I signed up for Facebook's Farmville today, and it doesn't look like a whole lot of fun. I am in a definite minority. There are more than 65 million Facebookers signed onto the Farmville site. They do things like grow and market a strawberry crop in four hours. They exchange gifts. They help each other out - harvesting, planting, branding calves, slaughtering chickens, hacking rattlesnakes to pieces and hanging cattle rustlers.

     Actually, I don't know if any of that's true, because I don't have time, REALLY, to play massively online games (is that a MOG?), and I suspect that few of the roughly 960,000 actual u.s. FARMERS HAVE TIME TO DELVE INTO TIMESUCKEY COMPUTER GAMES.
     dON'T GET ME WRONG. i LOVE COMPUTERS. rEALLY. BUT IF I SPEND TIME ON MY COMPUTER, I NEED TO BE EITHER DOING SOMETHING USEFUL OR LEARNING HOW TO DO SOMETHING USEFUL. lIKE, IF YOU'RE A MECHANIC, DO YOU PUNCH OUT AND THEN GO JUGGLE YOUR WRENCHES?
     SOMETIMES THE LEARNING PART IS FRUSTRATING.
     DID YOU NOTICE, FOR EXAMPLE, THAT THE COLOR OF THE TYPE IN THIS POSTING IS WEIRD? AND THAT IT'S ALL IN CAPITAL LETTERS? AND THERE'RE SOME STRANGE THINGS GOING ON WITH THE SIZES OF THE TYPE? i DIDN'T TRY ANY OF THAT. aND YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO POST IN ALL CAPS BECAUSE  

     IT'S JUST LIKE SHOUTING! IT'S RUDE!

     hOWEVER, TODAY WHEN i SIGNED ON TO BLOGSPOT, IT WOULDN'T LET ME TYPE IN UPPER AND LOWER CASE LETTERS. I DON'T KNOW WHY. I TRIED TO FIGURE IT OUT. EVERYTIME I COME HERE, I GET A NEW SURPRISE AND USUALLY I CAN FIGURE OUT A WAY AROUND IT. BUT TODAY, AFTER SPENDING SOME ANNOYING TIME ON FARMVILLE, AND THEN COMING OVER HERE TO BLOGSPOT AND MORE FRUSTRATION, I FIGURED, I'M JUST GOING TO DO IT THIS WAY. MAYBE I'LL HAVE BETTER LUCK TOMORROW.

     I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE, BY THE WAY, NOT TOTALLY ENCHANTED WITH FARMVILLE. THE FACEBOOK SITE CALLED "NOT PLAYING FARMVILLE" HAS 1.6 MILLION FOLLOWERS, ABOUT DOUBLE THE NUMBER OF ACTUAL FARMERS. MAYBE I'LL MESS AROUND IN FARMVILLE FOR A BIT LONGER, SEE IF I CAN CATCH THE MAGIC. I MIGHT EVEN TRY TO SEND YOU A GIFT.

     I'LL BE BRINGING IT 'ROUND IN A SPREADER.