Saturday, November 17, 2007

The status game

As I was leaving the house this morning, my mind in its random ramblings replayed a few bits of the Monty Python Dead Parrot sketch. "Lovely bird, the Norwegian blue! ... 'E's not dead, 'e's pining for the fjords!"

The upshot of this being that my status line on Facebook says "CJ is pining for the fjords."

Of all the various crack-like elements of Facebook (they have online RISK through Facebook now! I am so never getting work done again), one of my favourites is the status line. Scanning through my friends at any given time offers a range of status updates ranging from the hilarious to the absurd to the genuinely informational. Sometimes all at once, as in my fellow-CAAS member Jennifer's, which currently reads "Jen is wondering if getting teary-eyed at the sight of coffee is a bad thing." Given that I happened to read that one before I'd had my own first sip of java, the empathy in me was overpowering.

And the hated IS ... if there is one thing that unites regular status-updaters, especially those who like to be funny or creative, it's a hatred of the fact that we are constrained to using the present-tense passive verb ... leading to sometimes awkward locutions (which as an English professor can be really galling), and the delimiting of possibilities.

Anyway, I thought I'd share a random sampling of status lines that were current as of a minute ago ... leaving out names of course in the interests of whatever privacy may actually be left in the age of Facebooking.


... is not being aloof, friends, just insane with overwork.

... is confused.

... is calling it karma.

... is one letter away from a scream.

... is even more useless than yesterday.

... is I hate when people just write random stuff here without following the proper grammatical sequence that follows the conjugated verb "is."

... is wickey, wickey, wha, wha.

... is what I'm trying to say.

... is no longer ill. All praises be.

... is the eggman.

... is aspiring.

... is paid the dollar, sidekick rings what's up holla!

... is Lessing, Schiller? Definitely not Hegel.

... is perpetually baffled.

... is finding out that it is actually possible to eat too much pastry!

... is itching for a new razor.

... is pale in intensity with good legs and a long, dry, clean finish.

... is lacking bounce-back-ability.

... is driving to Ottawa. Home of the shitty-ass Sens.

... is as she appears to the left.

... is on a midnight train to Georgia.

... is a winter wonderland!

... is genuinely excited about her horoscope.

... is at the level of barely functioning.

... is exceedingly drunk, and is pondering the beatific benefits of red wine.

... is trying hugs AND drugs.

... is oh so quiet (shh! shh!).

... is walking a very fine line.

... is gonna pick the meat from the big city bones, because the hot is getting cold.

... is too cool for school.

... is in a plain brown wrapper.

... is a source of nine essential nutrients.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm famous! I like using my Facebook status as yet another place where I can use all the awesome lyrics that are constantly floating around in my head. I use both my Windows Messenger "name" and "personal message" for lyrics most of the time, and it's a challenge to find ones that fit with the mandatory "is". Call It Karma = good song. :)

Lesley said...

I HATE the IS. It IS so stupid. Although, it's kind of funny to come up with stuff. Last weekend I managed to anger my sister when I changed it to "Lesley is mourning the loss of Allison's hair" which I thought was pretty funny but she didn't (my niece got her hair all cut off). Today's "Lesley is poppin' n Lockin'" prompted my brother to put on his best ghetto impression and respond. But the worst facebook problem is when people change their relationship status from single to engaged or engaged to married FAcebook calls it ending their relationship. Wait until you find Scrabulous...good thing the government banned FAcebook on their computers...I'd never get any work done either!!!