Like you, I have a Facebook account. But probably unlike you, mine is a potent source of vicarious weirdness. Which is a good thing, because I try to keep my real world life as sane and unexciting as possible.
Facebook stirs me in strange ways.
I am a calm man.
Facebook wishes me to have a more interesting life. To that end, it suggests 'friends' based on the slimmest of similarities, rather like Amazon suggesting purchases. Not that there is a profit motive to FB, but both internet entities have this desperate need to be relevant, as measured by how often you take their bait.
Amazon for several years has suggested Christian Apocalypse romances and handbags, based on my previous buying patterns (documentary hypothesis, textual exegesis, and a fancy watch), and Facebook has decided that I like Rabbis and Hong Kong girls.
In a way, Facebook is right.
They probably guessed Hong Kong girls because I have at times posted stuff that included Chinese phrases.
[The logical connection between Hong Kong girls and Rabbis is what both of them eat at Christmas.]
Naturally I am fascinated. The very idea of a "Hong Kong Girl" is racy and titillating. So before clicking on 'send friend request', I cruise into their Facebook pages to discover what they are like.
Apparently they have between three and five thousand friends, evenly distributed among both genders, and including people with non-Chinese names.
Who are all fascinated by their photo albums.
Which are filled with handbags.
HANDBAGS?
Sometimes also the odd photo of a motorcar, dinner at a restaurant, shoes, bracelets..... but mostly handbags. Very expensive handbags.
Sweetheart, you could have posted a photo of you and you favourite cousin on the Star Ferry, or at the top of the Peak..... Handbags?
Do handbags represent freedom, your dreams, romance, a fairy tale?
If so, why is one of them puke green?
Looks to be your favourite, too.
Two dozen pictures of it.
From different angles.
And perspectives.
Why on earth do you have so many images of handbags?
Perhaps it's your version of soft core porn?
Repressed lust and frustration?
I know there's something sexual and deeply symbolic about handbags, but for the life of me I can't figure out what.
And I really don't want to know.
I like freaks, but not that bad.
GOODBYE, KITTY!
The alternative to the handbag queens, though in lesser numbers, are the Hello Kitty types.
I like Hello Kitty too, lord knows, Hello Kitty Texas Chainsaw Punk tattoos, Hello Kitty Urinal Targets, Hello Kitty Hamburger Patties, and Hello Kitty Boxer Shorts (all to be seen at 'the Official Hello Kitty Merchandising Office') leave me breathless, but heaven's sakes, girlies, y'all have NO life if that is the summa that roils your kettles.
Yes, I have a Hello Kitty kippah, and no, I shan't send you a picture.
Actually, amidst the Handbaggers and Hello Kittens there was one young lady who wanted to do something to me or with me till I 'fly up into the heavens' (idiomatic expression), and whose handbagless photo album showed a keen familiarity with hot wax, but given that she's ten thousand miles away, doesn't look particularly bright, and made the same offer to over four thousand other folks (evenly distributed among both genders, and including people with non-Chinese names), the prospect was less than inviting.
While the intellectual conceit of passion with a non-handbag obsessed woman has a certain frisson, the realization that it would at best lead to sharing intimacy with over four thousand other victims (evenly distributed etcetera) was a distinct downer, and just knowing that some of them combine the handbag and Hello Kitty fetishes is frightening.
So no.
I shall not share your hot wax.
The reason why most men are frightened of handbags is because we do not understand them. Handbags are a potent sexual-communicative object, in that the choice of handbag conveys something about the bearer and sends an unmistakable message.
We just don't know what it is.
Portable womb? Hair? I've got baggage?
What?
The interpretive possibilities are endless.
Such random chaos and anarchy disturbs us, we prefer far simpler communication, as is embodied in the phrases 'yes', 'no', 'go away you pervert', and 'have another beer'.
Simple. Straightforward. And guaranteed to keep the dialogue flowing.
The handbag also represents a happy feeling of ownership and pride, but men will instinctively resent it precisely for that as being unfair competition. We cannot compare, because we don't have fancy buckles and straps, and we aren't covered in puke green leather.
We know we can rectify all or part of that lack, but for reasons which are strangely not obvious to women, we resist.
Puke green leather doesn't work for us.
[Neither does the Hello Kitty kippah, but I'm wearing it ironically.]
We KNOW that shlepping around the handbag radiates your desirability and makes you ecstatic. That part we grasp.
But we fail to see why we should be like that.
Puke green leather.
A leprechaun.
Not us.
Some of us shaved today. Didn't you notice?
Hey, I'm wearing clean clothes!
For entirely different reasons, most men object to Hello Kitty. That saccharine feline, with her cutesy-poo affectations, appearance, and accoutrements, does not dingle our bell in any way.
Not as an accessory, not as a decorative motif.
Eyes spaced precisely so. Bow perfectly canted to one side.
Blank emotionless expression.
No, doesn't work.
Perhaps if she were covered in puke green leather?
IRMA BUCKETGUT
One suggested FB friend can only be described as 'Irma Bucketgut'. Everything on her page indicated capacious junkfood appetite. Big, dripping, greasy fistfulls of meat shreds on a roll, tureens of cheese-flavoured mush nibbles, bacon on everything.
Pizza. Burgers. Fried chicken. Meatloaf.
The coveted 64 oz. big gulp mug.
A princess of pork chop.
Yes, she had a handbag.
As well as Hello Kitty panties.
No, she was not a Hong Kong girl.
I declined that Facebook suggestion, just like many others.
I cannot figure out what similarities Facebook assumed we had.
However, if Facebook decides that I need to be friends with a rabbi who collects handbags and Hello Kitty garbage, I may be powerless to resist.
After all, we have so much in common.
Like Chinese food.
And a kippah.
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