![Obligatory Facebook Home Post [What The Tech?!]](http://fierceandnerdy.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/facebook-home-255x180.png)
I wasn’t going to make this post because I couldn’t quite put into words how I felt about Facebook Home. I kept trying to come up with analogies that would help relay my true feelings about it and because of this, I kept putting it off. Then, last weekend my dog lost his toe in a tragic ‘pawing at the wicker basket’ accident. In case you’ve been living under a rock, on April 12th Facebook released its app/jacket/cover/non OS thing called Facebook Home. Rumors have been brewing about a Facebook phone since Facebook itself went mobile. Zuckerberg was always quick to let it be known that a phone itself wasn’t in Facebook’s scope for the near future or probably ever. Then, in true Facebook fashion (meaning yet another Facebook press conference surrounded by hype where Zuck appeared to not have noticed the outfit his wife laid out for him that day RIGHT on the bed so he threw on whatever was closest to him on the ground) Facebook Home was announced! Is it an OS? No. Is it an app? No, not really. Well then, what the frig is it? Facebook Home, currently available to a few select Android devices, is something I would’ve first begun to describe as a sort of mask. As in… it hides your OS and Facebookifies your phone through features like Chat Heads (trying not to be another blogger with shit to say about THAT name EEEeeee), which is an attempt to integrate texting and Facebook messaging by alerting you just to the side of your Cheezburger viewathon that your mom is texting you to ask what it is that you were taking that worked so well for your Nigerians… oop she meant migraines. Frickin autocorrect. I thought this feature would be a pretty cool one. You don’t have to exit your current app to open your messaging app and it would flow really nicely into having a conversation with someone. However, since I’m not the most active Facebook Messaging user in the world, I found the chat list and messaging app to be a total clusterfuck. The biggest turn off for me being that in order to send a message, I’d have to distinguish between if I was sending it to my friend’s cellphone or their Facebook. And, well, since I’m over 25, Facebook Messaging just doesn’t happen to be my standard form of communication.It felt cumbersome and totally in the way of me trying to send a text. Second ‘big’ feature: Cover Feed. This basically replaces your phone’s lock screen and home screen wallpaper with a continuous flow of photos and news items that you would normally find in your feed upon signing onto Facebook or opening the mobile app. I knew since before I downloaded Facebook Home that this would be a feature I would opt out of (allegedly it’s disableable) and not even use for so many obvious reasons. I don’t need to see shirtless selfies of my 18 year old cousin when I go to check what time it is (said cousin being a ‘he’ but still…). Facebook Home also disables the ability to secure these things from random people picking up your phone, so there’s that. I downloaded Facebook Home on April 12. I actually checked multiple times throughout the day to see if it was available for my S3 in the Play Store yet. I was excited about switching things up a bit from my standard Android experience. I enjoy interfaces (interactive experiences are what I do for a living), and it’s fun to see developers stray from the intuitive (or what becomes intuitive based on prior experiences). I was happy to see Facebook take a stab at changing my phone experience altogether and “putting people at the center” of it. I checked the Play Store for the 6th time that day and there it was. Click. Download....
![Accepting Thirst: Edward Field’s Kabuli Days [Hippie Squared] [BOOK WEEK]](http://fierceandnerdy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/kabulidaysposter1.gif)
Accepting Thirst: Edward Field’s Kabuli Days [Hippie Squared] [BOOK WEEK]...
posted by Jeff Rogers
A travel journal is a kind of quest tale. In 1970 poet Edward Field journeyed to Afghanistan questing for Sufis (as a Gurdjieff fan); “sex, as all travelers are;” and “a little hotel clinging to a rock in the middle of a rushing river” which he saw in a National Geographic in his dentist’s waiting room. And while a tourist goes looking for sights and souvenirs, a lone traveler with a notebook is seeking transformation. Kabuli Days: Travels in Old Afghanistan is the journal of his inner and outer travels, published forty years later but still relevant. Afghanistan is ever with us. 1970 was only three years before Afghanistan’s king was deposed and the Russians invaded, before the mujahedeen and the Taliban and the decades of wars that still continue. Field’s an accomplished poet (After the Fall: Poems Old and New, 2007, among many others) and memoirist (The Man Who Would Marry Susan Sontag, 2006, on Greenwich Village bohemia), known for a direct poetic voice, “the simple language of truth.” Born in 1924, he became a poet in World War II. He was in his mid-forties when he wrote these pages. A travel journal takes its shape not from authorial design, like a novel, but the inescapable rhythms and patterns of a life, wrapped around the spine of a journey. Still, from Mashad, Iran, across the border to Kabul by bus, the first leg of his trip sets up scenes and themes that will recur again and again. Crowded bus rides on painful benches over rough roads past ruins, children squeezed in anywhere, with passengers from all over the world, Swiss and Pakistanis, English and Australians and French, until the bus breaks down in the desert. Field has a poet’s close eye for people...
![Sam the Sham is Happy that the World is in the Toilet [Fierce Anticipation]](http://fierceandnerdy.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/SuckerPunchRobot.jpg)
Sam the Sham is Happy that the World is in the Toilet [Fierce Anticipation]...
posted by Aimee Swartz
Well dear readers, it’s Sam the Sham again. Let’s not waste much time with me delving into an esoteric reason as to why I am disgruntled with stuff. Just know it involves summer camp, mononucleosis, Transformers 3, giant spiders, not going to Comic Con, and a can of black olives. There. Now that we got that out of the way… FIERCELY ANTICIPATING Within ten minutes of knowing me, you’ll find out that my birthday is (and has always been) on September 11th. I tell you this not for the pity party, but rather because it explains why I find humor in the absolute bleakest of moments, and it also comes with a good story. The short and sweet version is that a girl in college, on Sept. 11, 2002, asked me if my birthday had always been on 9/11. I said “Yes, since I was born,” which, remarkably, saddened her. When faced with tragedy, rather than weep and moan, I try and find a way to get those around me to laugh. Distract us from the obvious plight. I am the anti-Fox News. So what am I fiercely anticipating, you might ask? (I brought it back. Relax.) The rough road ahead! Some people turn to the bottle in time of trouble. I turn to comedians. With a new season of Louie, I am reminded about the struggle of the day to day minutiae, and how it can be soul-crushing… and yet hysterical from an outsider’s perspective. Patton Oswalt is coming out with a new album to take a few pop shots at the establishment. And a new season of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (which I have, thankfully, finally come around to watching) is going to remind us all that we are inherently good...