FOWC with Fandango — Writhe

Even though it isn’t Earth Day today, I have come to feel that every day is Earth Day, at least as long as we are allowed to live on the earth. All of this happened because I follow Bizarro and a number of other cartoonists on Facebook.

It’s really about the only thing I do follow on Facebook since they stopped posting the scores of the currently playing teams I follow. That, at least, used to get me to go over and look to see who was winning or losing whatever they were doing — football, baseball, basketball. You know. Whatever is currently in season.

These days, having to look at Facebook for any reason makes me writhe nervously and twitch uncontrollably. These are the people who got me hacked. Whenever I am on their site, I’m convinced something evil is happening, if not to me, then to someone I know. But there’s still stuff there I can’t find elsewhere, so I swallow hard, breathe heavily, and go.

Facebook is beginning to remind me of Charter, our well-hated cable network. We don’t have a choice about using Charter because whoever runs our town (I literally don’t know and it’s better if I don’t know) made a deal that only Charter can ply its wares in Uxbridge. Thus we do not have Fios, for example. We can get Dish, but the trees don’t agree. Too many tall trees. Many too many.

FIOS isn’t allowed to run their wires down our road. Meanwhile, Charter is having problems, so we get dozens of little “off air” glitches that last anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes. Some knock us off the air entirely. After which I need to reboot the router, modem, TV, telephone, and both computers. They always glitch exactly when Garry or I am about to place an order for dog biscuits or Gingko Biloba or a book I’ve been hemming and hawing about ordering for months.

Suddenly, you get the all too familiar “can’t reach that page” and you realize the computer is down. I look at Garry. His computer is also down. I don’t bother to check the telephone because I’m sure it’s not working either.

The more we depend on ISP services, the more they run our world. To have your world run by Trump is bad enough, but to have it run by Charter Communications is demeaning.

I spend a lot of time writhing and twitching. Life in 2019 is uncomfortable in all kinds of ways.

Today, I had reason to check out Bizarro because he’s going to have a live feed on Facebook tomorrow and if I can figure out how to make it run, I’m going to tune in.

I’m not big with “live on Facebook” stuff mainly because I really don’t know how it works. I can usually make it work — eventually — but I haven’t put much mental energy into figuring it out. By the time I get myself hooked up, the event is over. I’m not sure why, but I swear everything is far more complicated than it used to be.

I remember you used to find the page and click it and you were “on.” Now, there’s a link and a code and usually, one of those “I’m not a robot” thingies that despite not being a robot, I can’t read. So by the time I dope out what kind of robot I’m not, it’s finished. I’ve missed it. I will try to get there early, but no promises.

I’m not a robot. Really. I’m not. I swear it. Or if I am, no one told me.