classics and name drops stuff from Wuthering Heights, Romeo and Juliet and Pride and Prejudice in an embarrassingly transparent way. But despite all the pages, the characters remain pretty flat. Bella isn't really torn that much about loosing her humanity she's just trying to figure out a way to get around the annoying obstacles that keep preventing her from experiencing eternal happiness with her stone cold lover.

The book trivializes life and glorifies the life of a bloodsucking vampire. They are all powerful and in Meyers’ novels there is very little drawback, so you don't understand why we don't all just become vampires. Unlike Wuthering Heights, their love is pretty straightforward love at first sight kind of stuff: He's hot so she likes him even though he's kind of a murderer.”

This sounds markedly different from the last vampire book I read, Anne Rice’s “Interview with The Vampire.” It was later turned into a movie in 1994, which I also enjoyed, despite the fact I am not a Tom Cruise or a Brad Pitt fan. As for the book, I agree with Wikipedia’s assertion that “the confessional tone, from the vampire's perspective, touching on existential despair and the sheer boredom of lifeless immortality” sets the book apart from its genre predecessors. The goth glamour is infused with, at least one the vampires, Louis’, genuine repugnance for the life he leads and the “love story” in the book is anything but conventional. Louis’ mentor/vampire companion, Lestat, creates a “daughter” for the pair, when they come upon the nearly lifeless child of a Plague victim. Over 65 years, the girl’s mind matures into that of an intelligent, assertive woman forever trapped inside the body of a six-year old child, who comes to hate Lestat for what he has done to her. Rice also creates an intriguing ambiance, having done some research on the “period” elements of eighteenth century France and New Orleans.

According to Abby, Twilight is “like a “Dawson’s Creek” coven of vampires--campier and less thought-out than “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” which prided itself on campiness. What is most disturbing, given the book’s target teen audience, is the heroine, Bella’s eagerness to drop everything for her glamorous coven 'family.’ This no doubt echoes the desperate search for acceptance that drives so many teenagers to become groupies or druggies, or otherwise give up themselves entirely, in order to join an "exclusive" group. She's just so thrilled that they will have her. As for the love story, not much depth there either. Whenever he touches her or kisses her she talks about how his perfect face makes her forget to breathe, how she can't stay angry at him and how she feels inadequate next to him. This isn't true love, this is the kind of infatuation girls felt for their posters of Kirk Cameron.”

Abby and I were discussing how gothic fluff like the “Twilight” series is ultimately far more disturbing than a book with an overtly sinister theme like Nabokov’s “Lolita.” Not only is Nabokov’s language light years ahead of Meyers’ in terms of depth and nuance, but the choice of narrator has a large impact as well. Despite giving her name to the title of the story, Lolita is essentially ambiguous, merely a repository for her captor’s fantasies. Given her young age, her mother’s death and her stepfather’s custody, it is not apparent that she willingly accepts the relationship with her captor. On the contrary, she runs away every chance she gets. Meanwhile, in “Twilight,” it only takes 20 pages of the first book, for Bella to realize she's in ‘luv’ with Edward, give up all consideration for herself, and decide she will do anything to be with him. By the third book, Bella is in some type of mortal danger (as usual) and the coven swarms around her to protect her with Edward her boyfriend/manager/father calling the shots. He makes decisions for her (in her best interest) and she rolls her eyes and complies. There's another character, Jacob, who is in love with Bella, but he's a werewolf. He fights with Edward over her and then ends up teaming up with him (to help control her and make decisions for her).”

Anyway, I found Abby’s email review of “Twilight” rather hilarious and thought I’d share it. Not sure I’d read any of the books myself, although, never say never because something that popular probably is distracting. Hopefully, the references to “Jane Eyre,” “Wuthering Heights,” “Pride and Prejudice” and “Romeo and Juliet” will inspire the series’ young readers to pick up these classics and discover a richer world, along with heroines who refuse to compromise their identity and values, or pay a real price for it, if they do.

I read my share of Sidney Sheldon and Danielle Steele as a schoolgirl—mostly because these books were readily available on my grandmother’s bookshelf, my maternal grandmother, I will say. My paternal grandmother tended to favor moderately more genteel historical romances, usually set in England or the American South. One day, as a fifth grader in the library of Christ the King parochial school, Sister Patricia Geary caught me reading Colleen McCullough’s “The Thornbirds,” a novel about an Australian woman who has an affair with a Catholic priest. Rather than making me feel bad about my reading selection, she simply said: “I can see our reading program must not be challenging you. I am starting a new reading class next year and I’d like to invite you to join.” Sister Patricia is my first memory of a truly great teacher. I joined her class the next year.”