P(dis)interest

I am going to say something now that may very well get my chick card revoked, but I feel like it needs to be said...mostly because I have nothing else to blog about today and I told myself if I don't blog I'm not allowed to play the Sims tonight:

I don't get Pinterest.

I know, I know, gasp! Shock! Horror! I have had numerous friends attempt to explain to me exactly what is so addictive about the whole thing, but I really don't get it. As far as I can tell, most of Pinterest pins consist of recipes, craft ideas, and cool things people saw around the Internet. I like recipes. Crafting mystifies my clumsy ass, but I like cool things. But...why do I need to get these things from Pinterest...?

I fully admit I am a crotchety ol' Luddite...or at least I'm possessed by one that wants to yell at every person it sees on the street with an iPhone, "Darn kids! Quit clickety-clacking on your cellular telephone devices and go read a book!" In general, I am annoyed by technology (an incredibly stupid position for someone who has a blog, you know, on the Internet, but I never said I was a logical Luddite).

I only embrace new annoying forms of technology if they replace other older more annoying forms of technology. For example, I love Facebook and e-mail because they allow me to pretend like the telephone doesn't exist (I am actually considering making the outgoing message on my voice mail something along the lines of, "Ring, ring! What's that sound? Are my cookies done baking? Facebook me if you figure it out"), but I don't text because it's annoying in the same way that the telephone is annoying: everyone you know can reach you at any time they want and there's nothing you can do about it. At least in the days before answering machines, caller ID and cell phones you had plausible deniability. "Oh, you say you called me last night? Sorry, I was out at the soda shop sharing an egg cream with someone much handsomer and more interesting than you. Try again tonight." Now the best you have is, "Uh, I dropped my phone in the toilet?" which your friends clearly know is a lie since you're probably using it to watch Youtube video parodies of Lady Gaga songs sung by Sesame Street characters while you're talking to them.

Um, so that was a very long way of saying that while I like to cook, I have never figured out how looking on Pinterest for recipes is any easier or more enjoyable than leafing through one of my many cookbooks or, if worse comes to worse, simply googling, "cheap-ass recipes that don't taste like crap" and thus it doesn't meet my superior annoying technology criterion.

Another reason I suspect I don't understand Pinterest is that I'm missing that crucial female gene that controls things like the apparently ubiquitous female ailment known as "baby fever" (I have kids, yes, but I never felt any sort of wild feverish longing for offspring), affinities for purses (I have one. It holds my stuff. I don't understand. Help.), Channing Tatum (redneckface), Katherine Heigl movies, and the all-important female pursuit of "crafting". I'm not being snarky here as I wish that I did possess that female gene. It would keep me from feeling like I'm back in middle school reading Little Women alone in my history teacher's classroom at lunch whenever a group of pals starts discussing Coach's latest line (do they have lines? I don't even know how to speak purse), "Magic Mike" or bento box lunches. I might as well hang a sign around my neck reading, "Socially Deficient Dork: Talk to Me About Video Games and My Secret Naughty Dungeon (s& Dragons) Past".

I also don't mean to disparage those who craft (or make crafts? I'm not sure what the approved nomenclature is here). I admire the heck out of my creative pals who can make useful things beautiful and who can take a Salvation Army chair, 2 scraps of fabric and some leftover paint and make something I would spend $300 on (you know, if I was a real grown-up and ever had $300). That's not what I'm talking about when I say I don't get crafting. I totally get making things that you need or that enhance your life. What I don't understand is making things that nobody has ever needed in the history of humankind and spending money and time to make them.

For example, one time on a crafting show, I saw a woman take a piece of burlap, spend a good 5 minutes unraveling the edges, spend a good hour or so (edited, obviously) stringing beads onto the unraveled burlap and tying knots in it. Can you guess what she was making? A placemat? A table runner? The world's scratchiest and least useful poncho? Nope. It was a bowl cover. You know, a bowl cover. Who could live without a good burlap bowl cover? I know when I see an uncovered bowl, I am overcome by the inappropriateness of it all (look at the way those sides gleam in the light! And that drop of sauce just about to spill over the edge? It's indecent!) and thank God I have that square of beaded burlap I spent $15 and 2 hours making to throw over the whole mess. Okay, yes, obviously I know it's probably meant to keep flies and such out of your food, but had this woman never heard of tin foil? Plastic wrap? Or the eco-friendly and economical dish towel perhaps?

Oh, and I have to include here a video that did not come from Pinterest, but which, to me, epitomizes the idea of the "useless craft".

Yeah, you could cut up an entire series of perfectly good books to make a box...or you could just put your stuff in a regular box and sell or donate your unwanted books to ME. I promise I'll give them a good home. I did at least find it amusing that the books she murdered were the A Series of Unfortunate Events series. A series of unfortunate events sure befell those books, ba-dum-bum.

Basically what I'm saying is that craft projects fall into two categories for me: 1. Things that look awesome and useful but which my clumsy, easily-frustrated, easily-distracted self will never be able to reproduce and oh-to-hell-with-this-I'll-just-buy-it-on-Etsy and 2. Things that no one needs and which might be expensive and/or borderline sacrilegious (NOT THE BOOKS!) to reproduce.

So, let's review here: I am 100 years old and secretly (well not now, I guess) hate technology. I am not a real girl (I'm more like Lars), and I am too clumsy, cheap and minimalist to craft. That about covers why I suffer from Pinterest disinterest.

What I should probably do instead is create a site called "Megterest". It would consist entirely of screenshots of funny stuff happening to people's Sims, clips from "Game of Thrones" and "Parks and Recreation", podcasts of people talking about how much they love running, and coupons for free wine. That's how I would get people to visit it. All of my friends would be whispering to each other behind my back, "Gee, that new site Meg set up is full of a bunch of boring, dorky crap, but man...those free wine coupons!"

Speaking of which, if you find free wine coupons on Pinterest, re-post them on Facebook, okay?