Google my space & I'll come on your face book*

God I hate children. It's not so much that I hate each and every one of them personally (though I often do), but it's more that I dislike the entire notion of them. They're small, they're breakable, and most of all, they're fucking creepy. I don't really understand why people willingly choose to have them.

Not so recently, I made myself an account on Facebook. Yes, yes, wah, social networking sites, etc - Trust me, I know the drill. But for my first three or so months on said site, my entire purpose for using it was to play Scrabble at work. You see, our organisation had blocked access to such frivolous sites such as Scrabulous, yet have left the door wide open on Facebook. At first, this was fine and dandy; kittens and rainbows even, if you will. Gradually, my circle of games expanded... I was playing Scrabble, Risk, something akin toStarCraft, and some retarded game called Pirates. Oh! And Warbook - that was a good'un . This was all well and good - I had a lot of spare time on my hands, and all these games require players to be able to procrastinate their real priorities at an advanced level.

But then came the whole 'social networking' side of Facebook. I thought I could avoid it. I still think I can avoid it - but what I can't avoid is the sheer amounts of disgust that this dark side provokes. People I didn't recognise started 'friending' me. It wasn't long before I worked out that I actually did know them - in the vaguest possible sense - from my first high school. Now - and this bit is important - my old high school and I have a bit of an understanding... I don't think about it, and it leaves me the fuck alone. I would like to think that this rule applied to every fucking person I met there, but it appears it hasn't. Particularly in the case of the Mormons.

But that's an interesting concept, isn't it? You, the devoted Lutheran send your children away to a Lutheran high school. You hardly expect them to come out the other end of the six years as a practising Mormon, do you? But, it happened. Christ knows how (pun totally intended), but it did. Maybe they gave up on trying to convert the unbelievers and decided to go straight to poaching. I quite like to think they sent some kind of stealth mass Mormon infiltration into other religions' educational territory. You know, with crack Mormon operatives - armed withcamouflage bicycles and bibles of pure titanium.

But anyway, it seems the Mormons have found facebook. Seriously, go check it out - they've all jumped on there and have organised into their little cells. They're mobilising amongst pretty much every fucking person they've ever met from about kindergarten onwards, including the whole fuckingyearlevel of the-school-that-I'd-best-not-mention. At first, it seems nice and innocent, but then you find yourself knee deep in terrible memories and images of what your once-peers have become... which in itself is a terribly terribly depressing sight, and a bloody addictive one at that. Morbid curiosity takes you from one oldschoolies ' profile page to another in a desperate search for someone who has an even vaguely interesting life these days, and in this case, you're pretty unlikely to come up with any results.

The plus side of all this is that having completed a bit of cyber-voyeurism into their lives, I'm fairly certain I'm unlikely to cross paths with any of this mob any time soon. In fact, I'd go so far to say that even if any of us were to bump into each other, both parties would be prepared to look the other way for a few seconds while our respective realities recomposed themselves. After all, pretty much all of these people can be neatly divided into two separate camps - the mass-baby producing suburban/hotshotbogan families, or the psychotically insane conservative Liberal supporting queers. I don't even know how the latter group can survive without incorporating significant amounts of self harm into their daily routine, yet against the odds, they seem to.

It's the baby producing ones which fucking amaze me. Sure, I'm still at an age and mentality that a little part of me quietly screams away in abject horror - okay, sometimes also audibly - when I hear of people I once set fire to things with/drank with/sneered at across a classroom (cross out as appropriate) having children. And I suppose to be fair, none of these people were ever interesting enough to vandalise things with, but still. The women seem to have dedicated their post-high school lives to reproducing as quickly as humanly possible - and when I say post high school, I mean only fucking just... a ridiculously expensive private school education** has not been completed with a view of going to uni and maybe learning something about the world as the rest of us know it (ie, outside of the council they were born, raised, educated and will probably die in), but instead has been applied to pursuit of stupid and pretentious jock boyfriends/future husbands. Particularly it seems, the kind you knew werefuckwits since year eight because, say, your darling David there publicly cheated on you for not fucking him, his footy team, and their girlfriends on his fifteenth birthday. For example. But it's alright now, he's older and more mature.

That must be one fucking life of bliss, mustn't it? Pop out sprogs, play your fill of bejeweled, make dinner, and otherwise be all Kath & Kim, put up with your fuckwit solicitor and footy bogan husband and his mates, and wonder which receptionist he's screwing in the office this week while you clean baby shit out whatever it is that babies shit on... again. While I can't even begin to fathom this mentality - of both the men and women involved - I can't help but feel ultimately relieved that these absolute fucking fools of people are all paired up together and more or less confined to whatever pleasant leafy suburb they've decided is a nice place to raise their oh-so-entitledhellspawn.

God, just typing this is making me want to vomit. And then, preferably, track down that stupid Mormon who started all this and punch in him square in his stupid smug looking dial. That said, I'd like to partially redeem old-highschool discoveries on Facebook by pointing out that connections from my other, less cunt filled high school, have been an absolute delight to catch up with. Particularly the ones that are now reading this blog. I always liked you the best. It's true. You should buy me an ice cream to thank me. No, don't think about that comment, just go and buy the ice cream.

Someday, I'll tell you more about the adventures of shitsville highschool. But not now. I have ice cream to eat. Please feel free to share your facebook reunion horror stories in le comments.


Sincerely,
The Rantolotl.



* courtesy of a sticker in a bathroom stall, for the young writers festival 2007. Appropriately, there's a facebook group for it.

** I had a scholarship to this school, so I feel a little more justified in pissing this portion of my lifes education against a wall. Plus I think I at least came out of it with some useful knowledge, even if that knowledge manifests itself as a general hatred of rich suburban wankers. No, fuck it. That's a really good attitude to have. More of it!