Monday, September 7, 2009

Help! My Facebook Page, like Billy Pilgrim, has become “unstuck in time.”

I noticed it earlier today, Labor Day, Monday September 7, 2009. I opened my homepage and the top post was from Rachel Flynn, who was “moving to New York tomorrow.” Wait a minute, I recalled that she had said that on Friday, and I knew there had been several posts since Friday. What is going on?

I looked at the previous post. It was from my New Zealand Internet friend Jason Goroncy promoting his excellent blog, Per Crucem ad Lucem, on Saturday at 8:13 pm.

The previous post was Donna Schaper enjoying the end of summer and looking forward to events in September, posted on September 3.

“And so it goes” at Kurt Vonnegut might say. In his book Slaughterhouse Five, one of my favorites, his protagonist, Billy Pilgrim “becomes unstuck in time” and experiences past and future events out of sequence. So one moment he is experiencing his life as a middle-aged married dentist in upstate New York, and in another he may be back as a young chaplain's assistant in WW2 experiencing the firebombing of Dresden in a bunker the Germans have put him as a P.O.W, and in another moment he is naked in a zoo on the planet of Tralfamadore with B-movie starlet Montana Willdhack, both having been kidnapped by the Tralfamadorians as examples of earthlings. You get the idea.

If you are one of the handful of people on earth who read blogs, but doesn’t have a Facebook page, here’s how it works (when it isn’t broken): you scroll down your homepage, and all your “friends” posts cascade down the wall in order of posting time. To have your Facebook page become unstuck in time is most disconcerting.

I thought it might be a problem with my computer, but posted about it and got two responses from other people that said it was happening to them too. I can only access their posts from the little notifications thingy in the bottom right corner.

I just checked to see if they fixed it, but no: Rachel is still moving to New York tomorrow. Unstuck in time. Sorry Rachel!

I hope they can fix it.

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for this and the smile. And thank God it was Saturday and not tomorrow. (Speaking as one of the movers for the movee). We also got to sleep in today which was lovely.

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  2. I'm here! Luckily no Vonnegut-inspired shenanigans are currently affecting me since, as Mom just mentioned, it wouldn't be fun to move in yet again.

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  3. That's a relief. Have a great New York experience. I was born there and there is no place like it.

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