Facebook is Full of Scammers

Yesterday I started getting a flood of friend requests on Facebook. Out of curiosity at who these people were I decided to accept these requests and maybe chat with some of these people. Then the dam burst and at the end of the day I had over 1000 friend requests, most of them coming from African countries.

I briefly chatted with one person who had sent me a message. He was posing as a woman from Los Angeles, currently living in Indiana. He did not have a good command of the English language and kept asking me personal questions. I told him a few things about myself, and when I suggested that he might be a young African lad he got all religious on me and said god would punish him if he ever did such a thing. Then he said he was falling in love with me. Typical scammer bullshit. He couldn’t even spell his own fake name right on his profile.

I know things are rough for people in the Third World, but seriously, there are so many criminals pulling this shit that it is unbelievable. I deleted my first Facebook account several years ago and only made a new profile as a means to promote my blog, but man, it is turning into a huge waste of time. Facebook is a horrible company that uses people’s personal information to make money. I have so many fake friends now trying to message me that if one of my two actual friends there ever tried to send me a message it would be lost in the spam. It really doesn’t matter because I don’t use Facebook to communicate with my friends.

I went to bed early last night and am up very early this morning. My weight has held fairly steady over the last couple weeks at 207 pounds, though I need to cut my food intake some more to start dropping some pounds. I am still 40 pounds overweight. I approved some more of these fake friends on Facebook this morning and deleted a lot of the requests, but man, this is going to take forever. Perhaps I should publish a guide on how to pull off a romance scam and maybe my fake friends can learn enough English to make believable profiles. Perhaps I should scam the scammers myself and dox them to the authorities. Perhaps I should ignore the dregs of humanity who think I am some kind of legit way to make some scammer gold. I look for friends and find endless enemies. What a crock of shit the world has become.

All My Friends in Africa

I checked my email this morning. 34 Facebook friend requests, most of them with African names. I thought “what the hell?” and decided to approve all the friend requests. As soon as I approved one request, another was sent. A lot of these new friends had pictures of good-looking females as the profile picture. Apparently I got spammed onto some kind of miss lonelyhearts message board and all the little lads from Nigeria decided to friend me.

I got hundreds of new contacts now, and an audience for my blog posts. I have been on that Facebook account for about eight months now and only had a few random friend requests and one friend, my Dad. Then my friend friended me and the requests from Africa began. Oh well, I enjoy talking to random people. It will be interesting to see what kinds of things these people post and what they say to me in messenger. Who knows, maybe even some of them are honest people who are just looking for a friend to chat with in these hard times. We’ll see.

One Day Free

I am one day free from alcohol poisoning. It’s a little after six AM and it’s dark as hell outside. Junior and I went to sleep early last night. I didn’t do a hell of a lot yesterday but lay around and recover. Alcohol is poison, pure and simple. I have been trying to quit drinking for the last several years. If I think about all the problems that substance has caused me over the years it just makes me sad.

The dog just had a quick bark at his own reflection in the darkened window. He’s sitting on my bed now staring at me with a hang dog expression on his face. I am going to make a cup of tea and get myself together for the day. I have slept enough for now and feel it is time to get going on this new day with my new attitude on drinking. I have a friend now, and even though he is a dog he seems wise beyond his two years.

Sobriety

I am making an attempt at sobriety today. Yesterday I got wasted. I feel terrible about my mistakes, but man, things have to change. I have my dog to look out for me. I have my Dad taking care of the bills. What I have to do is take better care of myself.

I think I am going to get some light exercise and get my mind off this latest challenge. I quit smoking last week. I can do this. I can stay sober and away from spending money on shit I don’t need that does me no good.

Cold Sun

I am sitting at my computer in my room looking at the bright,cold sun through the curtains. It is still eleven below this morning, too cold for Junior to be out in the yard for long. He’s relaxing in bed now. I have the radio on and my house is warm. I have food and water and don’t need to do any shopping today. We are expecting more snow tomorrow, then again on Sunday.

I watched some videos on YouTube this morning supposedly about how to make money on a blog. Basically you get popular, then shake down your readers with advertising and scam “products” like VIP content. This is not my idea of an honest living. I can’t remember the last time I bought something I had seen advertised. If I buy something I go looking for it and find the best deal. I have never given a dime for any exclusive content, even back in the days when I used to hang out on sketchy websites. Right now I am just trying to grow an audience and get some feedback on my content.

Even though I am no longer Catholic, I think I am going to do the whole give up something for Lent this year. Smokes and alcohol would be a start. It would be good for my health as well. It would be good for the bottom line too. I am running out of money, and what I have left is marked for maintaining this personal blog for another year. That bill rolls around in June, so I have to keep my shit together for another four months.

Even though I drank yesterday afternoon, I think I got a decent night’s sleep and had pleasant dreams. Nobody cares about the dreams of a 59 year old single man with no real job and no real friends. Well, I care about my dreams. I am not nobody.

Maybe I will work on a poem today. I haven’t felt like writing poetry in a long time. Most of the poetry I read online is doggerel verse and it pains me that people don’t even know how to write a poem. I honestly see little point in poetry anyway, which is why I changed things up on this blog. This is my online journal and my personal story for random people in India to read about the life of an American. I’m a poor man, but I do my work and keep this house running. More snow tomorrow. Cold as all fuck today. Bye for now.

Snow

Yesterday was a severe snow day. I spent a good two hours shoveling out the driveway and clearing the cars from about ten inches of the shit. It was cold as well, about 15 degrees F while I was working. This month has been very cold in Michigan. There are no signs of it warming up any time soon.

Junior is still sleeping this morning at 6:30. He had a time yesterday going through the deep snow for his walks. I made baked beans with bacon yesterday and a roast chicken for dinner. I also got half-loaded on a pint of vodka. I keep saying I am going to quit, but man, it’s hard with nothing to do in the house but work. I didn’t get stupid drunk or anything, just ended up going to bed after dinner and curling up next to the dog. I suppose today is a new day. It’s been a week now since I got any cigarettes, so I am mostly over the smoking shit.

This journal has turned into a chronicle of my problems. I don’t know what else to write about. Perhaps that’s why I am not popular. Almost eight months on this blog and no hope of any kind of traffic. I am doomed to obscurity in the freezing hell of Michigan winter.

In the Grip of Winter

It’s cold outside this early morning. It was down to 6 F at 3:15 AM. The forecast is for more cold and 3 – 6 more inches of snow by Tuesday morning. I am tired of this cold weather and wish it would just warm up. I can remember one Valentine’s Day back in the early 1980s where it was 70 F, like a spring day. Now, it’s just cold as fuck and more of the same.

I drank again yesterday. Something about the day got to me. I am over it now, but think I can get through today with no intoxicants. Junior curled up next to me in bed and guarded me through my drunken haze. He’s a good boy for the most part and seems to love me. My girl, well, I don’t know how she feels about me these days. She messaged me on Thursday, two words, and didn’t reply when I finally got back to her later.

I have some quiet new age music going now for the sleeping dog. I may play Skyrim for a while and try to figure out what I want to do with my life. It’s depressing to look out the window. I am thinking about planting a garden this year. I am thinking about getting my life back into some kind of order and leaving alcohol and drugs behind me.

Dog Bullshit

I decided to fire up the Chromebit and do some work on it in the hall and of course Junior had to start pulling books off my shelves and acting up as soon as I left the room. I moved the books out of the way and gave him some stern words, but he’s still sniffing around the door and making life miserable for me.

Firefox on my main computer crashed hard. It took over ten minutes to force a shutdown and get a restart. Firefox is a glitchy program and has major issues with memory leaks causing crashes. That’s another reason I am on the Chromebit now, aside from the dog being a bastard and barking and growling at me every time I work on my computer.

This little computer gets the job done, though it is a bit slow. I have a big screen for it though and text is easy to read. I have to get Kindle for this machine and download all my books to this device. Then I can read in peace without Junior going apeshit on me and causing interruptions. Having a dog is turning out to be a bit of trouble, but he seems like a good friend most of the time. We’ll see how things work out today.

Cold Winter Morning

It’s 17 degrees F outside this morning and a light dusting of snow fell overnight. I have a cup of tea and I am sitting here at my computer while the dog looks around in bed and yawns. I slept a long time last night, almost 12 hours, but hey, it is winter and time to hibernate.

I was good yesterday and didn’t drink or smoke. I ate a lot, but it was mostly beans, peas and lentils. I had a baked potato, broccoli, and lentils for dinner. My weight is about the same this morning. I have yet to do any exercise.

It’s still dark outside and I have to think about what I want to do with this blog. I am getting a few readers every day, and some new subscribers or followers, whatever they call them here. I think I want to invest more time and effort in my writing and make this blog something useful.

Stupidity

I was stupid yesterday and drank booze. I ended up flat on my back in bed listening to the Pogues with my dog Junior going nuts with affection for me. I had a dream I was taking a bath in the barn. It’s a little after six this morning and too early to take Junior out for his morning walk. Something triggered me yesterday. I think it was the call from the doctor. I am not going to let anything trigger me today. I have work to do and places to go and don’t need this bullshit in my life.