don't you just love/hate facebook

I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook, but who doesn’t?

I’m not going to get into the history of how Facebook came to be or how it has evolved, so if you're lost, just go rent “The Social Network” cause I don’t have the patience to hold your hand though the progression of online media.  I would like to simple point out what I LIKE & DISLIKE about the social communication monster.

First of all, put a capitol “F” on “facebook” already… it’s a billion dollar company so act like it.  Also, I have not and will not buy any stock in Facebook’s IPO… for two reasons mainly. 

1) Zuckerberg seems more like a douche every time I see a photo of him or read an article about him.

2) I just don’t trust a company that really has no tangible “product” that they are selling.  And that makes me nervous about the stability of that company’s future.

Actually, just ignore the first reason.  I’m just jealous that I’m not a billionaire at age 27… also, I am a little irritated that I don’t have a gold medal either… so screw you too Phelps!  Not that I have the intelligence or athleticism to accomplish either feat.  And the more I think of it, I really should NOT voice my presumptions about the future of consumer driven commodities in relevance to communications stock features.   So let’s just forget about the last part and get to the point here.  That being that Facebook is good, but it’s not great.

I use Facebook to basically communicate with people that I don’t talk to on a weekly basis.  It keeps me in touch with friends & family who might live out of town, be incredibly busy or hard to get a-hold-of on the phone…  and so on.   I like that I can see photos of people that I have not seen in a few years, especially family members.  And I think it’s a lot easier to Facebook message someone instead of email them in some cases.  I can do without the games, but they are a nice touch.  It’s unfortunate that life has gotten so busy that I need to simplify my correspondence with friends & family using Facebook, but use it if you got it right?

However, I do NOT use Facebook to:

-          - Tell the world what I am doing every second, minute, hour, or day.

-          - Constantly add anyone I recognize to my friends list, just because I can.

-          - Go on a trip, and upload photos and comments to FB instead of enjoying my vacation.

-          -  “Facebook Creep” or rifle through photos of people I don’t really know.

-          - Comment on other people’s conversations like I’m part of it, when really I’m not.

-          - Meet new friends from Nigeria that need some cash… but promise a huge return.

-          - Poke people (except for Scribs)

-          - Post song lyrics that I think are awesome for how I feel today.

-          - Ask rhetorical questions to no one in particular… or just posting random thoughts

-          - Post photos that are “cute & sexy” (girls) or “masculine and ripped” (dudes) to gain attention.

-          - Speak out on politics and religion to anyone who will listen.

-          - Gain sympathy from others by boradcasting to everyone a personal difficulty I am having that day.

-          - Post photos of myself with the hopes that someone will complement me

-          - In general, use Facebook as my forum to proclaim every single idea or thought I have ever had… and expect not just anyone, but everyone to be amazed by how interesting and intelligent I am.

-         

            Shit… I could be here all day.

Ok, maybe I have done some of those things in the past… but I’m going to stop… tomorrow!  I promise!

Let’s face it, there will always be someone who is irritated by what you post… I just think some people are asking for it a little more than others.  So just use better judgment and we will all be better off. 

If you are sitting there thinking “I don’t care what people think, I’ll say and do whatever I want”… then you are the problem… and sadly you will never get it.

This leads me to another type of person on Facebook.  Like gasoline to the fire, the instigators and supporters of these idiots (who are “followers” to the very definition of the word), are what keep these crazy people going on with their ridiculous ways.  So don’t be one of those people either please.  It’s a bad way.

But with twitter, facebook, blogs, youtube, and whatever else… it seems that I am out-gunned.  Society has created a hype of these communication tools, and now we must suffer the bad to enjoy the good.

In conclusion, if you want to listen to some idiot ramble on about nonsense, enjoy your Facebook… or you can just continue to read our blog… same difference.

I promise my next blog will be better, and will continue to promise this at the conclusion of every blog!

Facebook, or how I married a 78 year old man.

I just got done going for a walk and bike ride so I figured I might as well keep this productivity going! How do you go for a walk and bike ride? Simple, just go for a bike ride, get tired, then walk your bike home. It helps if you have a tail to put between your legs…

Well here’s the start of the new blog experiment for us. We’re trying to get more blogs out there and hopefully keep the quality up there, or I should say, get the quality up there…

What we will be doing is taking certain topics and writing several different perspectives on that subject. There is about six of us who are contributors to this blog, everyone isn’t exactly active, but we should be able to get at least three of us to write on most subjects. Hopefully they’re funny, but if they’re not at least you should be able to enjoy how terrible we are at getting our points across and how little sense we generally make.

The first subject we are going to tackle is Facebook. We were going to do a breakdown and compare and contrast the new Justin Halpern book, “I Suck At Girls” but that will have to wait until the other guys finish the book…me, I might as well have written it, or most of it! The following is my take on the phenomenon that is Facebook…

A long time ago, at a college campus much like the one you attended…

I first started using Facebook in 2004…I think. It wasn’t exactly September 11^th, or the day Kennedy was shot so I can’t recall exactly where I was or what I was doing but being most my days consisted of playing lots of basketball, partying, and skipping class in those days there is a good chance I was hung over and was trying to figure out who that girl was from that party. What girl and what party are also insignificant as you will undoubtedly learn in upcoming blogs.

Facebook was cool, no doubt about it, and the best apart about it; it was just for college students. When you turn 18 you can officially vote, buy cigarettes, and gamble in many states…not exactly the greatest things in the world, but Facebook became another one of these rights of passage and to me seemed like an awesome way to keep in contact with high school classmates I had lost contact with and kids from my courses which I would have met during Syllabus day and then quickly lost contact with (due to lack of attendance) if it hadn’t been for Facebook!

Sure Facebook was filled with creeps, but really where isn’t? Myspace was the major competitor in those days but to me the major downfall was that anyone could join myspace…I’m not positive but I’m pretty sure I married a 78 year old man on there at one point…you at least needed a valid college email address to join Facebook back in the day. Now that exclusivity is gone, which of course helped Facebook grow immensely but now I get friend requests from my elementary basketball players, and I’m that 78 year old man all of a sudden.

There is certainly a million things I don’t like about Facebook and I think most of you would agree but for the most part I still use it to keep up with what my friends are up to, and more and more I am using it for business. We now have a profile and company page for our business as well as a group site for our charity organization…I know what you’re thinking, when did I actually get my shit together…well I’m not totally there yet, but like most people, I have my moments.

The ways you can now use Facebook for business are unbelievable. It is by far the best method we have to advertise and keep our customers up-to-date with whatever may be happening and it has helped build our charity from very small to one that has now raised over $130,000!

I still am able to talk to friends and family all over the world, follow certain organizations and personalities that interest me, and due to a group I started several years ago, “I’d High Five The Todd” (from SCRUBS) I am now friends with Robert Maschio, the actor who plays “The Todd.” The random connections you can make on the site are really unbelievable, but like most things, there’s an opposite side to the coin…

I now officially know everything about everyone, or at least it seems that way. People I had always liked post some of the most ignorant hate filled things on there so that now I often find myself appalled to even be in the same room as them anymore. I now know when everyone is in a relationship, and better yet, the standing of said relationship. Because of this, we also know when said relationship has ended and as it is very easy to get your feelings out there instantly, we know how, and many times why, things didn’t exactly work out. I’m not saying that this is the worst thing, some people just need a little support when they’re feeling like they’re at their lowest point but long before Facebook there were…phones, and coffee shops, and living rooms.

What makes matters worse is not only does everyone know what you are doing at any given moment during your day (if you are an active member, as most are since it is far more addicting than crack or heroine, a fact…which I recently made up) but you know what everyone else is doing. I don’t want to find out I didn’t get a job because I find out one of my random friends got it, or worse yet that one of those friends was recently tagged in a photo with my girlfriend in which they appear to be…doing something inappropriate. None of this has actually happened to me, but it could easily as I’m not very employable…or attractive.

As we continue to become more and more dependent on electronics and communicating through them, we may lose contact with real relationships. I finally did graduate from college (online, stupid hypocrite) my degree was in Hospitality Management…I guess it still is, you can tell the writing thing isn’t working out too well…I love talking to people, and generally I enjoy being around them. I’m perfectly content being myself as well, but given the choice I think I take people any day…even via Facebook.

A quick note on Pinterest…I’m not on the site but I’m pretty sure it’s mostly used for recipes and craft ideas…Don’t we have Google for that? I’m not a big recipe guy but if I want to make something and I’m not sure how, I type what I want to make into Google and after reading the recipe…I make it, and it’s awesome as I am tremendous cook/baker. Arts and Crafts? You should see the picture my nephew and I colored the other day, or the barn we made out of cardboard. You want to know how to make these? I’ll “Pin” it to you later…

The bottom line is that Facebook, like it or not, is very addicting. We all know people who aren’t on Facebook and refuse to join…but they’ll join…just give them a taste, the first ones free. That’s how they got me…the 78 year old man you’re going to marry later…

Now to just post this to Facebook…

The Flood of 1997

The Flood of 1997

(A 13-year old boy’s perspective)

The spring of 1997 was a terrible one. I remember it started out with my mom, dad, and I coming back from a basketball tournament in Devils Lake and on our way home we happened to run into a heard of Holstein cows. That’s right, a heard. The cows were all very dark and it was one of those nights where there was absolutely no moon, one of the darkest nights that I remember. We went into a dip in the road and when we came out on the other side all we saw was the reflection of the eyes of a million hamburgers. Somehow my dad managed to miss most of the heard but we did clip two or three of the cows with one of them flipping around the side of the car and crapping on the window on my side of the car. All I could think of was that if that window had busted in the ordeal this trip could have been a whole lot shittier…

So that was the beginning of the Spring of ’97 for me, almost got crapped on by a heard of cows and totaled out our car, things weren’t looking so great.

Besides this there was a growing fear that all of Minnesota and North Dakota was going to flood, in Minnesota we’re survivors but we were obviously worried about everything we would lose in North Dakota…this was before the oil was really discovered otherwise it might have been more of a national concern.

The day after my near poop experience there was a pretty terrible ice storm that knocked out most of the power in our area and kept it down for several days, which made the flood fighting all that much more difficult. Once the power was back and we were able to get back to junior high…and life for most other people, they really kicked up the efforts by giving us the option to go down and put together sand bags for building dikes in Grand Forks and the surrounding area. Now I’m really into volunteer work now, but at the time I’ll admit that the only thing that I was thinking was that it meant getting out of school. I live at one of the highest points of Red Lake Falls, I’m not really worried about the river getting to me, I’m more worried that I may fall into the river!

So you know just how smart I was signing up to do a bunch of manual labor rather than practicing my keyboarding skills in school…thankfully I’ve gotten smarter over the years, it did only take me about ten years to finish my bachelor’s degree…

After a few weeks of loading up these sand bags and sending them to the needed areas we all got pretty good at it but unfortunately we started hearing phrases like “100 Year Flood,” which of course being as smart as I was, I started constructing an Arc and gathered pairs of animals. But even at 13 years old we began to realize just how devastating this flood could become. Grand Forks was in serious trouble and despite all of the help it was getting from the area, the thought was that it just wasn’t going to be enough.

My sister was attending UND at that time but classes had been put on hold so that the students could help sand bag to help save their city and very possibly their University. As it became more and more evident that the effort simply wasn’t going to be enough, the residents of Grand Forks were evacuated. They were told to leave their possessions behind and just get out of the city. My sister, much like myself, was a bit of a procrastinator at the time and probably took off much later than she should have. On her journey from Grand Forks to Red Lake Falls she was detoured several times because of flooded roads and eventually took her car through about four feet of water to get home. Now mind you, she is probably the smartest of this Brumwell clan…

By the time she arrived home I had gone to sleep, I was tired from all of the keyboarding practice I had resumed after they found out my notes to go sandbagging had been forged…but I awoke the next morning to one of the greatest sights a 13-year-old boy may ever experience, a living room filled with beautiful co-eds!

As our place was the closest place for Steph and her friends to escape to they decided that they would all come here until they were able to get back to their families once the water subsided. I truly thought I had died and gone to heaven…just a few short weeks prior to this a cow had almost crapped on my head, now all of a sudden I felt like Hugh Hefner! I took immediate action, waking up Ryan and heading straight to the kitchen. I had met all of these girls before but I hadn’t had the opportunity to truly impress them, so by the time they woke up Ryan and I had prepared their breakfast and were dawning our Sunday best…but alas, I was 13 and wouldn’t have known what to do with any of them if given the opportunity, not like today’s generation.

Oh, I almost forgot about the flood! Downtown Grand Forks was all but destroyed, after the dikes broke and all of downtown was flooded, the buildings downtown somehow started on fire as well. The local paper had pictures of houses and decks floating down the river almost daily. Whole sections of the city were completely wiped out and many, many people lost their homes and really, their identity.

But from the ashes of devastation an almost new city was reborn. The old downtown has mostly been rebuilt, and in many ways is much nicer now than it had once been. Larger dikes and flood walls were constructed to help protect the city and where once stood an older neighborhood there is now a beautiful city park that helps house many travelers that come to Grand Forks for the shopping and many other area attractions.

It has now been 15 years since this terrible disaster, and I was recently reminded by a posting on Facebook by one of those same lovely ladies that was once a guest in our basement. Many people remember the events differently and this account probably isn’t accurate at all, I was 13 after all, but I guess the point is that although it seemed like a real shitty situation to most, to one 13 year old boy, it resulted in one of the best weeks of his life. It goes to show you, when God (or a cow) shits on your window, sometimes he opens a door (that leads to a basement filled with beautiful co-eds)…or something like that.

The Lost One?

What Apparently was a lost blog has been found!

After a long weekend I decided to sit down to a nice Woody Allen movie and fire off a delightful blog for all of our faithful readers...turns out you need all of your attention, plus others to understand anything Woody Allen puts together. I know this yet I continue to type because I'm assuming I'll get lost even with great focus. I'm a bit of a movie snob, even though some may question my taste in such movies...some may even say that such family favorites as Sideways might not be family friendly at all...those people are lucky I hold them in high regard.

The real reason for the blog is the fact that last weekend we brought the K-Bun experience to the man himself. After months upon months of planning, eight individuals came together for the T-Wolves vs. Knicks game to show a nation that Paul Bunyan was potent enough to father a love child with some other mythical creature on the west coast. Lucky for us nature called to this love child and brought him home to Minnesota. K-Bun did not disappoint going off for 32 points, and 23 rebounds, the T-Wolves on the other hand did not complete the victory losing by a couple points right at the end after leading for most of the game...another disappointment was that after all of our hard work to get the name out there, our fantastic arrangement of costume design, the sign design that would make a graphic artist jealous...turns out the game was not televised. We may be idiots...

After great consumption and many observations of just how many people of Asian decent had come out to see the Vin-sanity show, there were indeed quite a few. It may be the best thing to happen to the NBA since Yao, the Wolves even had their largest crowd since 2004, but that was without an Asian player on the court so I might have to do some more research to get you exact numbers for that stat...I'll put Adam on it.

***Update

I wrote the first part of this blog right after we returned from our trip to watch the T-Wolves but was far too tired to finish, and as we need to really get after it if we ever hope to hit 100 blogs (my personal goal) I decided to post this one as well!

Since our fateful night at Target Center the T-Wolves have hosted a Paul Bunyan night as well as had a beard contest. We have not been contacted by the wolves so god cursed them in the form of Kobe Bryant (el diablo) taking out our beloved Ricky Rubio for the season.

That's right wolves...God wants you to give us some credit.

Also, I still don't have the stats from Adam...

No Ox's were hurt in the posting of this blog.

The Voice...mine.

It has recently been brought to my attention that I may talk too much...especially in interviews.

Earlier this week, my friend Kurt Philion came to my house to interview myself, my brother, and our friend David about a charity event we host every year to raise funds for cancer research and before we got started there was a lot of chatter going on about how Kurt didn't really need to be in the room, he would just introduce me then take off for an hour or so. We all had a good laugh and then it came time to do the interview. We had set it up so that I would talk a bit first and then hand the mic over to my brother to handle some more particulars about the tournament in general and then Dave would do a separate interview about his experience with cancer, as this year he is celebrating ten years of being cancer free!!!

So there. We had a plan.

Kurt introduces me and immediately I mention that apparently I talk too much in interviews so I'll try to do a better job with this one...then I talk for about 15 minutes straight.

I finally make my exit and get the microphone turned over to my brother, who sums up everything about the tournament very nicely and then says that he's sure that I'll want to talk some more so he hands the mic back to me...and I have more to say, as expected.

When we finish, it turns out that our interview, which is about twenty minutes, will be scaled down to 15 minutes of air time, but the full interview will be available as a web cast on their web site www.krjmradio.com after the interview airs on Wednesday, April 11th at 5:45 central. Leave it to me to take up the entire interview plus some!

Dave's interview was fantastic. I'm not going to talk a lot about it because I respect the hell out of that guy and you should just tune in to listen to it on Wednesday, April 18th at 5:45 pm on 101.5 or 106.5 FM.

I will talk a little about Dave in general though...since I like the sound of me slapping the keys too!

I think that a lot of people think Dave is a bit crazy, or at least over the top a lot of the time. I myself often spend days or weeks tracking down his clothes after he leaves town, but Dave knows what a lot of us seem to forget, that our time here isn't as long as we perhaps may like. We are literally all on borrowed time, you never know what tomorrow will bring. So in my opinion we should all have those nights where our buddies have to spend a week tracking down our clothes, or at least spend some nights getting a little crazy. We shouldn't be afraid to live the life we've been given, it certainly is a gift and I don't know about you but I enjoy the hell out of gifts!

A lot of people will be spending the holiday here with family and friends, lord knows thats not always an easy thing to get through! But certainly take the time, religious or not, to live in the moment with the ones you love...or tolerate.

Today was "Good Friday," and I ate meat. Later, many bad things happened. Fact.

I'll have to wait until next year to redeem myself I guess, but fishing was slow this year and I really like turkey...turkey counts right?

Happy Easter! (and Twins Opener...maybe they'll get the home opener at least...because I'll be there...perhaps looking for my clothes!)

For Renzy

It’s been a long time since any of us Dark Humor guys have actually posted a blog to the site here but recently I had a really good friend get into a car accident and I thought that perhaps this may be a way to brighten his day and get him on the road to recovery, after all, laughter is the best medicine right?

A while back I blogged about the significance of rocks as a metaphor and actual rocks…tied to ponies. I think if Kurt, my friend, is reading this he probably already knows where it’s headed…

My family has owned and operated a tubing and camping place in Northwest Minnesota for over 27 years now, and in that time we have had a lot of wonderful people come and work for us, or I should say with us. In the long-run the fact that these people have been right beside us in the trenches, in good times and bad, have made them more than employees or friends, any one of us would certainly consider them to be part of our family. I could go on and on about each and every one of the people that have worked for us over the years, but this blog isn’t for them today. I’m writing today for someone who has been like a brother to me, who inspired me to go to college with the intentions of some day becoming a writer…which apparently hasn’t panned out so well…

Our operation for the tubing has changed quite a bit over the years and at one point we actually would have a few people waiting for everyone to get off at our landing, where we would cut the tubes apart and then haul them back to our launching facility. As kids this was always the best job to have because we were far away from supervision and generally spent the majority of our time swimming and messing around.

One particular day we were hanging out at the landing with my brother and our friend Kurt when for some odd reason we decided it would be a good idea to have a bit of a rock fight…we were kids, and even worse, boys. What started out as pebbles quickly escalated to larger and larger actual rocks until eventually Kurt was hurling boulders at me until he finally got what he wanted and took me out at the legs. As I was lying on the ground, in and out of consciousness, some nice lady came to my defense and was able to stop Kurt from inflicting any more torture to me, thank god!

Now that’s my side of the story and Kurt may claim it went a little different but one thing is for certain, this little story about actual rocks has become almost a metaphor to us. The truth of the story is that Kurt may have simply rolled a rock at me and I went down like a ton of bricks because I am a bit of a weakling, but to this day we each maintain our own versions of the story and I don’t think we will ever forget, or maybe truly remember, that day.

Even though we don’t see each other very often anymore Kurt will always be a part of my life. It may be a coincidence that we share this story about actual rocks when so much of our lives can be tied to the metaphor of rocks as well. I don’t tell him enough how much of an impact he truly has had on my life and I just wanted to take this opportunity to let him know. I may never be a true writer, my 3 readers would agree, but the fact that I love doing it can certainly be attributed to Kurt…who in case you are wondering still has a Werewolf novel stashed somewhere on his shelf, just waiting for me to finish my film degree to make! (In case you were wondering, I actually switched majors about seven different times and finally ended up with a business degree…what a cop out huh?!)

The Last One

It’s been a long time since my last blog; and fans, I apologize for that.  I have been spending my time trying to relax and enjoy the finer things in life, such as work, taxes, planning big events, and sitting through blizzards.  All good times. 

In my profession, I deal with many different types of people.  I also deal with a lot of different problems.  The most recent problem I am facing at work is not the annoying person who can’t balance their checkbook, the person who gets declined for a loan because of their bankruptcy, or the person who flat out lies to me about their account while I’m looking at it with them.  No, these are not the problems I have been facing the last few weeks.

I must admit, the problem is – me and taxes.

I don’t have a problem with paying taxes.  Taxes are a priority for our communities, cities, and our country to survive.  Taxes are how we build social security (because we all know that will stick around for years); they help pay for our police departments (which are never over staffed); and they pay for our road maintenance (I have never once driven by and witnessed three people holding one shovel. NEVER…) 

My problem is not how a middle class person, who works 8:00am – 5:00pm every day, and who pays his or her taxes and is in the same tax bracket as someone making millions and billions.  Of course, that does bother me, and should be changed.  Hopefully it does soon.  What really, really drives me nuts is when someone comes in, who can’t speak English, hasn’t paid taxes for years – who maybe doesn’t even pay taxes at all – and lives off of the government.  How does the government pay them back?... by giving them $7000, $8000, or $9000 tax returns.  SAY WHAT!?….You ask, “How do you get such a return back?” The answer is – don’t work and have lots and lots of babies.  Then I ask, “How do you smell so bad?” Answer: “alskdfjaweoijasd;j”… Yea I can’t make it out either.  So, you see my problem.  I am stuck in my desk, biting my lip, and watching these checks being cashed…and I can’t even slash any tires.  I know, I have it rough.  What makes it worse…is when they ask me why they didn’t get more.  Wow, that’s ballsy.  Where are those tires?

I must admit, I may be a bit jealous.  They get all of this money back every year.  What do I get?...a full time job, health insurance, stock options, a roof over my head, a college education, and good hygiene.   

How can this all be fair?…..

Was this the one?  Straight to hell on this one?

This concludes “The One” series, as of now.  I must apologize to everyone.  Some comments were bad, some were horrible, and some were just true.  I would also like to say, thank you for reading, taking my thoughts with a grain of salt, and for not hunting me down.  I promise, the next few blogs will be more inspirational and worth your reading time.  So, once again, Thank You and I Am Sorry.  Tune in again.