My neighbor growing up was my best friend. We’d play American Gladiators together after we watched women’s wrestling for hours. She also had everything I ever wanted.

Like a Nintendo.

My parents were, as I’ve previously mentioned ad nauseum, teak and fine china people. They were the original wooden toys people (after, of course, the pioneers and the Amish) and would’ve been pretty happy if I played that weird hoop game or made things out of piles of sticks. I’m pretty sure they, at one point, bought me a wooden doll. Yeah, you read that right: I owned a wooden doll. Is it any wonder that I’m as maternal as a sack of rocks?

(answer: no)

When I begged them, year after ever-loving year, for a Nintendo, they scoffed at me: Video games? I should be reading a book by candlelight or sewing my own clothes or churning butter. Not rotting my mind on video games!

It bears mentioning that my older brother spent his days and nights playing Zork on the computer.

So Nintendo? I had no stinkin’ Nintendo.

Which meant I spent an inordinate amount of time at my best friend’s house, begging her to let me play one level – just one level. She, delighted at the sudden shift in power, would tell me, hail noes until I got up to leave, and when I did, she’d suddenly develop an interest in playing.

Eventually, my parents bought me a Sega Genesis, so while my friends were teaching Mario to fly with those stupid fucking raccoon wings, I was playing Echo the (Asshole) Dolphin. There went any interest I had in becoming a dolphin lover.

Today, I don’t like games. Can I blame my parents for that? Probably not. But while Daver and Ben sit on the couch at night playing games on their (not so) Smart Phones, I sit and actually watch television. My parents probably DID have a good hand in making sure my attention span was greater than that of a gnat. Thanks, Mom! Thanks, Dad!

But my children, God love them, they love their games. Video games, to be specific. And I’ll begrudgingly admit that video games have come a long way in the past (mumbles) years.

What kills me, though, is this: with all of the awesome games out there these days, my kids still want to play fucking Mario games. Or Sonic games. The shit that was around (mumbles) years ago when I was a wee crotch parasite.

Not only that, the kids love to WATCH those old television shows. The ones my parents forbid me to watch because, like video games, television rots your brain. I was allowed to watch an hour of public television. A day.

But my kids? They’re in love with some creepers “Super Mario Super Show” from the 80′s. And the Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon. Stuff I never saw. And thank GOD for that, because holy creepers, Batman.

You’d think that with all of the newer television shows with LESS creepy characters, they’d opt to watch them. But no. They’re watching stuff that both Daver and (older) Ben watched. I’d have probably watched them too, had I not lived with hippies.

Now, I’m thinking that the kids need some wooden dolls or that hoop game or some sticks for Christmas.

Seems only fair.

Now as much as I USE technology, I’m also fairly inept.

(stop laughing)

My computer, Big Mac, he* gets updated once every blue moon, when some piece of software I use to check my email has become defunct. Other than that, I use this picture as my screen saver, which is probably depleting the life of my computer every second it’s on there:

But I don’t care. See how MAJESTIC it is?

*weeps*

*weeps*

*weeps*

Anyway, like the rest of the world, I’m on Google Plus. Which is touted as “The Better Facebook,” which I suppose it is, only until it develops it’s OWN Farmville and my friends start asking for spells to make their crops bigger. The next time that happens, I’m demanding that the person behind that request come the fuck OVER to my house and help me with MY garden. My FOR REAL garden.

(also: I love you, Pranksters, because every time I bitch about Farmville, 400 of you send me requests for crops or pink cows or whatever on The Facebook. It’s proof that I know the BEST people on the Internet.)

So I’m on The New Facebook and I use it occasionally to do things like say, “I’m so happy this isn’t The Old Facebook,” and “Isn’t this better than The Old Facebook?”

Other than that, I use it about as much as I use The Facebook. Which is to say, hardly ever.

But because I hate Skype more than I hate John C. Mayer, I heard about this newfangled thing you kids do called “Hangouts.” The New Facebook hangouts.

TELL me that doesn’t sound dorky.

Anyway, with the Band Back Together Board (for the non-profit, NOT like a Skateboard or an ACTUAL piece of wood), being in separate states, we use The New Facebook Hangouts for our board meetings. We USED to use Skype until we realized we needed to be able to conduct ACTUAL business rather than, “OMG YOU LOOK LIKE YOU’RE IN A DISCO.” Or “NICE FREEZE-FRAME FACE! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

Seems unprofessional.

Anyway.

So we launched the new site this weekend, which meant that the 80 of us that work behind the scenes (SHOUT OUT TO MY HOMIES, THE BRAINS!) were all running around like Chicken Little. Or maybe that was just me. So on Sunday, we had a Google Hangout for about 10 of us.

I started the hangout because obviously, and slowly people popped in and out. It was pretty rad. I mean, MAH FRIENDS IN ONE SCREEN? What could be better?

(answer: pony on roller skates)

But I neglected to do one important thing. One VERY important thing. I didn’t make our hangout private.

So every 10 or so minutes, random old men would pop into our chat, causing us to frantically block them. It was an awesome game of WHO CAN BLOCK FASTER?

What made it WAY awesomer is that one of our Brains, Sarah, got stuck chatting with some guy from Egypt who told her she was “beautiful like the moon.” When I stop laughing, I’ll let you know.

My only regret is this: we didn’t see a single naked wang.

What is the world coming to when you don’t see a SINGLE NAKED PEEN while on The Internet?

*wrings hands*

WON’T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE WANGS?

/end hand-wringing

*all of my technology is male. I have Frank, my iPad, John, my iPod, and Larry, my iPhone. That way I can say, “I’m hanging with FRANK tonight,” and it sounds illicit – also cooler than “I’m playing on my iPad.”

Designing a site is about as easy as teaching my washing machine to sing “Whoomp! There It Is!” Actually, now that I think about it, teaching my washing machine might be easier. Just ask my coffee maker, who’s been singing “It’s My Party” since last summer sometime.

The minute computers are turned into anything but email machines, I get flustered. Or, I should say, I start tonguing my Xanax bottle and hallucinating random animals singing an A Capella version of the ABC’s. That’s more like it.

And yet I get tasked (read: task myself) with this shit. It’s the REAL Bad News Bears.

For the past eleventy-five-niner months, I’ve been working on redesigning Band Back Together. It turns out that WordPress kinda balks at having more than 2,000 registered users, 2,000 posts and 300 pages.

(to answer your question: GO WITH WORDPRESS FOR A PERSONAL BLOG. Blogspot is the SuperCuts of the blogging world)

But we’ve been redesigning Band Back Together since I can remember. Which means I’ve been constantly bombarded questions like, “BUT WHAT ARE THE OBJECT PERMISSIONS? WHAT SHOULD WE DO?” Questions like that make me go all, “lalala, pumpkin pie is NOT delicious, lalala,” because I’m just not equipped to answer them.

The new site launched this weekend, which, I was all RAD, NO MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT PERMISSIONS, but then, I got MORE questions about permissions. And objects. And objects WITH permissions.

I spent the weekend fantasizing about photoshopping Avril Lavigne’s neck, severed, and spurting a veritable blood fountain. Don’t ask me what she did to evoke my ire, but I think it’s a song about skaters or complicated, or complicated skaters. Either way, it hurt my vagina to listen to.

But we did it.

And this week, I’m battening down the hatches and preparing for more objects and permissions and answering questions I know nothing about with “um…C?” because that’s what you do when you don’t know. You SOUND like you know the answer. It works out well. (lies)

So now, I am off to tongue my empty Xanax bottle and pray that no one asks me about permissions for at LEAST an hour. Or Avril Lavigne’s head is comin’ OFF.

Go see my purdy work on Band Back Together. Then? Tell Your Aunt Becky how YOUR weekend was.