I joined Facebook in 2008, but it wasn't until 2009 that I recognized its potential as an audience for my sense of humor. I've been looking through my old posts just in case I leave the platform in the future. One of the main lessons I've learned is that I used to get sick a lot more often when I wasn't sheltering from a pandemic! Most of the articles I linked to are now 404, sadly.

Here are some of my posts from 2009 that I still think are funny or insightful:

• I wonder if Pandora Bread Company serves baked evils?
• Truth is dumber than science fiction: here's a technology that was designed without an off switch, and now everybody's alarmed that you can't turn it off, and nobody seems to realize that what it needs is a freaking switch. If that were the premise of a fiction story, people would think it was dumb. [link to an article about computer chips in official ID cards]
• I had a dream about working at a nursing home with about 20 PTSD patients and about 100 cockatoos, some of whom were indistinguishable from humans except for their limited vocabularies and a propensity to open nuts with their teeth.
• I'm going to lunch with the Optimists' Club today. I'll keep a close eye on the level of their water glasses.
• [after having wisdom teeth removed] I'm resigned to everything tasting like blood. What can I have for dinner that will go well with blood?
• Adobe ConnectPro sounds like something you'd use to build a retaining wall.
• We're all individuals! If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day.
• [On Sept 11] The profusion of "never forget" posts today makes me think of "V for Vendetta." Remember, remember 11th September / The jet fuel, treason and plot. / I can think of no reason World Trade Center treason / should ever be forgot. Just remember, there's forgetting, and then there's forgiving. Who would Jesus bomb?
• The house-modeling software [for energy audits] doesn't have an option for indicating that one's walls are insulated with corrugated cardboard. Apparently the designers never met the previous owners of this house.
• I'm amused that this year's Manley (NE) Day falls on Talk Like a Pirate Day. I'll have to saunter into town and see if I can find some Manley pirates. Correction: It's not Manley Day, it's Pillage the Village! Even better!
• Is someone who makes allegations an allegator?
• I like to think that when Arthur C. Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," he was referring to the way some things inexplicably start working all by themselves after they've been broken for weeks. I love when that happens. Who's the patron saint of computer programmers? [A friend supplied: St. Isidore of Seville]
• Is the periodic table an example of occasional furniture?
• I'm thankful for all Federal employees, past and present. Thank you for serving our country, whether you risk your life at it or just spend your life at it. On behalf of the bureaucracy-phobic everywhere, I salute your bravery, strength and endurance.
• I'm enjoying the two supercomputer-related headlines today. Oak Ridge has the new world's-fastest computer and will use it to simulate the entire Earth for climate change research, etc. Meanwhile, IBM has made a model of a cat brain that is 100 times slower than an actual cat brain.
• With all due respect (none) to 3oh!3, "do the Helen Keller" means "talk to the hand."
• I'm amused that someone named Schiller is responsible for enforcing a ban on shills. [link to an article]  This is why I didn't become a car mechanic.  That and a lack of aptitude.
• Suppose you're making your way back from Mars... and you're on fire.  Would you say you feel "better than ever"?
• I wonder why so many battle-scene soundtracks include singing in Latin.  Is it just the influence of Carmina Burana, or was there some point in the history of our collective unconscious when people chanted in Latin while bad stuff was going down?
• Where is the dividing line between chutzpah and delusion?