I'm just going to say this about that. If anyone can explain any part of this to me I would love to be enlightened. Otherwise I shall never speak of it again because it's obviously a moot point.

When I was mugged, in the city of Chicago in the state of Illinois, my (state of Illinois) driver's license was taken. The police who arrived at the scene put me in the back of the squad car. I was bloody and injured, but they gave me a list of phone numbers to call immediately. The list contained numbers to credit card companies, banks and the Secretary of State. The officers were very kind and told me my injuries were important and they would get me medical attention, but first and foremost I needed to call my bank, credit card companies and the Secretary of State and tell them what happened. They told me every second counted because it wasn't just my credit cards and bank accounts that could be in jeopardy. They told me my physical injuries would heal but the damage identity theft can cause could last for years.

And so from the back of a CPD squad car, maybe 10 minutes after the attack, bleeding and still shaking and in shock and barely able to speak coherently, I called my bank, credit card companies and Secretary of State and told them what happened. They froze my accounts and put my information on a national list of victims. This was supposed to protect me from identity fraud. My bank was already closed for the day, so their loss and fraud department instructed me to go to the bank in the morning to close my frozen account and open a new one. They told me that since my driver's license was stolen I had to bring my birth certificate, passport and whatever third form of ID I had, Social Security card, military ID, preferably something with a photo or official notary stamp, like mortgage/deed docs. They told me utility bills, rental leases and work security badges were not valid forms of ID.

I got to the hospital, got patched up, got a couple hours of pain medication-induced sleep and the next morning I limped to the main branch of my bank with my official birth certificate, passport and Social Security card. My bank opened at 9 AM, I was there at 9:15.

Unfortunately I was 10 minutes too late. At 9:05 at a branch across town "I" had already withdrawn all my money closed my account.

How was I able to be at one branch at 9 AM and at the main office, 10 miles away, at 9:15? Identity theft aided and abetted by the dumbest bank teller in the world.

A woman showed up at that branch with my stolen driver's license, claiming to be me, and, of course her story matched. The teller said the woman was upset and crying about being mugged and "seemed scared" about identity theft. She told the teller she wanted to withdraw all her money and close the accounts. She didn't want to open a new account for a few weeks out of fear of identity theft. The woman told the teller she had no credit cards because they all had to be frozen because of the mugging and she would need her cash until she could get new credit cards and open a new bank account. The teller, who pulled up my accounts and saw all the notes about the mugging and freezing the account. The crying woman's story matched, she had a valid driver's license, so, the teller was very sympathetic and handed over all my money to the woman who had my driver's license and promptly closed the account. She even offered the woman a glass of water and gave her the forms for fraud "just in case."

The woman claiming to be me only had to have a matching story and show one form of ID, a driver's license, to gain access to my frozen bank accounts, while I, the actual victim who froze the accounts, the victim whose driver's license was stolen, needed three forms of ID to gain access to my accounts...which had already been drained and closed.

I did everything right. The teller who gave away all my money did everything wrong.

In Illinois, driver's licenses have a signature imprinted on them, large enough to read and compare to other written signatures. The signature on the account closing documents, the signature the theft used, bore zero resemblance to mine. My signature is angular and efficient, devoid of superfluous twirls and flourishes. The signature the imposter used was big and loopy and had all sorts of extraneous details - the sort of penmanship 12 year old girls use to write their names on extra credit science class posters. And even if the bank teller was "bad" at graphology, the woman thief who drained my account spelled my name incorrectly when she signed the account documents. I realize bank tellers are not FBI agents, but given the circumstances one (or at least I) would think some extra attention would be given to details like penmanship and spelling.

Numerous phone calls, meetings with fraud agents, forms filled out and filed, and several months later I got some of my money back from the bank. I had to pay for fees incurred during the fraud claim. And that's not including interest lost while my money was "missing." I suppose I could have sued the bank or the bank teller, but, ahem, all my money was stolen so I didn't have money to pay a lawyer.

I bank's fraud and security teams reviewed video tapes from the branch where the woman drained my account. She was a very short Latino girl who appeared to be about 19 years old. The security team was able to deem (from the height ruler she passed by when she entered the branch) that she was 5'2". My driver's license clearly states that I am 5'11". I was not 19 at the time, and even in dim light with good makeup I probably could not have passed for 19.  And thanks to wonderful DMV lighting accentuating my extra-white skin, my driver's license photo clearly showed that no chromosome in my DNA hails from anywhere south of the 60th Parallel (North).  

Nonetheless, it happened. It all happened. Incredulous and unfair as it all sounds, it happens several times a day, every day.

The police officer in charge of my "event" told me that this is why the officers were so adamant about me calling the banks within minutes of the attack and mugging. Driver's licenses have a huge street value. The guy who mugged me undoubtedly sold my license for anywhere between $200 and $2,000. The officer told me there are "chop houses" all over the city where "no questions are asked" when someone shows up wanting to sell a driver's license.

The officer added identity fraud to my bodily harm/larceny case. My driver's license had already been entered into a fraud database, but in the case of my bank and the nincompoop teller, it didn't make a difference.

The "good" news is that this all happened a couple months before my license was due to expire. So. At the time I thought, "Even if someone was out there passing themselves off as me, they can only try it for a couple months before the license expires." It was small comfort because my info was on there, and out there, being passed around and used by who knows who. I was scared because they had my address, they knew where I lived. I sublet my apartment and moved as soon as I could. But all these years later it's still discomforting.

Getting a new driver's license was a huge ordeal. Because of the identity fraud, I was fingerprinted at the police station so that my "official" fingerprint is on file. Then, when I went to replace my stolen driver's license, I had to be fingerprinted. (I'm told this is no longer done at "most" DMVs in Illinois.) And since then, every time I renew my license I have to go to the DMV and take my birth certificate, passport and Social Security card to prove I'm actually me. Other people can renew by mail or online and need only show their current driver's license. But not me. Because my license info is on the fraud database I have to go to extra lengths to prove I'm me. The officer told me this will be the case the rest of my life.

And sure enough, it has reared its ugly head. I got a call from a hospital at 2 AM. The admitting nurse looked up my phone number and called to tell me "I'd" been admitted and was unconscious, did "I" have health insurance information for "me." I told the nurse about the mugging and stolen license and that whomever was using my expired ID was not me. The nurse said, "Yeah, I didn't think she looked 5'11" but she's unconscious so we couldn't check the eye color and she can't sign anything to check the signatures." So, the woman brought in unconscious from a mix of crack and booze wasn't me. You might think the hospital staff would confiscate the stolen license, but, nope.

Shortly after that there was a fender bender accident and the guilty party attempted to use my expired driver's license as a form of ID. Police were not called, but insurance details were exchanged. Turns out the guilty party used a stolen ID (mine) and a fake insurance policy. That was a painful set of phone calls I had to endure - first from the guy who was hit, and then from his insurance company.

A year later someone attempted to get my Social Security number using my expired driver's license. Fortunately several forms of ID are required to get info from Social Security and the attempt failed, and because of the info in the identity theft/fraud database I was notified of the attempt. You might think someone at the Social Security office would confiscate a stolen, expired driver's license, but nope.

There have been numerous attempts to open credit card accounts in my name, using my driver's license number. The attempts fail because (fortunately) I didn't have my Social Security number on anything in my wallet (lesson I knew and am teaching you if you don't know it: Never, ever, ever carry anything with your Social Security number on it unless you absolutely have to, like on your way to a mortgage closing.) When I bought my condo I had to fill out a form regarding the identity theft, essentially swearing under notarized oath that I am me and not someone impersonating me. Sitting around the table at the closing, wary looks were exchanged during that portion of the paperwork.

Every time a question about the identity theft arises, the people in charge tell me, "This is for your safety. We're doing this for you because your driver's license was stolen and you're in the identity theft/fraud database." Eyes are usually rolled and/or exasperated sighs are issued along with that statement.

And now, the state of Illinois is granting permission to "undocumented" "visitors" to obtain driver's licenses. 

One might think, "Well...at the very least it should eliminate that fake ID and insurance issue, if an undocumented visitor gets into a car accident at least they'll be accountable because they'll have valid driver's license." And yeah, sure, maybe that's one issue that will be eased, and that would be great because I would hate for anyone to have to endure the phone calls I had to handle when someone used my stolen license as a form of identification at the scene of an accident. So. You know. Yay for that.  (A girl can dream and I'm trying real hard to choose the optimistic viewpoint.)

And maybe if they can obtain their own driver's licenses they won't have to use stolen driver's licenses, so the black market industry of stealing and selling driver's licenses will diminish or even go away, which might, in turn, decrease some of the muggings in the city. So. You know. Yay for that. (A girl can dream and I'm trying real hard to choose the optimistic viewpoint.)

But.

Um.

Having endured what I've had to deal with since being mugged, and what I will continue to have to deal with because my name is in the identity theft/fraud database, I can't help but feel the cruel sting of irony over the fact that in the state of Illinois, people who are illegally in the US can now get a driver's license easier than I can.

I'm sure there's something (or many things) I don't understand about the new Illinois undocumented visitor driver's license law. I'm sure my perspective is jaded because of my unfortunate experiences regarding my stolen driver's license.

Based on my aftermath of a stolen driver's license, one part of the new law puzzles me. The law states that the licenses are not to be used for identification.

Called temporary visitor driver's licenses, the permits will vary from traditional licenses several ways. Most noticeably, they will be visually different, with a blue background as opposed to red one.
The cards will be marked "not valid for identification" and cannot be used for things like boarding airplanes, voting or purchasing a gun. The licenses will only be valid for three years instead of four years, like traditional licenses. After three years, the individual would have to go through the process again.

To qualify for a license, an applicant must prove they have lived in Illinois for at least a year and show that they are ineligible for a Social Security card. Documents that will be accepted include a copy of a lease, utility bills and a valid passport or consular identification card.

Drivers must also pass vision, written and road tests and pay a $30 fee. In order for the license to remain valid, a driver also will be required to get insurance. If a person with a temporary visitor's license is caught driving without insurance, they will be ticketed for both driving without insurance as well as driving without a license.

The licenses won't be valid for identification. Um. So. What's the point? The only plus I can see is that undocumented "visitors" can now buy insurance, which is good because they now have to buy insurance to go with their new driver's licenses. But. What about someone over 21 who wants to get into a club or buy booze? Bouncers and dudes at liquor stores are going to say, "Sorry man, I can't accept that ID, it's not valid." I dunno...I can't see that happening. And what about other states? Are people in other states going to say, "Oh, wait, this is one of those Illinois temporary visitor licenses, I can't use this as a form ID." If a bank teller can't even distinguish between me and a 5'2" 19 year old Latino, I'm guessing bouncers, liquor store dudes and people in other states aren't going to determine the temporary visitor licenses are not "valid identification."

Further, if someone gets mugged and has their temporary visitor's driver's license stolen, and that license, like mine, is used by someone else, is the rightful owner of the license a victim of identity fraud? If the license isn't a valid form of identification, then, technically, it's not identity fraud. But, then, technically, if the licenses aren't a valid form of identification, then, the rightful owner is guilty of identity fraud by merely carrying a driver's license that isn't a valid form of identification. Lots of semantics in all of this, and I hate splitting hairs, but I'm trying to figure it all out. 

And speaking of semantics, it's called a temporary visitor driver's license. I realize "temporary" is not a finite measure of time. And "visitor" can be interpreted at least a few different ways. So there's a lot of gray area when you put those two words together.

But. Here's a story problem. It's a tricky one. In order to qualify, an applicant must prove they have lived in Illinois for at least a year. US temporary visas are typically not allowed for periods longer than 6 months per calendar year. There are some loopholes for students, teachers, diplomats and spouses of diplomats, but generally a temporary visa is 6 months. So 6 months is the base unit of measure in terms of foreign nationals temporarily visiting/residing in the US. And yet to obtain a driver's license in Illinois, undocumented "visitors" have to prove they've lived here at least a year - proof including utility bills and a lease. And they have to renew the license every three years.

I told you I suck at math and I hate story problems, so that's probably why I can't make those numbers add up. Gotta be my computational skills failing me again.

The signing of the law was a big stinking deal, the governor signed it on a Sunday morning and there was a mariachi band on hand to celebrate the signing.

Oh. And. That's something else I would like someone explain to me. I'm pretty sure there are a lot of Polish and Irish undocumented "visitors" in Illinois, why weren't there celebratory Irish dancers and a polka band on the capital steps, too? Did they decline the invitation?

Ultimately I would like someone to explain to me the point of the "temporary" "visitor" licenses. And I would like someone to also explain to me why, for the rest of my life, I will have to jump through more hoops and offer more proof of ID to renew my driver's license, valid for identification, than undocumented visitors will have to provide in order to obtain a driver's license. (An answer other than, "because you were mugged and your driver's license was entered into the identity theft/fraud database.")

I haven't spouted off about a pop cultural topic in a while. Indulge me as I indulge my opinions. Or not. It's my blog and I'll opine if I want, knowing full well my opinion is of no significance to anyone, really, and especially not to the parties involved.

The topic is: Disappointment.

The catalyst is: The Annie Leibovitz post-Sandy fashion photographs.

When my brother went to college he left behind a crate of old Rolling Stone magazines he collected. I devoured them, trying to learn everything I could about rock and roll. In the process I learned a lot about photography, too.  So I grew up with Annie Leibovitz as a role model. She was a serious photographer, a visionary artist, and she was breaking the gender barrier in what was then a male dominated industry. In my teenaged estimation, she was breaking barriers and opening doors for women, and was a creative visionary to boot. The only thing cooler than being a rock and roll photographer was being a rock and roll guitarist, and I debated that being a photographer could be even cooler than playing in a band because as a photographer you got to see all kinds of bands. As a musician, you're touring and rehearsing and probably not seeing a lot of other bands live.

I even wrote a term paper about women in professionally creative industries and used Annie as a case study. In that term paper I wrote something like, "Annie didn't just work at Rolling Stone, she wasn't just a photo editor back in the office or a studio photographer working under the safety of a controlled environment, she was a concert photographer. She was out there in the rock and roll trenches photographing all of it, and a lot of it's not pretty or glamorous. The recording industry is dominated by males. It's difficult for even the most talented women to be taken seriously as anything other than a backstage groupie, but Annie broke that barrier and got the well-deserved artistic respect she deserved."

Yes. I was an impressionable teenager and yes I had a girl crush on her.  But what I wrote still holds true.

I grew up and grew more aware. I discovered many other photographers, old and new. And still, always, Annie's work impressed me. I don't always care for the subject matter, especially because it's so celebrity and fashion oriented, but when I take a step back and think, "Hmmmm, let's pretend I was tasked with shooting a photo of _________. How would I do it? What would I try to bring out of the subject and how would I light them? How would I convey what I see and what I feel about their work?" And often my response is, "She nailed it. She chose the best options and did what she had to do because it's her job." Perhaps photographing Miley Cyrus is the dumbest job on the planet, ever, but who among us has never had to do something really stupid, meaningless and demeaning for work?

I even found solace in some of Annie's more vacuous subject matter. I used to keep a stash of what I called "motivational resources" in my desk at work. Mainly magazines, clipped articles, books, or music to either inspire me, enlighten me or, most frequently, console me. When I had an especially rough day at work I took a 15 minute mental health break, a sort of psyche cleanse. The rule was that I couldn't just look at Vanity Fair or Vogue or read a favorite passage of Hitchhiker's Guide or listen to Doolittle. Part of the process, a rule I made for myself, is that I had to dig deeper, go through all the steps that had to happen for that magazine or book or song to end up in my desk drawer.

"I bought the magazine at the drug store where someone's job is to fill the magazine rack. They get paid to place magazines on racks. Someone's job is to drive the truck that delivers the magazines to the drugstores. There are people at distribution centers who keep track of sales figures for those drug stores. They get paid to compute the number of magazines sold at that drug store and project future sales figures based on sales history and demographic data and advertising rates. There people at a printing press who get paid to load stacks of magazines into trucks heading to distribution centers. There are people who run bindery equipment that cuts and glues the printed pages together, sometimes they have to poly-bag the magazine bundled with another magazine or insert. Sometimes that's based on zip code. The bindery people don't know how it's concluded that people in 60XXX zip codes should get an insert for Mag Mile Shopping, they just know it has to get done. There are people who operate the presses that print the pages. It's digital, now, but there's still an art to color correcting inks and making sure it looks "right." They know it looks right because there's a press check where an art director and maybe the photographer stands over the press operator and their boss, the production manager, and painstakingly look at several press proofs and choose which ones they like. A lot of people have a lot of jobs that delivered this magazine that contains this photograph of this stupid celebrity. The celebrity doesn't matter, the photograph doesn't even really matter, but without both, there would be no magazine and a lot of people wouldn't have jobs. Does the photographer ever think about the guy on the truck delivering the magazines? When the photographer is setting up the lighting and composing the shot, are they thinking about the woman whose job is to put magazines (that will feature those photographs) on a rack in a drug store?"

I used to find going through that chain of events strangely motivating and inspiring. I used to think that certain photographers and writers did think about all those people when they were photographing or writing, and on the days when they were tasked with a stupid assignment and wanted to refuse, they stopped and thought, "Wait a second. I'm part of a process, if the woman in the bindery department can work third shift while raising three children, I can photograph the celebrity of the month or write the story on the pros and cons of soy milk in coffee." I wanted to believe that motivated them not just to keep going, but to find a different angle or lighting, find something innovative or artistic or inspiring or, especially, revealing in even the most trivial subject matter. Annie always comes through artistically and professionally.

So yes, I carry some serious history and bias about Annie Leibovitz.

Consequently what I am about to say might surprise you.

I don't like Annie Leibovitz's post-Sandy photos in the upcoming issue of Vogue. 

Are they distasteful? If you look to Vogue for news, then yes, they're in very poor taste. But I'll volley back with, "Looking to Vogue for news is not in the best taste, either, so, touché." 

Are they demeaning, degrading and disrespectful to the people affected by Sandy? I'm not one of the people affected by Sandy so I can't answer that. Ditto the professions featured -  firefighters, National Guardsmen, power company workers, etc.

Are they silly? Yes.

Putting Sandy aside for a minute, are they good photographs? Not really. At least not when you take Annie's body of work into consideration.

Annie has a way of capturing something more from her subjects. Even the dumbest fashion spread can take on a sense of irony or bemusement or contempt when shot by Annie. She rarely gives us mediocrity. And sadly, to my eye, artistically, that's what these shots are: Mediocre.

They could have been so much more. 

I want to believe there's an editor or photo editor who directed the shoots and chose those shots, shushing or talking over Annie's vision, and that there are some poignant, quality photographs of the actual workers taking the main light that didn't get published.

But that doesn't excuse Annie, Ms. Leibovitz. She agreed to take the photos. Maybe it was under duress, but I kinda doubt it because it's now, 2013 (2012 when they were shot) and she's Annie Leibovitz, and I'm guessing she doesn't have to take every assignment presented to her.

Sometimes Vogue tries to be intelligent, tries to pretend that it has an editorially significant point of view on something other than Fashion Week. I find this laughable and misguided. Know thyself. Then write about what you know. I have no doubt there are people out there relying on Vogue for their news on current events, and maybe some of those people didn't hear about Sandy and the subsequent devastation, so maybe featuring a fashion shoot amidst the recovery process is the only way to reach those people.

But. Wouldn't the bigger favor to those people be to feature a well-written (but easy to read, no big words) article about the continuing tragedy, and feature poignant photos of people affected by Sandy and the brave people who worked through the storm trying to save lives and offer assistance? Photos sans designer clothes and fashion models, that is.

That's not really Vogue's thing, of course, and it sounds silly to feature that sort of reporting in a fashion magazine.

And therein lies my point. Don't try to be something you're not. Stay true to yourself.

Vogue is Vogue, and their purpose, their reason for being, is to feature expensive fashions hung on vapid, vacuous models who made career choices to wear clothes and get their hair and makeup done for a living. And in that respect those models may very well represent their segment of society's feelings about Sandy: Apart from it, not affected by it, concerned with other things, prettier things, more expensive things that can be purchased. The models in the photographs don't look part of the scenes in which they're posing, and not just because they're wearing clothes that cost more than the annual salaries of many of the workers posing with them. They look like the stoned bimbos badly air guitaring in Robert Palmer's Addicted to Love video. The lights are on, but they're not home. I'm willing to bet one of my college diplomas that the models in the photographs care more, and know more, about the clothes they're wearing than what the workers they're posing with actually do for a living.

And maybe that's the riddle within the riddle, maybe the joke's on Vogue, maybe Annie was showing how meaningless and stupid fashion is. Maybe her point is that Vogue would go to the extreme of placing fashion models in expensive clothes next to firemen and power company workers just to appear relevant, and wow, aren't they stupid? "Look how stupid Vogue is, everyone, here's the photographic proof."

But it's still a missed opportunity. For Vogue and for Annie. If Vogue felt utterly compelled to do "something" on Sandy, why not feature women whose jobs require them to wear Dickie's brand work clothes in the pages of Vogue for a feature on Sandy and the people who are rebuilding Long Island? It doesn't get more industrial chic than that. Why not show the beauty of people who live and work there?

Or. Why not just leave the real reporting to real publications?

It's not that Annie doesn't have what it takes to shoot poignant photographs and portraits of the Sandy aftermath. She does have the stuff, the vision, and the sensitivity. And yet, the photos are as dull and empty as the models' vacant gazes, and as flat as their chests. The clothes stand out above all else, and naturally that's the point of the photos. But there is nothing that indicates those are Annie Leibovitz's photos - they could have been shot by anyone with the right camera equipment.  

Anyone can hold a camera, point it at something and snap the shutter. Even blind people do it (with poignant results). Given proper equipment and lighting, anyone can shoot a serviceable photograph of just about any subject. But. Where fundamental technique ends, artistry and vision begin, and those are difficult, and often impossible to define aspects of photography.

Photographers often respond to queries about their process with a simple shrug and, "It's just what/how I see." And that's the beauty and fascination of photography. Photography gives us the opportunity to view the world the way other people see it.

And I (desperately) want to believe that Annie Leibovitz doesn't see the aftermath of Sandy the way it's portrayed in her Vogue photographs.

Idolizing people is a dangerous game. Holding anyone up as a legend or hero is fraught with emotional complications. Holding them in high regard or esteem because of something they worked hard to accomplish? Yes, of course, credibility equals respect. And we can all use inspiration in the form of a "someone who did it and succeeded" story. But you must also always remember they're human, so they're fallible. If you don't keep that in mind, you're in for disappointment. (Anyone want to hazard a guess at how many signed copies of Not Without My Bike and yellow rubber wristbands are up for bid on eBay or in the donation bins at Goodwill this week?)

It has "bothered" me that Annie chooses the high fashion and celebrity worlds as her subject matter because I fear it can trivialize her and her talent. But I've made a lot of compromises in my own career, so who am I to judge?

And then along came Sandy. 

And those photographs.

Who's being trivialized? The firemen, power company workers, Coast Guard, National Guardsmen of Long Island.

The Coast Guard and National Guard shots provoke me the most. The story of the shots is people hard at work, responding to an emergency. And there, in the way, are perfectly coiffed girls in strappy 5" heels and flowing evening gowns and miniskirts. The Cost Guard shot features women who look like they're at a party on Sean Combes yacht in St. Tropez, not rushing to a water emergency on a Coast Guard boat off Long Island. Good thing the Coast Guard was there, because the models in the photograph might get hypothermia what with all the cold spray from the water and wearing those flimsy, filmy backless gowns and 5" strappy heels. There are three models in that photo, in diaphanous white gowns, perhaps alluding to sirens Pisinoe, Aglaope and Thelxiepi. But if that's the case, is the Coast Guard escorting them away, ridding the area of their danger, or is the Coast Guard under their influence and rendered incapable of assisting in emergencies?  Perhaps it's just a more simplistic play on the word siren? Whatever the intended artistic vision or story, the reality is that they're not wearing life jackets and they're wearing unsafe footwear for that area of a boat. (I know this because I was a Sea Explorer and took numerous Red Cross Water and Boating Safety classes. Plus it's just common sense.) Perhaps the message is that fashion gets in the way of real work. If so, I can applaud that, job well done, Annie, because in that case the joke is on Vogue. But I fear that's not the case. I would love to choose to believe that, but, I don't like to delude myself.

Even the choice of models could have turned this debacle around, or at least offered an element of awareness. If the real women of the utility companies and Coast Guard are too real for the pages of Vogue, (I don't think that, but because they didn't go that route with these photos, I presume Vogue's editorial staff does) at the very least, instead of the usual stick thin, fragile, anemic looking waifs with size 00 clothes draped over them, why not use more fit, muscular models who could actually lift a case of soup to load onto a truck or throw a life ring far enough to reach someone stranded in the water? Those women could be made up and put in expensive clothing, but at least remove the element of "they're just in the way."

Years ago I attended a swanky do with my then boyfriend. It was a black tie event at a chic gallery of a museum so we were dressed to the nines (or at least to the sevens), and I even got my hair done and had a professional manicure. After the event we couldn't get a cab, so we walked a couple blocks hoping to find a cab further away from the throng of people leaving the event. We cut through a side street and chanced upon a dog who was bleeding and listless. I sacrificed the shawly cape thing I was wearing and we wrapped up the dog, found a cab and went to an emergency vet clinic. When we arrived, they took the dog to an exam room and instructed us to wait in the waiting room. It was 1 AM and the people in the waiting room looked like the people you'd expect to see in the waiting room of an emergency vet clinic at 1 AM. Most were in some sort of pajama-ish attire or sweats, tussled hair, the women either had no makeup or tear-smudged makeup, and they all looked tense, tired and worried. If a photo were snapped at that moment my boyfriend and I would have looked like we had too much to drink at a fancy party and stumbled into the wrong place - like Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan at a soup kitchen, self-unaware and our mere presence achingly snobbish. Even though our intentions were good, our reason for being there was sincere  - we were in the throes of an animal emergency, too - the photo would not tell that story. (The dog's story ended well - he was lost during a move and his humans had given flyers to all the animal clinics, yadda yadda yadda, happy ending for everyone.)

So I know, firsthand, these moments can happen. Emergencies happen without notice and we can end up looking disturbingly out of place just because of the clothing we happened to be wearing when the emergency hit. There are some infamous photos of people at the scene of disasters looking very normal or well-dressed, overdressed, wrongly dressed when juxtaposed against the backdrop of the aftermath of a recent crisis. That juxtaposition of normal life contrasted against life turned upside down tells a griping story: It can happen to anyone, at any time.

Maybe that's the story Annie was going for with these photos. But because the models lack the pained, shocked and worried expressions of people in the throes of a catastrophe, we can probably dismiss that hopeful theory.

Ultimately they're just silly fashion photos for a silly fashion magazine. It's silly to even devote any gray matter to the topic.

And the controversy is brewing up a lot of publicity for Vogue, a magazine that, like every other printed publication, is struggling to maintain relevance and ad revenue. And that is probably the real purpose behind the photos. Annie may have been a pawn in the game or an aware strategist in the game, either way there are still several huge missed opportunities for everyone involved with the photos, and especially for the Sandy victims.

Further proof my friends are assholes: I was sent a link to this video with the simple note, "Cats in pajamas! Cute! You'll love it!"

I was expecting actual felines in pajamas, the cuteness of which I will openly debate with anyone who dresses their cat in clothing. (I prefer cats au naturel.)
But, you know, cats are cute, pajamas are cute, cats in pajamas, cute². I thought my "friend" was just trying to cheer me up.

At first it just seems like a cheesy, tongue in cheek OK Go-esque low budget video, purposely home made looking. Then it takes on a sort of compelling, "this could almost pass for art" kind of feel. The school or hospital corridor where it was shot seems less "the bass player's mother works there and let them shoot this in the hallway behind the employee cafeteria on Sunday afternoon" and more "is that a special 'facility' for mentally impaired adults?" And then, at the 1:16 mark it takes a disturbing turn that will haunt my fitful slumber for weeks to come. *



*Fellow coulrophobes beware. Really. I mean it. Beware. Danger. Save yourselves. Turn back now.

The problem isn't Facebook. The problem isn't Google or Wikipedia.

The problem is humans and the things that make them human.

Facebook, Google and Wikipedia are merely unwitting accessories and conduits in the crimes of civility humans are perpetrating.

People are flawed. Period. We're all flawed. And to me, that's what makes people and life interesting. I suppose because I'm so flawed that I despise the dogged pursuit of perfection at all cost. I realize that sets up a mirror within a mirror situation for me, but heh heh, I'm flawed so don't expect much in the way of overcoming flaws from me.

I hazard guesses that the world is comprised of two types of people: 1) Those who like Martha Stewart because she's living proof that dogged pursuits of perfection are pointless and mockworthy, and, on a deeper level, they're an outward cover-up for inward inadequacies; and 2) those who like Martha Stewart because her humorless, apparently self-unaware determination to create perfect everything, from scratch, using only the best ingredients, fabric, paper, pottery, glassware...whatever...resonates with them because, they, too, are desperate to create perfection in an imperfect world. Or to at least create an outward illusion to hide, or compensate for, the inward flaws.

I further theorize that people in the second category are also endowed with competitive personalities. Maybe not "win at any and all cost," but, competing in a race where the opponents don't even know there's a competition. We all know people who have to be the first, best, fastest, whatever-est at everything they do, as if there is a life-or death championship race for who can complete a grocery shopping trip the fastest.

It's good to have one or two things you can do perfectly, either by disciplined study and practice or by savant quirk of the brain. Achieving the pinnacle of success at something is good. It buoys self-confidence and self-esteem. I'm not disputing that fact. I'm not knocking dogged determination, persistence, discipline and ingenuity. Those are all good things.

And it's good to have a thirst for knowledge. Curiosity, plain and simple, is a gift that lasts a lifetime. Learning + applying learned knowledge = evolving. There's empirical evidence that evolution is a good thing. I'm not knocking the drive that fuels the quest for understanding. Curiosity, education, knowledge...also good things.

But.

When standards of perfection, standards that perhaps are unattainable by most, and/or, more to the point, undesirable by most, well, that's when the problems commence.

Remember those kids in school who not only knew the correct answers to every question the teacher asked, but insisted on shouting out the answer every time? They seemed to have to prove they were the first kid to have the correct answer posed by the teacher. It wasn't their intelligence or studiousness that was annoying. It was their self-righteous bragging that grated on the rest of the kids in class. By the second week of the school year it went without saying those kids knew the answers, first, but, yet, they felt a need to continually prove to everyone they knew all the answers - and were the first students to do so. This type of need for validation (usually) eventually causes social ostracization from other classmates. These kids are just so annoyingly self-righteous that even at that age the other kids find them tiring and boring.

The core problem, obviously, is insecurity. Those kids who feel compelled to prove to the entire class that they are the first to know the correct answer are desperate to achieve high rank and high favor in the classroom. They're too young to realize the psychology and sociology of the situation, or that it's backfiring on them big time: That they'll be remembered as the annoying know-it-all smarty pants, and not as the revered font of all knowledge king/queen of the classroom.

Fast forward to present-day. Facebook. And. Welcome back to third grade. I didn't especially like my third grade classmates, for the record, which is probably why I've never loved Facebook.

Facebook is Heaven for all those insecure self-righteous third-graders desperate for validation who are now adults and still shouting out answers to every question, even when no question is asked. And it's an inner circle of Hell for the rest of us who are only on Facebook because we want to see occasional photos of far-flung family and friends.

Sure, it's easy enough to ignore the wall posts and nosy know-it-all opinions left in comments. Generally, I don't spend enough time on Facebook to even dig deep enough into my friends' and family's posts to read their comments. I scan for posts including new photos of children or pets or vacations and make sure no one's posted something crucial like a death notice. Every now and then I post a photo or a link to something relevant to the viewers I customize. And that's pretty much the sum-total of my Facebook time. I have a get in and get out attitude about it. I log in maybe twice a week. When I do log in, I mentally block the political rants, the bragging, the non-joke jokes, the "funny" photos and sayings that are shared so often they should come with a penicillin injection, and, I especially mentally block the spats that boil over in comments.

No problem, right? Sounds like I have a healthy handle on Facebooking, right? Yeah, I thought so, too. I don't love it, and I'd rather live without it. But, it's a fact of life and I'd like to keep in touch with family and friends, and since this is the preferred medium of communication for many of them: I deal with it.

So how, then, could someone like me get tangled up in one of the most common Facebook pitfalls? My friends. Turns out many of my friends are those self-righteous know-it-all third graders desperate for validation and determined to prove a) they know everything, b) they're always right, and c) they're better, faster, smarter and more perfect in every way than any other human on the face of the earth ever has been or ever will be.  And now that they're adults, they're also judgmental, critical and selfish.

How could someone like me friends with people like that? I'm not sure. I didn't know I was friends with people like that until Facebook happened.

I knew all of these people prior to the advent of Facebook. And yes, I knew a few of them had a few "tendencies." But they had many wonderful qualities, too, so I overlooked their determination to grow their own perfectly scented and shaped bay leaves and then fashion them into perfectly arranged bay leaf wreathes. After all, I have tried (unsuccessfully) to grow Meyer lemon trees more times than I care to admit because I want to have my own lemon juice. Hey, everyone needs a hobby. I overlooked their panicked dashes (quests) to housewares departments the day a particular perfect item in a particular perfect color or pattern by a particular manufacturer hits the shelves. Have I not, in more solvent times, taken part in a frenzied shoe sale? I overlooked their constant Googling and Wiki-ing over every infinitesimal trivial tidbit about every topic that arises in conversation. Okay, maybe I haven't overlooked it, because it's difficult to overlook the iPhones that seem to have melded to the hands of some of my friends, and it's difficult to overlook the fact that some of them rarely give eye contact anymore because they're transfixed to their iPhone screens. And it's difficult to overlook the fact that no one in their presence can speak more than two sentences without them Googling or Wiki-ing the subject of one of those two sentences and then presenting "the facts" or "the truth." Just like those annoying kids in third grade, they knew the correct answer first. Even when no question was asked. But, hey, I have been known to Google the occasional curiosity so...stones and glass houses.

I didn't know these people in third grade. But I now have a sad and disturbing hunch we would not be friends if we'd known each other back then. Facebook has given me more insight into my friends than I want. Insight into their psychoses and neuroses and issues they really need to resolve with the help of trained and licensed professionals.

I am drawn to intelligent and quirky people. My friends cover a broad spectrum of cultural, income, social, spiritual, political and professional worlds. But the common thread is that most of them possess a certain type of intelligence, the type of intelligence that fuels quick and deep wit without malice or narcissism. Many of my friends claim to have been a little offbeat, a little nerdy, and a little creative when they were kids.

I used to think, "Great! Kindred spirits! How fortunate that our paths eventually crossed!"

It never occurred to me that my friends, these kindred spirits, were those obnoxious, know-it-all, self-righteous braggart kids desperately trying to be the first to shout out answers in third grade. It never occurred to me that my friends were narcissistic bores with insecurities masquerading as delusions of grandeur regarding their intelligence. It never occurred to me my friends had superiority complexes. But now, thanks to Facebook, it appears that may be the case.

And I had no idea some of my friends were capable of the rude, callous, malicious behaviors and thoughts they publicly dole out on Facebook. I had no idea they were questing for perfection in everything. And I really had no idea that they have achieved perfection in so many areas of their lives.

But I have now been schooled at Facebook Academy.

I am now very aware that many of my friends do pretty much everything perfectly. I know this because they show and tell me, and the entire world, how perfect their home grown bay leaf wreaths are and how perfect their Nordic-themed Christmas (it was perfect because they bought authentic Scandinavian hand knitted mitten, sweater and hat shaped ornaments for their tree when they were on vacation in Scandinavia last summer - not the kind you buy at Crate and Barrel (perish the thought!)) Don't get me wrong, it's not that I didn't know many of my friends have become, gulp, yuppies.
And I know a certain amount of "I'm the arbiter of taste" goes along with that. I accept that.
I was already very (painfully) aware of that. It's the obvious and desperate need for validation and superiority complex aspects that eluded me until Facebook showed me the light.

I am now very aware that many of my friends have taken the whole thirst for knowledge to a disturbingly rude level. Keep in mind that I know these people. I know them well enough to know their SAT scores and college GPAs. Keep in mind that I suffered through some of their serious lapses in intelligence, common sense and judgement when they were single and dating. I know what they've done, I know their successes and their failures - and I know why and how they succeeded and failed. I know they possess above average intelligence in several arenas, and I also know they're utter, useless morons in other arenas. This is why they're my friends. They're not perfect, they're not fonts of all knowledge. They make mistakes, get it wrong now and then, and used to accept and even embrace their shortcomings. They used to be self-aware and self-effacing...and abundantly interesting. But constant access to Google and Wikipedia have turned them into humorless, boring, robotic data processors Hellbent on being the first with the trivial factoid, correcting everyone and proving they knew the definitive answer first.

It's annoying and disturbing to see this change happening to my friends in real life, and it's sadder still to have the physical evidence of the shift in their emotional paradigm on Facebook.

I refuse to engage in Facebook comment "debates." My feeling is that if I wouldn't say it to their face, I won't say it on Facebook. I never thought this would be an issue for me because my friends - and most of my family - wouldn't engage in that kind of behavior. My friends are emotionally mature. My friends are witty, kind, intelligent, people without malice. Or, well, I thought that's how they were.

Welcome to the dawn of the awareness of the ugly underbelly of friendships. Thank you, Facebook, for rolling the beast onto its back so I can see just how ugly the underbelly is. I really didn't want to know. But now I know.

There are boundaries in all relationships. No matter how close you are to another person there's always an unspoken boundary, and you both know, at least roughly, where that boundary is. People sometimes say, as a way of defining and explaining a friendships, "We tell each other everything," or "we share all our secrets." It's meant to indicate a very close friendship. But the reality is that they don't tell each other everything, they don't share every secret. They may divulge more to that friend than they divulge to other people, but, there is always at least one line that's not crossed. I've always thought one of my better qualities was the ability to gauge those boundaries. I have a sort of instinct about boundaries, and I respect them. I always thought it's what makes me a good friend - I know what the line is, and where it is, and I don't cross it out of respect for the other person. I'll go right up to the edge, sometimes, I'll go perilously close to crossing it if necessary to help a friend, but I won't cross it.

And most of my friends seemed to have the same general sense of boundaries and respect for them. At least that's what I thought until I got schooled on Facebook.

I'll just stop beating around the bush and say it: Turns out my friends are assholes.

And not just run-of-the-mill assholes. Pompous, affected, arrogant, judgmental, critical, selfish, rude, narcissistic, boring assholes with superiority complexes.

Tedious crashing bores, to summarize. 

And no, it didn't feel good to get that off my chest. It hurts to come to this realization and it really hurts to admit it. I've been avoiding admitting it for a while, a couple years, at least, but I'm now forced to acknowledge it because my friends have outed themselves on my Facebook wall.

I don't know if they were always assholes and I'm just now realizing it thanks to Facebook; or if they've recently become assholes because of nonstop access to Google, Wikipedia, and Facebook via their iPhones.

I know they were not tedious crashing bores. I would have long ago realized that. So it's just the asshole aspect that has me pondering.

Here's a recent example to illustrate what brought me to this juncture. It's one of many recent examples I could share - I see some version of this from at least two different people every time I'm on Facebook. I'm sharing this in hopes of gaining some insight and understanding. This matters to me because I love my friends and I want to sort out my feelings and learn how to deal with this. I'm in way over my head, though, and I need outside help sorting out what's happening. More importantly, I need help devising a good solution for dealing with it because my usual, "Accept, forgive, peace, love (duh)" approach isn't working.

On January 1 I posted a photo of a cute cup of hot chocolate my mother made for me and said, "Happy 2013, it's off to a great start! (thanks, Mum!)" The hot chocolate was adorned with a candy cane and cute marshmallows. I customized who could see the post. Only a few select people who a) are very close friends, and b) know my mother, and c) like things like hot chocolate, candy canes and cute marshmallows made the viewing list. We're talking seven people, two of whom are siblings. 

Within one minute of posting the photo and New Year message (and I know this because Facebook timestamps everything) a friend commented, "Is it the lighting on the photo, or the melting marshmallows, or is that hot chocolate overly light colored? It doesn't look very rich or chocolatey. It isn't that Godawful Swiss Miss crap is it?"

Happy new year to you, too.

Fortunately my mother is not on Facebook.

(For the record, to vindicate my mother, it was not Swiss Miss.)

In real life this friend isn't usually so snarky, although on Facebook I notice there's an edge to her comments. But, this is a dear friend so I chose to take no offense and chalked it up to New Year's Day morning after syndrome. If we'd been face-to-face, not Facebook-to-Facebook,  I probably would have said, "Sounds like someone needs a Bloody Mary or a couple more hours of sleep." But I refrain from making comments like that on Facebook because syntax and "of the momentness" can be issues and the hurt feelings that can result from the misunderstandings are not worth it.

My brother doesn't know this friend. Apparently he was insulted on my mother's behalf. He felt a need to defend our mother's hot chocolate making honor. Two minutes after my friend posted the comment (for a grand total of three minutes after I posted the photo and 2013 greeting) my brother commented, "I'm certain it's melting chocolate from Belgium. Our mother would never buy 'Swiss Miss crap.'"

Facebook said it was a minute after my brother's comment, but it seemed more like a nanosecond when my friend responded with, "I know Belgian chocolate and that does not look like Belgian chocolate. That looks like American hot 'cocoa' powder."

Oh crap. Oh crap. Oh crap. Oh. Crap.

A Facebook argument over, of all things, hot chocolate was brewing right there on my wall.

An argument over a photo of a cup of hot chocolate meant to be a cheery New Year's Day greeting.

Three minutes later another friend chimed in by adding a link to some ultra fancy Belgian website where you can order all manner of chocolate for hot chocolate purposes.

Almost immediately (one minute later) another friend commented about proper technique and equipment required to make the "best" hot chocolate and included links to sites selling the "best" equipment including frothers specifically "designed" for hot chocolate. (Who knew?!)

My brother then commented again, informing the group that my father's former colleagues in Antwerp send a holiday gift box of chocolates, including melting chocolate for hot chocolate, to my mother every year, so, yes, the chocolate used in the hot chocolate was directly from Belgium and my mother has a double boiler and chocolate pot so the proper equipment was used.

There was a brief moment of silence on the wall (whew)...and then in chimed another friend telling us that hot chocolate originated with Mayans, and the Spaniards were the first Europeans to hop on the hot chocolate craze, so the drink would have been more apt on December 21, the day the Mayan calendar ended, and Spanish chocolate, not Belgian, would be more authentic.

Nitpicking, hair splitting, silly, pointless, one-upping, competitive comments that proved nothing other than: My friends are jerks with way too much time on their hands.

Take away their Google and Wikipedia access and what would they post on Facebook? Nothing. Take away their Google and Wikipedia access and how would they obtain validation? I dunno. They'd do it however they did it before they melded with their iPhones, stopped making eye contact and started  Googling/Wiki-ing everything, I guess.

I wish it didn't extend beyond the confines of Facebook, but it does. Thanks to the aforementioned palm to iPhone meld they are increasingly "this way" in person, too. It's impossible to wistfully muse about anything because someone with an iPhone melded to their palm will Google the subject and faster than anyone else! retrieve way more information than necessary. Perhaps the problem is me: I do muse wistfully more than I probably should. I thought it was understood that my musings are not only wistful, but rhetorical. To me wistful musings are rhetorical by nature. Apparently not. If I was musing wistfully too often, it's no longer an issue because the race to Google/Wiki-ing happened so often that it became Pavlovian. Dog does something to get disciplined, dog stops the behavior. Girl muses wistfully and the iPhonehands spring into action, girl stops wistfully musing.

Access to information is great. Helpful. I love living in the information age. As a species, we should be phenomenally successful, reaching heights of brilliance unrivaled. But we're not. If we're so smart, why is the world such a mess? We have details about everything, pretty much everything ever in our history, and it's all available at our fingertips (iPhones melded to palms) so there's no excuse for any kind of failure, ever again. And yet...we're not teleporting or even using personal jet-packs. People die from a lot of forms of cancer, children and animals are abused and the Third World is still the Third World. (But hey, we have developed a hot chocolate frother!) With access to so much information, why aren't we advancing faster? Information overload? Boredom? Laziness? Stupidity? Too busy wasting time Googling hot chocolate and proving to a group of seven people that we know the origin of hot chocolate or the definitive way to create the "best" cup of hot chocolate?

I can sum it with another sad real-life example. The friend who chimed in about the Mayans creating hot chocolate used to be a serial napkin sketcher. An evening comprised of a few drinks would usually generate several Rube-Goldberg type drawings. There were some really good ideas on some of those napkins. But now, instead of a Sharpie and a napkin to create ingenious solutions, she uses a stylus to Google hot chocolate. She used to imagine creative new ideas and develop new products, now she looks up mundane details about mundane things that were created centuries ago.

My oversimplified theory, after watching my friends devolve into overly competitive, insecure obnoxious know-it-all third graders, is that we're not evolving from the information age to the innovation age fast enough. Oooops, there I go, musing wistfully again. Someone will Google "innovation age" and prove me wrong. Spare me the emails. I was merely musing. Wistfully.

I dunno.

I'm not longing for a simpler time.

I'm not advocating a disinformation age.

I'm merely wishing my friends would spend less time Googling and more time thinking for themselves.

I have a hunch that if that happened the respect and civility would return. As would the humor and eye contact.

As for Facebook, I have a theory about that, too. The lack of eye contact creates a false sense of privacy. 

But. I don't understand the "veil of anonymity" explanation for the incivility in the form of combative and/or boastful comments made on Facebook. There's no anonymity. These are friends, people I know in real life. People I knew in real life long before Mark Zuckerberg was even in high school.

Last month a friend became combative and offensive over, of all things, French Impressionism. This friend posted four comments that were rude and insulting. This friend called me stupid and suggested my stupidity is why no one will hire me. I kid you not. That's a watered down synopsis of the four comments.

What spawned this insulting, offensive tirade against me? My comment that a photo of a mutual friend's daughter looked like Renior's "Girl with a Watering Can." I said, "Awwww! She looks like the Girl with a Watering Can!" Three minutes later my friend posted on my wall, "It's not 'The Girl with a Watering Can,' it's 'A Girl with a Watering Can.' The article makes all the difference in this case. 'The' implies she is *the,* girl with a watering can, that she's special, definitive, whereas 'a' implies that she's just a random girl with a watering can." Links to curator's notes on Renior's painting were included.

Thinking my friend was surely joking, I commented, "Ah yes, there is all the difference. But [our friend's daughter] looks definitively Renior in that photo, n'est-ce pas?"

Yadda yadda yadda I was lambasted and called stupid, and it was suggested that my stupidity is standing in the way of gainful employment. The topic of Renior or his paintings or even the proper use of articles hasn't come up on any job applications or during any interviews, but somehow this is apparently the root cause of my unemployment. I'm obviously too stupid to figure out how and why.

That was five weeks ago and no apology has been issued, but I've long since forgiven my friend for the insults. I'm rising above, not holding grudges, all that. The only person who looks bad in all this is my friend, who comes off looking like there's a need for medication and intense therapy. I could delete the comments to protect my friend's reputation. And eventually I probably will. But for now I keep the offensive, know-it-all comments posted as a reminder that something evil is afoot amongst otherwise pleasant, civil, kind people. I also haven't deleted the comments because I hope, desperately, that my friend will see her comments for what they are and realize how obnoxious, hurtful, narcissistic, superior, affected and rude she's become. I fantasize about the moment she stops feverishly Googling trivial, inconsequential bits of information, lifts her gaze from her iPhone, looks me in the eyes and apologizes.

I suspect it won't happen. I think she's too far gone. And that makes me really sad because she used to be an interesting, funny, aware, creative and decent human being. But it also makes me question how well I knew her. Has she always been this insulting, pompous, self-righteous, narcissistic and insecure and I just didn't notice because the cruel side of her personality wasn't spelled out and directed at me? Did I need Facebook to lift the veil that hid my friends' true personalities? Yikes. I hope not. These are difficult life lessons and it pains me to think that something as silly as Facebook is the conduit.