facebook is as facebook does

As two of you might know, I have just latched onto Facebook and it's killing me.  All these talented, voluble people! They do so much and think so much, and plug into so much and take pictures and share and comment constantly.  How do they find time to do anything else?  

I don't. I have to be disciplined - not hard right now because I am behind in my assignments on a course I am taking online that requires up to four hours a day of writing and thinking time.  And I am due for another draft of that screenplay I've been working on. And then of course, there is my daily blog.  Almost daily.  This is all I can manage today.  I have to see what's on Facebook.

i shall walk upon the beach...

Do you ever watch the cooking show, Chopped?  I like it and I learn something every time, for example:

asafoetida |ˌasəˈfiːtɪdə, -ˈfɛt-| (USasafetida)

noun

1 [ mass noun ] a fetid resinous gum obtained from the roots of a herbaceous plant, used in herbal medicine and Indian cooking.

2 a Eurasian plant of the parsley family, from which asafoetida gum is obtained.

 They had to cook with it the other night. This is not about food or cooking.

Lately I have been bothered by the background music during the show; it’s so loud I can’t make out exactly what the cooks or critics are saying, or when I do, the music is annoying.  I noticed when I watch the public channel (WNED where I live) that BBC productions have a lot of ambient noise that makes it difficult for me to understand a Yorkshire accent, for example. I had my annual medical checkup recently and I asked my doctor about it just as she was going to recommend a hearing test. I’m the right age for it.  Well, my test revealed some hearing impairment, enough to warrant some aid. 

Shock!

I have been trying to adjust to this new onslaught.  I guess I had long since been reconciled to wearing glasses. I do remember when I started university, hiding my glasses in my binder every time I saw a boy . My father couldn’t understand why I kept breaking them.  Nowadays it would not be a problem; everything is made of plastic. The witty and acerbic American poet, Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) wrote a devastating couplet that haunted me:

Men seldom make passes

At girls who wear glasses.

The poem was called News Item, published in 1927.

l was comforted by the rebuttal written by Ogden Nash (1902-1971),  another American poet best known for his light verse.  I’m going to write this without checking, not sure if I can find the whole poem online:

Yes, girls who are be-spectacled

Will never get their neck tickled.

But safety pins and bassinets

Await the girl who fascinets.

I found it! 

I almost had it:

A girl who is bespectacled

She may not get her necktacled;

But safety pins and bassinets

Await the girl who fassinets.

 His spelling is a little different. This is not about Parker or Nash.

It’s about my hearing impairment, I don’t want to call it loss. But it is. It is a loss, another slipping away of my faculties and strengths as I age..  That’s what  I'm having trouble with. TSEliot again (I quoted him yesterday), this time from memory:

I grow old, I grow old,

I shall have my trousers rolled.

Do I dare to eat a peach?

Here’s the original:

I grow old ... I grow old ...

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind?   Do I dare to eat a peach? 

Ai me.

I had better quit while I’m ahead while I still have most of my marbles.