(Some reasons not to go all the way up Pikes Peak.)
In January we went to Colorado Springs. The day I got sick, my wife decided to drive up Pikes Peak. The first reason not to go all the way to the top is when the road is closed. In January, it is likely to be closed because of snow and ice. I believe she got to about mile 12 or mile 15 before they made her turn back. On the trip last week she pointed out the scariest parts of the switchback. It was bad enough driving that with dry roads; I can't imagine doing it on snow.
This past week in July we tried to drive up with our son, his wife, and our new grandson. A sign at the entrance requested no babies under 4 months, but Tyler's doctor had cleared him, so up we went. Until somewhere between mile 15 and mile 16, when the engine temp went into the red zone. We had a busted coolant overflow tank and had lost too much coolant. Down we went, using more brakes than we would have otherwise. We bought coolant at the point they check your brake temp (we were in the safe zone, but just barely), and made it down still using too much brake, twice having to turn the heater on to help pull heat from the coolant. Car trouble is another reason not to drive all the way up.
The final reason? Acrophobia. An unreasoning fear of heights.
Part of it is probably that I grew up in the desert. I think our 1st story roof was the highest I normally went. Except for the odd drive in the mountains. Normally these bugged me, but not horribly. Then, at the age of 7 or 8, on a trip to Cloudcroft, New Mexico, on a narrow, two lane, no shoulders or guard rails, savagely twisty mountain road, my sister Sharon (2 1/2 years younger) and I looked down. And down. And down. Down about an 80 degree or steeper slope. With the overgrown, rusting hulks of cars a long way down, clearly victims of the curves at speed.
About that time, a fully loaded tractor trailer (one of several that trip) came flying around a blind curve, partly into our lane, probably doing the speed limit (70 MPH). Certainly we were going the speed limit. Dad hugged the edge of the road. I'm pretty sure the tires were half way off the edge. The car was shimmying, the semi was practically scraping paint, and the ghosts in the cars below were planning a welcome party for us. Sharon and I spent the rest of the trip to the top, and most of the trip down a few days later, in fetal positions on the floor of the car. Our insane younger siblings, Kathleen and Bill, gleefully looked out the windows and described what they saw. We'd have killed them, but that would have required opening our eyes.
The first part of the drive up Pikes Peak is through lush peaks and valleys, with the occasional steep bank covered in trees. The view down is in the distance, a pleasant buffer of vegetation hiding the nearby horrors. Once past the tree line, you are suddenly aware of the steep, steep drop offs and distance to the bottom. But the road is wide, often has guardrails, and a good bit of time the drop off is on the left. Space between you and the fall zone helps a lot.
But farther up, you spend a lot of time (with no guardrails! What idiot forgot the guardrails?) with the drop off much closer... on the right. At times the road is dirt, not asphalt (what fool forgot the paving?) Then the serious switchbacks start (often still dirt, and mostly without the guardrails (what MORON forgot those???)) and you are obviously higher up, it's soooo far down, and if you mess up even the teeniest bit, you will fall, fall, fall, and it's just a question of whether you'll die before the car explodes or after. Which draws your eye to the terrible, terrible edge of the road, the oh, so clear line between safety and driving off into space...
I recall vividly how I learned from motorcycling that your natural tendency is to go where you're looking. In this case, that's the edge. So far down. There's a little bit of a shoulder; between that and how steep the mountain is, you can't tell if there are rusting hulks of cars below, ghosts waiting for you to join them... And all I want to do is curl up in the fetal position on the floor.
I "joke" about that with my family. My wife and son both ask if I want them to drive. "No, I'm fine, Sharon can drive back down so I can look around." But that's just me trying to cope, trying not to give in to the Fear. I'm terrified. I'm determined to do this. I don't think I can do it. I pray, desperately, for strength.
The car overheats. Answered prayer? Serendipity? Chance? I don't believe in chance, and it wasn't what I asked for. But it's a gift horse, and I don't look it in the mouth; there might be a slope in there. We let the engine cool, and I drive back down. Why did I keep driving? I couldn't tell you. Machismo? Maybe. Psychopathic fixation and reasoning shutdown? More likely. I'm pretty sure we made it down safely.
I'd still like to see the view from the top. But unless I can afford a helicopter ride (and NOT a bubble helicopter!) I just don't see it happening.
PS: Today I went off the high dive. From underneath, it's 10 to 12 feet high. From on top, that makes it 16 to 18 feet eyeball level. But it's easily twice that inside my head. But I jumped. Three times. I would have gone again, but I was at a party, and it was piñata time. I've come a long way being able to do that. I won't give up fighting my fear of heights. But I think Pike's Peak, for me, is just over the top.
PPS: I don't believe in ghosts. But that's how things seemed at the time.
Sunday, August 09, 2009
Monday, July 06, 2009
Freebird!!!
I was wondering why people were so wigged out about Michael Jackson's death. Then I remembered...
I was watching Lynyrd Skynyrd play Freebird on the two part video from 1974 on YouTube. Despite the infinite airplay (second only to Sweet Home Alabama), it's still a great song. I don't think they ever played it the same way twice live. Then again, I don't think they played any song the same way twice live, unless it was "Sweet Home, Alabama"...
Watching them again, I was just having a blast, until it hit me all over again. In my head, I heard the announcer's voice on the radio: the plane crash, no details at first; slowly they trickled in. Dead and wounded, some survivors. What amazing guitar interplay! You can't play the song and have it sound *right* without three guitars. At least three dead, no names pending next of kin being notified. I remember the first time I saw them, opening for the Who. The song went on forever, and I never wanted it to end. Crescendo after crescendo. Ronnie's dead? Who else? Albert and Gary in bad shape? Leon may be paralyzed for life? I was stunned. I sat there and cried in the typewriter repair shop where I worked. (Yes, I cry easily for a guy. Big softie, that's me. My eyes got damp during Finding Nemo, OK?) I was inarticulate for hours. The tragedies of the rich and famous don't usually have much impact on me, but Skynyrd's music was practically a part of my soul. Just a bunch of long haired, red neck, hippy rock and rollers. Well, I was pretty much a long haired, Texas cowboy, hippy rock and roller myself, back then.[1] My homies, even though the term hadn't been invented at the time.
The kicker is that, since it's a band, not an individual, there have been several more deaths since. Each time, another bit of me feels like it died, and I grieve for all those who've gone before again.
I was always jealous of Albert's, Gary's and Leon's hair. I'm still jealous of all their chops. And Leon always had on some cool hat (I love hats).
Watching the video, I didn't exactly cry, but I did tear up. I miss those guys.
Death, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways. Nevermind, not enough time.
Ronnie and the rest who've passed on, I pray you made Heaven, and are truly free as a bird now. And one day we'll all fly free together.
[1] Still am, other than trading the hippy lifestyle for a relationship with the One who made me.
(Here's a version with some really sweet guitar work: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x34uaw_lynyrd-skynyrd-freebird-germany-197_music .)
I was watching Lynyrd Skynyrd play Freebird on the two part video from 1974 on YouTube. Despite the infinite airplay (second only to Sweet Home Alabama), it's still a great song. I don't think they ever played it the same way twice live. Then again, I don't think they played any song the same way twice live, unless it was "Sweet Home, Alabama"...
Watching them again, I was just having a blast, until it hit me all over again. In my head, I heard the announcer's voice on the radio: the plane crash, no details at first; slowly they trickled in. Dead and wounded, some survivors. What amazing guitar interplay! You can't play the song and have it sound *right* without three guitars. At least three dead, no names pending next of kin being notified. I remember the first time I saw them, opening for the Who. The song went on forever, and I never wanted it to end. Crescendo after crescendo. Ronnie's dead? Who else? Albert and Gary in bad shape? Leon may be paralyzed for life? I was stunned. I sat there and cried in the typewriter repair shop where I worked. (Yes, I cry easily for a guy. Big softie, that's me. My eyes got damp during Finding Nemo, OK?) I was inarticulate for hours. The tragedies of the rich and famous don't usually have much impact on me, but Skynyrd's music was practically a part of my soul. Just a bunch of long haired, red neck, hippy rock and rollers. Well, I was pretty much a long haired, Texas cowboy, hippy rock and roller myself, back then.[1] My homies, even though the term hadn't been invented at the time.
The kicker is that, since it's a band, not an individual, there have been several more deaths since. Each time, another bit of me feels like it died, and I grieve for all those who've gone before again.
I was always jealous of Albert's, Gary's and Leon's hair. I'm still jealous of all their chops. And Leon always had on some cool hat (I love hats).
Watching the video, I didn't exactly cry, but I did tear up. I miss those guys.
Death, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways. Nevermind, not enough time.
Ronnie and the rest who've passed on, I pray you made Heaven, and are truly free as a bird now. And one day we'll all fly free together.
[1] Still am, other than trading the hippy lifestyle for a relationship with the One who made me.
(Here's a version with some really sweet guitar work: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x34uaw_lynyrd-skynyrd-freebird-germany-197_music .)
Monday, June 29, 2009
Oh Michael, Ye Hardly Knew Ye
I recall seeing the Jackson 5 on TV when they were just starting out. I thought they were cool. They were singing "I Want You Back", and that kid Michael was just going crazy on the dance floor. I loved the song. And I loved the dancing.
And I couldn't tell my friends. At least my white friends. We'd moved about 3 years before from a west Texas military and university community where people were just people, to a small town in the south where (at the time) white people were people, colored folk were generally something else, and there wasn't too much mixing, and then only under controlled conditions. Unless you liked getting beat up. A lot.
I had a couple of black friends, anyway; they'd somehow managed to cross the color line and not cause riots (no, I am not exaggerating). They and the local rock station turned me on to Diana Ross, James Brown, and many others, including the Jackson 5. My parents had worked hard (and rather successfully) to raise us to notice skin color about like we noticed hair color or eye color, and they were fine with us listening to this music. (We were the Outsiders, for sure.)
That radio station (and the black station that proper white folk weren't supposed to listen to) kept playing the Jackson 5, even playing their older songs over the next few years. At one point in 1972, I recall hearing five or six Jackson 5 songs in the same afternoon on one station, including "I Want You Back".
Some of my friends-- who'd been brought up in that culture of racism-- stared listening to these cats as well. They all claimed not to watch Soul Train, but if you watched them dance it was clear they weren't learning these moves from American Bandstand. By now, of course, black music in the white world was maturing (as well as sometimes getting rawer and / or angrier), but the Jackson 5 were still drawing people better than all but a few black acts.
For a few years after this the Jackson 5 (morphing into The Jacksons in a name dispute between labels) and Michael kind of flew under the radar for a while until Michael appeared in The Wiz. Things started moving for Michael again, though predominately still in the black community. But now his weirdness was center stage; black friends who bought The Jacksons' records and Michael's records were as likely to talk about his surgery and idiosyncratic behavior as they were his music. Until Thriller. Now everyone listened to (and watched, via MTV) Michael. Subsequent tours (no tour for Thriller) saw ticket prices that, for the time, were insanely high. The Machine was in full gear, and Michael was the hamster keeping the golden wheel spinning.
The Music Industry, the Pop Fans, and Greed Running Amok in every one around him (and probably in him; Real Money and Adoration of the Masses will tempt nearly anyone) had caught Michael at a young age and locked him in that hamster wheel. I've often wondered whether his bizarre lifestyle was primarily because of substance abuse or just a reaction to the cage, trying to carve out an identity because he really didn't know who he was. In either case (or perhaps both) the man sure seemed lost inside that ever changing body and the growing metropolis of the Michael Jackson Mystique. This is the end, to greater or lesser degrees, for far too many of our kings and queens of popular culture.
I never met the man, and I certainly can't judge him. But despite the glamor, the money, the accolades, I don't really see Michael Jackson as all that successful. Sure, he had money, fame, and millions of rabid fans. But I see a sad case, a man possessed from a young age by people riding his gravy train, molding Michael Jackson into the image of the god they wanted serving them.
I've made my share of jokes about his bizarre lifestyle but I really do appreciate the contributions he made to the music industry (especially to helping black music go mainstream in the 1969-1973 era) as well as to music itself and ultimately to racial harmony. He was a great pop singer, a great dancer, a brilliant showman / entertainer. He made some pretty cool, significant contributions to charity. But in the end, I wonder how happy he really was, if he really knew who he was, who he was created to be, and where he was ultimately headed. I don't know that he did. For his sake, I hope he did. Eternity's a long time by yourself.
What about the Machine? The Music Industry; society with stars in its eyes, worshipping its idols and driving them to hide, to despair of the public; the Greed Machine? While I detest them as collectives, I feel the same way toward the people in them as I do Michael and everyone else. Far too many of us look at Michael Jackson (or Elvis or Farrah or whomever) and try so desperately to be one of them, someone we are not, that we in turn lose sight of who we are and were made to be (if, indeed, we ever knew), and wander, like Michael, in an inner city of confusion and desperation. May God have mercy on us all and deliver us from ourselves.
Thanks especially to Kayla Marie and to John VanPelt, whose responses to Michael's death got me thinking more about these issues.
And I couldn't tell my friends. At least my white friends. We'd moved about 3 years before from a west Texas military and university community where people were just people, to a small town in the south where (at the time) white people were people, colored folk were generally something else, and there wasn't too much mixing, and then only under controlled conditions. Unless you liked getting beat up. A lot.
I had a couple of black friends, anyway; they'd somehow managed to cross the color line and not cause riots (no, I am not exaggerating). They and the local rock station turned me on to Diana Ross, James Brown, and many others, including the Jackson 5. My parents had worked hard (and rather successfully) to raise us to notice skin color about like we noticed hair color or eye color, and they were fine with us listening to this music. (We were the Outsiders, for sure.)
That radio station (and the black station that proper white folk weren't supposed to listen to) kept playing the Jackson 5, even playing their older songs over the next few years. At one point in 1972, I recall hearing five or six Jackson 5 songs in the same afternoon on one station, including "I Want You Back".
Some of my friends-- who'd been brought up in that culture of racism-- stared listening to these cats as well. They all claimed not to watch Soul Train, but if you watched them dance it was clear they weren't learning these moves from American Bandstand. By now, of course, black music in the white world was maturing (as well as sometimes getting rawer and / or angrier), but the Jackson 5 were still drawing people better than all but a few black acts.
For a few years after this the Jackson 5 (morphing into The Jacksons in a name dispute between labels) and Michael kind of flew under the radar for a while until Michael appeared in The Wiz. Things started moving for Michael again, though predominately still in the black community. But now his weirdness was center stage; black friends who bought The Jacksons' records and Michael's records were as likely to talk about his surgery and idiosyncratic behavior as they were his music. Until Thriller. Now everyone listened to (and watched, via MTV) Michael. Subsequent tours (no tour for Thriller) saw ticket prices that, for the time, were insanely high. The Machine was in full gear, and Michael was the hamster keeping the golden wheel spinning.
The Music Industry, the Pop Fans, and Greed Running Amok in every one around him (and probably in him; Real Money and Adoration of the Masses will tempt nearly anyone) had caught Michael at a young age and locked him in that hamster wheel. I've often wondered whether his bizarre lifestyle was primarily because of substance abuse or just a reaction to the cage, trying to carve out an identity because he really didn't know who he was. In either case (or perhaps both) the man sure seemed lost inside that ever changing body and the growing metropolis of the Michael Jackson Mystique. This is the end, to greater or lesser degrees, for far too many of our kings and queens of popular culture.
I never met the man, and I certainly can't judge him. But despite the glamor, the money, the accolades, I don't really see Michael Jackson as all that successful. Sure, he had money, fame, and millions of rabid fans. But I see a sad case, a man possessed from a young age by people riding his gravy train, molding Michael Jackson into the image of the god they wanted serving them.
I've made my share of jokes about his bizarre lifestyle but I really do appreciate the contributions he made to the music industry (especially to helping black music go mainstream in the 1969-1973 era) as well as to music itself and ultimately to racial harmony. He was a great pop singer, a great dancer, a brilliant showman / entertainer. He made some pretty cool, significant contributions to charity. But in the end, I wonder how happy he really was, if he really knew who he was, who he was created to be, and where he was ultimately headed. I don't know that he did. For his sake, I hope he did. Eternity's a long time by yourself.
What about the Machine? The Music Industry; society with stars in its eyes, worshipping its idols and driving them to hide, to despair of the public; the Greed Machine? While I detest them as collectives, I feel the same way toward the people in them as I do Michael and everyone else. Far too many of us look at Michael Jackson (or Elvis or Farrah or whomever) and try so desperately to be one of them, someone we are not, that we in turn lose sight of who we are and were made to be (if, indeed, we ever knew), and wander, like Michael, in an inner city of confusion and desperation. May God have mercy on us all and deliver us from ourselves.
Thanks especially to Kayla Marie and to John VanPelt, whose responses to Michael's death got me thinking more about these issues.
Monday, June 22, 2009
My kind of wedding!
I love a good wedding and suffer through the rest. The Hall family weddings are always fun. They manage to take the wedding seriously without taking themselves or life too seriously. Since I haven't cleared this with anyone in the family, I won't name any more names. Those who know will know, and everyone else can fill in names as they please. If you need names, then I suggest (in order) Edwina, Fred and Poquan. Just because.
When the bride (traditional white satin) started down the aisle, the groom (jeans, jacket, boots & hat) went wild, like he was going to run down the aisle and tackle her. The best man held the struggling groom off the ground to keep him up front.
A couple of times during the service, the bride got so excited she just shimmied all over.
During the vows the best man was looking straight at the bride over the groom's shoulder with a big, goofy smile on his face. The bride barely made it through the vows without cracking up.
When they (the bride and groom) kissed at the end, it was so passionate I thought her dress was going to catch fire.
As the bride and groom started down the aisle after the service, the DJ started playing the traditional wedding recessional. After a few seconds of this the sound system made a noise like a dying turntable and switched to disco music (K C and the Sunshine Band).
After the dinner and dancing, the bride threw the bouquet. Her two sisters both got hold of it and fought over it until it ripped in half.
When the groom got ready to take off the bride's garter, they blindfolded him. She got up from the chair; the best man sat down with his pants pulled up to his knees and his boots off. The bride sat next to him to cover his legs with her dress. When the groom got old of the best man's *very* hairy legs, his expression was priceless.
When the bride (traditional white satin) started down the aisle, the groom (jeans, jacket, boots & hat) went wild, like he was going to run down the aisle and tackle her. The best man held the struggling groom off the ground to keep him up front.
A couple of times during the service, the bride got so excited she just shimmied all over.
During the vows the best man was looking straight at the bride over the groom's shoulder with a big, goofy smile on his face. The bride barely made it through the vows without cracking up.
When they (the bride and groom) kissed at the end, it was so passionate I thought her dress was going to catch fire.
As the bride and groom started down the aisle after the service, the DJ started playing the traditional wedding recessional. After a few seconds of this the sound system made a noise like a dying turntable and switched to disco music (K C and the Sunshine Band).
After the dinner and dancing, the bride threw the bouquet. Her two sisters both got hold of it and fought over it until it ripped in half.
When the groom got ready to take off the bride's garter, they blindfolded him. She got up from the chair; the best man sat down with his pants pulled up to his knees and his boots off. The bride sat next to him to cover his legs with her dress. When the groom got old of the best man's *very* hairy legs, his expression was priceless.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Dear face(less)book
An open letter to facebook and its advertisers (including corporations I was recently a "fan" of on facebook):
Dear face(less)book,
A couple of days ago, out of the blue, I was suddenly warned that I was possibly in violation of your terms of use, that I had possibly practiced "wall post abuse", and that my account could be locked (I forget the exact term) or I might be blocked from using this feature if I continued in this practice. That was the gist of the (singularly useless) warning.
Nowhere did you explain what you really thought the problem was. Nowhere can I find a list of the things that constitute "wall posts". Nowhere did you explain what behavior, how much, or in what time frame would result in the account being locked.
I spent some time looking through the FAQs as you suggested. I could find nothing at all that applied to my use of facebook.
I looked through your terms of use. I could find nothing in which I might be in violation.
I looked through your notes on blocking. They were also useless, other than warning me that you could not, under any circumstance, lift a block early. (I'm sorry, but that's just absurd.)
Giving up, I went back to my home page, and commented on someone's status. Surprise! That turns out to be a wall post! A huge banner took over the top of my page, explaining that You Have Been Warned, You Were Bad, Now You Are Banned, You Account Could Be Locked (whatever, still don't recall the phrasing). For some, apparently random amount of time from several hours to several days.
At this point I discovered that you are essentially not really facebook, but facelessbook. You make it as difficult to contact you as possible. All I could find was a "suggestions" contact page, which I used. Several days later, I still haven't heard back. It doesn't surprise me, but it certainly irritates me.
The icing on the cake is that after 24 hours (best guess) the giant warning banner disappeared. Nowhere can I find any hint of whether I am still blocked. I can try to wall post; only after I try to submit do I get a popup explaining that I am still blocked. Again, nowhere do you tell me whether this prolongs the block or increases my chances of having my account locked, or if this is, indeed, the correct way to determine when the block is lifted.
So for now, all I can do to communicate is set status and send private messages. This severely limits interaction. I got onto facebook primarily because I am involved with teenagers and college aged people. Much of this is because I am a youth pastor; in today's culture, facebook and myspace are requirements for keeping in touch and communicating with young people. You have now, arbitrarily, capriciously, and without any useful warning, cut off much of that interaction.
I suppose that since you provide a "free" service (of course, nothing is free, as the ads take time to load and draw my eyes, costing me time, my most precious asset) you feel no need to provide customer service. Until this blocking, I often opined that I would be happy to pay two or three dollars a month to get rid of the ads. But now, having experienced one of the highest levels of "customer no service" I have personally encountered, I am not so sure I would trust you with my money.
As someone who has spent over two decades in software development and IT, as an early adopter of the internet, I understand the necessity of defending against both spam and harassment. But your implementation of these defenses violates many, many rules of usability and user interaction.
I happen to know that I am not alone in this predicament. Quite a few others are in the same boat, including at least one school teacher. I'm sure some of those blocked deserved it. Some of them may even know why they were blocked. But I bet not all of them knew, and I know for a fact not all of us deserved it.
A a premier social media service, you wield great power. With great power comes great responsibility. While you have a responsibility to protect your users from spammers, stalkers and predators, you also have a responsibility to treat your users fairly, and to respond to problems appropriately-- not arbitrarily, capriciously, or without appeal.
You are currently the 700 pound gorilla. But on the net, empires rise and fall far more quickly than in the physical world. If you don't solve these problems, and solve them fairly quickly, I strongly suspect you will have a competitor arise "from nowhere", and take over most, if not all of your market share. You can choose to be reasonable and solve the problems, or to be arrogant and stay the course. In the latter case, you will ultimately be just another failed footnote in the second dot com bubble.
As far as advertisers and corporate fandom goes I certainly don't hold those companies responsible. But I will nevertheless boycott them so long as they support your faceless attitude.
Resolution: I quit trying to do anything that included a possible wall post for over 24 hours (close to 36). Suddenly I can wall post again. Was this the magic needed, or was it just that the random timer tripped? No clue, because facelessbook never responded.
Dear face(less)book,
A couple of days ago, out of the blue, I was suddenly warned that I was possibly in violation of your terms of use, that I had possibly practiced "wall post abuse", and that my account could be locked (I forget the exact term) or I might be blocked from using this feature if I continued in this practice. That was the gist of the (singularly useless) warning.
Nowhere did you explain what you really thought the problem was. Nowhere can I find a list of the things that constitute "wall posts". Nowhere did you explain what behavior, how much, or in what time frame would result in the account being locked.
I spent some time looking through the FAQs as you suggested. I could find nothing at all that applied to my use of facebook.
I looked through your terms of use. I could find nothing in which I might be in violation.
I looked through your notes on blocking. They were also useless, other than warning me that you could not, under any circumstance, lift a block early. (I'm sorry, but that's just absurd.)
Giving up, I went back to my home page, and commented on someone's status. Surprise! That turns out to be a wall post! A huge banner took over the top of my page, explaining that You Have Been Warned, You Were Bad, Now You Are Banned, You Account Could Be Locked (whatever, still don't recall the phrasing). For some, apparently random amount of time from several hours to several days.
At this point I discovered that you are essentially not really facebook, but facelessbook. You make it as difficult to contact you as possible. All I could find was a "suggestions" contact page, which I used. Several days later, I still haven't heard back. It doesn't surprise me, but it certainly irritates me.
The icing on the cake is that after 24 hours (best guess) the giant warning banner disappeared. Nowhere can I find any hint of whether I am still blocked. I can try to wall post; only after I try to submit do I get a popup explaining that I am still blocked. Again, nowhere do you tell me whether this prolongs the block or increases my chances of having my account locked, or if this is, indeed, the correct way to determine when the block is lifted.
So for now, all I can do to communicate is set status and send private messages. This severely limits interaction. I got onto facebook primarily because I am involved with teenagers and college aged people. Much of this is because I am a youth pastor; in today's culture, facebook and myspace are requirements for keeping in touch and communicating with young people. You have now, arbitrarily, capriciously, and without any useful warning, cut off much of that interaction.
I suppose that since you provide a "free" service (of course, nothing is free, as the ads take time to load and draw my eyes, costing me time, my most precious asset) you feel no need to provide customer service. Until this blocking, I often opined that I would be happy to pay two or three dollars a month to get rid of the ads. But now, having experienced one of the highest levels of "customer no service" I have personally encountered, I am not so sure I would trust you with my money.
As someone who has spent over two decades in software development and IT, as an early adopter of the internet, I understand the necessity of defending against both spam and harassment. But your implementation of these defenses violates many, many rules of usability and user interaction.
I happen to know that I am not alone in this predicament. Quite a few others are in the same boat, including at least one school teacher. I'm sure some of those blocked deserved it. Some of them may even know why they were blocked. But I bet not all of them knew, and I know for a fact not all of us deserved it.
A a premier social media service, you wield great power. With great power comes great responsibility. While you have a responsibility to protect your users from spammers, stalkers and predators, you also have a responsibility to treat your users fairly, and to respond to problems appropriately-- not arbitrarily, capriciously, or without appeal.
You are currently the 700 pound gorilla. But on the net, empires rise and fall far more quickly than in the physical world. If you don't solve these problems, and solve them fairly quickly, I strongly suspect you will have a competitor arise "from nowhere", and take over most, if not all of your market share. You can choose to be reasonable and solve the problems, or to be arrogant and stay the course. In the latter case, you will ultimately be just another failed footnote in the second dot com bubble.
As far as advertisers and corporate fandom goes I certainly don't hold those companies responsible. But I will nevertheless boycott them so long as they support your faceless attitude.
Resolution: I quit trying to do anything that included a possible wall post for over 24 hours (close to 36). Suddenly I can wall post again. Was this the magic needed, or was it just that the random timer tripped? No clue, because facelessbook never responded.
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