Invasion!

I sat on the toilet at work today, staring at the little speckled design painted on the linoleum floor.  The specks began to shift and roam in seemingly random directions.  I blinked and they stood still, back in their original positions.  I have the office ant colony to thank for this visual phenomenon. 

Jim, our maintenance guy, had noticed a few ants in the kitchen last week and set up a couple of traps, the kind with a clear goo inside that the little buggers get stuck in.  As of this morning, those traps had only caught one or two ants each.  But I was squishing about a dozen of the bastards on my office floor every day.  So finally, after going on a mini rampage this morning, wiping out 10 or 15 of the little twerps, I stole one of the traps from the kitchen.  I found a huddled mass of probably 20 or 30 ants under the corner of the rug below my desk, and placed the trap near them.  Then I went about my work and soon took a break for lunch.  When I came back from lunch, less than two hours after setting the trap, it had gone from clear to black. 

There had to have been 60 or 70 ants inside that one-by-three-inch trap.  Some were still alive, near the entrance, just beginning to explore this new contraption placed before them.  But most were dead, floating in the goo.  When I lifted the corner of the rug, there were yet another 40 or 50 of the little critters milling around, no doubt trying to figure out where that delicious sugary smell was coming from. 

I tossed the full trap, its black coat rippling, into the garbage can.  I knew we didn’t have any spray poison, so I grabbed some floor cleaner from under the kitchen sink and gave the remaining ants a good spritzing.  Then, while they were trapped and drowning in the liquid, I came through with a wad of paper towels and finished the job.  When I was done, there were no ants left. 

I cleaned up, took out the trash, and when I sat back down a few minutes later, a couple of ants had reappeared.  I tried to go back to work, but every few minutes I would look down and see trios or quartets of them fanning out across the floor.  I peeked under the rug again and found a new batch—maybe 20 of them—amassing near the seam at the bottom of the wall. 

I stole the second trap from the kitchen.  It had a mere two dead ants in it.  Throughout the rest of the afternoon, I kept an eye on the trap as it filled up.  The ants seemed to approach its entrance, peer in at the growing crowd inside, and say to each other, “Damn. Must be a party. Smells like they’ve got some sweet grub too. You wanna check it out?”  “Yeah, dude. Looks pretty fun.  I need a break, the queen’s really been crackin’ the whip lately. Check out all these guys, passed out near the door! This must be one helluva party! Woo!”  Then, dead.

Still, not every ant could be lured in.  Every 30 minutes or so, until quitting time, I went around squishing 8 or 10 little guys who happened to be scattered across the floor, roaming aimlessly.  But wherever I would kill one, another would always seem to take its place just a few minutes later.  By the time I left, their numbers appeared to be dwindling, but they weren't gone completely.  And now the ants have the office to themselves for the weekend, with the freedom to wander or join the party. 

My new #drug?

It’s funny how, as humans, whenever we quit one habit we almost inevitably replace it with another.  Quit drinking and start smoking.  Quit smoking and start putting food to your lips instead of cigarettes.  And in my case, quit wasting time on Facebook and start tweeting your brains out.

In my defense, though, my newfound Twitter addiction—er, fascination (addiction is a bit strong)—was enabled by one of my co-workers quitting his job and a nonprofit organization's controversial social media campaign. 

For the first week or so of Lent, I was happily plodding along without Facebook or any other form of social media mucking up my free time.  Then, on two days’ notice, the guy who used to take care of all our organization’s social media needs left to join a marketing firm that wanted him to start his new job post-haste (for which I cannot blame them; he does good work).  That left me and a fellow employee to pick up the slack by Facebooking and tweeting.  Naturally, my cohort filled the Facebook position while I took the wheel of the Twitter bus. 

That was two weeks ago, and since then Twitter has captured my interest and wasted my time like no website since, well, Facebook.  Or maybe Sporcle.  OK, yeah, Sporcle. 

When I first started using Twitter a couple of years ago, it didn’t hold much of an allure for me.  Hardly any of my friends and acquaintances were using it, and the 140-character updates (almost always with misspellings and textese abbreviations like “lol” and “smh”) left me shaking my head, wanting more. 

Now it’s different.  I still don’t really care to use my own Twitter account, because very few of my friends tweet, and I haven’t taken the time to follow a bunch of people who might be interesting to read about.  But using my organization’s Twitter account is fascinating.  We follow all sorts of interesting people, and all sorts follow us.  Plus, I can have fun coming up with clever little 140-character advertisements for our website, which might actually get people to click, and therefore become involved with our organization.  Social media have become viable forms of marketing, as many companies have proved in recent times.

The most recent, and probably most poignant, proof of that came last week, in Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 campaign, which, in addition to riling me up for a variety of reasons, kept my attention riveted on Twitter.  But that’s another story, for next time. 

By the way, these are some of the images that come up when you search Google for "twitter needs you."

This was here.

This was here.

And finally, my favorite. From here.

Status Update

I saw a great Facebook profile photo a while back.  No, I wasn’t on Facebook.  In fact, I haven’t logged on since Fat Tuesday, nearly three weeks ago.  And I don’t really miss it.  The longer I go without it, the easier it is to avoid it and not care about logging on.  But I digress.  This photo I saw showed up on a Google image search, I believe.  I don’t recall what I was looking for, but for some reason this photo showed up.  It was a Flash graphic that read, “You don’t need Facebook,” at first, and then changed to, “Facebook needs you.”  I’ll attach it below if I can find it.* 

It’s a nice little adage, or protest, but the sad fact is, I still feel like I do need Facebook.  Yes, Facebook needs me and other people to use it in order for it to be worth anything.  And if everyone stopped using Facebook, Facebook would be obsolete.  But the truth is, Facebook is actually quite a handy little communication tool.  According to this, nearly 156 million people in the U.S. alone communicate via Facebook.  So inevitably, by not using it, I’m being left out of some things.  And I’m leaving my friends and acquaintances out of some things too. 

For instance, how am I supposed to let people know that I’ve just posted a new blog entry?  I could call, text, or email a bunch of people and attach a link to this page.  Or I could post the link on Facebook.  Obviously the second option is the simpler of the two.  But now, without access to Facebook, I’ll just have to post this and hope my friends and family will check my blog and find this.  No, I’m not going to email everyone with a link.

Similarly, if one of my friends on Facebook posts an interesting link, I’ll have to hope they did the same on Twitter, which only a small fraction of my Facebook friends use.  More importantly, if one of my friends is hosting a social gathering (in real life), it’s not likely I’ll find out about it.  Most of my friends send party or event invitations via Facebook, not email or text.  Although, right now I am thankful for the ones who text.

So, even though Facebook’s existence depends more on its users than its users’ existence depends on Facebook, its overwhelming popularity has made it a ubiquitous communication tool.  I’ll survive just fine without it, but there’s no doubt I’ll be just a little bit out of the loop until I start using it again.

*PS: I couldn't find it.  Maybe I didn't see it on a Google search, but just imagined it in a dream.  Anyway, here are a couple of other fun pictures.  I found the first one here. 

I'm including this one just because it cracked me up.

This one was on this web page. 

And finally, here's another one that made me laugh.