vino & the bean: do you think they have facebook in heaven?

A: Do you think they have Facebook in heaven?
B: Nah, they have better things to do.
A: Hmm. Do you think they have Facebook in hell?
B: No way, dude. No pleasures in hell.
(Pause, while A. considers this.)
A: Do you think they have Facebook in limbo?
(Pause, while B. considers this.)
B: Facebook is limbo.

The sixteenth anniversary of my older sister's death came and went. I buffered myself with a visit from my long-time friend, Megan. A pedicure. A pancake. A few drinks as the sun set on the Sarasota water. The subject did not go untouched, but it did not drag the day into a melancholy ditch, as I have been known to burrow on other occasions. When the moon replaced the sun on February fourth this year, it literally smiled on Megan and me. (And, you know, dear readers, how infrequently I use the word "literally.") The moon appeared as just a sliver of a thing, but turned on its butt with its pointy ends up. In the middle of the sky! It was impossible to document on my digital camera, so you must just take my word for it.
Lots of people remembered her, my deceased sister, on Facebook, which I find sweet, and yet, odd, in this way: having died in 1995, she would not even know what "Facebook" is.

At the time of her car accident, the world was still living on the crumbling edge of hand-written correspondence. There were phone calls, of course, but Font-ed emails had not yet replaced tangible stationary and pen. She did not, to my knowledge ever have an email address. Or if she did, it collected one or two bits of information from U.T. that she already knew and probably never opened. She did not have a

katieh@hotmail.com

katiebeans@aol.com

khoben72@yahoo.com

... although I am sure that all three exist now and belong to the other K.H.'s of the world. No email address. No, we wrote each other letters! It was something that my dad started. He wrote letters to us when we were away at college, and then we started writing them to each other. We talked on the phone, yeah, but there were no cell phone plans like there are today (hell I didn't even get a cell phone until 4 or 5 years later), so letters were a great supplement to the expensive long-distance calls. But no email. And no Facebook. Imagine explaining Facebook to a person from an underdeveloped country. Or another century. Or, okay, the After world:

A: It's like a yearbook, but, like, for your Life. But, not tangible. Pictures? Oh, yeah, there are plenty of pictures, but no pages. Well, there are pages, but not pages you turn. Signatures? No, but you can "comment." And "post." But no, no pages. Walls. No, not actual walls. Remember, none of it is tangible. Yes, yes, of course you can read it, but you can't hold it in your hands. You can hold the computer in your hands, though. Used to be, you had to set the computer on a desk or table, they were so big. You remember those, right? Then they went on to laps, and we called them...?
B: "Lap Computers?"
A: No!
B: Lap Books?
A: No, but Apple did make a thing called "i-Book," so you're close. Think "trendy-sounding"...
B: "Lap Gap?"
A: No, Silly! They are called Laptops! But now, they're so small they're like-
B: "Hand-tops! Like the tennis shoe."
A: What? No. Whattaryou, like, from another century?
(Deadpan look from B.)
A: Right. No, the small new ones are called "i-pad."
B: Gross. (Pause.) They should call them "palms"... when they get small enough to hold in one hand.
A: Oh, yeah, we have those too, now.
B: But not for The Facebook.
A: It's "Facebook."
B: That's what I said.
A: No, you said "The Facebook." There's no "the." Just "Facebook."
B: That's retarded.
A: No one says that anymore.
B: "The?!"
A: NO! "Retarded." It's not okay to say "retarded" anymore.
B: That's retarded.
A: And, yes, you can check your Facebook on a palm.
B: "Face on a palm...!" Do you have any idea how retarded you sound?
A: Stop saying that!
B: Okay. So, it's not tangible, and basically it connects the whole world-
A: Well, there's "wireless."
B: Right, well everything's wireless in heaven. So, you'd think I should be able to get Facebook up here, right?
A: You tell me.
B: I'll ask.
A: Ask who? No, never mind... But, if you do get it, "friend" me, okay?
B: Will that be easy to figure out?

... I still have the letters that my sister wrote me in college. And when we went up to Toledo to collect her stuff we found the ones I had sent to her. There they were. All hand-written. . . and tangible.

This is the last of the "friend" dedications. It goes out to Megan. And to Katie.

I didn't do my official blog homework and explore establishments while writing this posting. Today, my Bean, was nothing more than the last two days' accumulated dregs reheated in the microwave. I know it sounds disgusting, but if you remove the coffee grounds from above your coffee pot right away, you can salvage the quality of the pot's contents for hours. Even 24 or 48 hours. Think of it this way, you wouldn't eat leftover chicken cacciatore that was left in a pan on the the stove top for a day. However, if after the dish had cooled a little, and you carefully removed it from its cookware and put it into Tupperware and stored it in the fridge, it would make a totally acceptable meal the following day. My Vino, was a shared bottle of Torrontes during the Sarasota sunset on Friday night. Fear not, dear readers, I'll be out and about again soon. But in the meantime...