I just read the following sentence on someone’s myspace page: "Everyone tells me I have an old soul." Pardon me, but no they don’t. No one says that. Except people who are reading from a bad movie script. Or people named Paula Abdul.

I urge you, brethren, in view of God’s mercy, to stay away from myspace if you can. That’s a weird little universe.

My brother (the middle one who once burned down a forest) introduced me to myspace at Christmas by showing me lots of people we grew up with. I signed myself up over there to utilize their odd networking scheme to contact a couple of old friends I hadn’t been in touch with in many years. I have since been amazed by how many other old friends have found me.

This post is not all about myspace.

But this part is about myspace. While I was in college, my parents moved away from the small west Texas town where I went to middle and high school. I’ve only been back a few times since then, and only once in the last ten years. I don’t see these people much. myspace enables you to see these people again. It’s very strange. What I find most puzzling is how many of these people have changed their names since high school. Seriously. At some point in their post-high school life they determined that the first name they’d used up to that point was no longer serving them well, and they went another direction. Very curious. My middle brother (the one who once burned down a gigantic forest, which not only destroyed lots of trees and all of the wildlife that called those trees home, but also triggered the mass global warming that now threatens to kill us all) once changed the spelling of his name. But he changed it back. This is odd, but not as odd as completely divorcing oneself from one’s name and making up a new one.

I have not changed my name. Maybe I should. Biff? Conan? Lance Armstrong?

Barack Obama is apparently a heavy smoker. This, for me, seems odd. I don’t know why.

I did not go to high school with Barack Obama, but he probably does have a myspace page.

On myspace, people list things like their sexual orientation and their income level and whether or not they smoke or drink. Can anyone explain this to me?

Do you think Barack admits to smoking on his myspace page?

Many people also have a clever little inspirational quote next to their photo on their myspace page. My favorite so far: "I WASN’T BORN WITH ENOUGH MIDDLED FINGERS" You and me both, sister.

Several people include photos of their car on their myspace page. Anyone want to see a picture of my ’93 Toyota Camry with the antenna bent at a 45 degree angle into (literally) the trunk?

Which reminds me: Did one of you hosers break off my antenna and steal it? It’s no longer bent at a 45 degree angle into the trunk. Now it’s just broken off.

Is the point of myspace, more or less, to prove to the world that you are, in fact, even stranger than we all thought you were in high school? I’m just asking because I am, in fact, even stranger than everyone thought I was in high school. I just need to know if myspace was invented for me to prove this.

This is my middle brother – the one who once burned down a forest the size of Vermont resulting in the imminent melting of the planet. I took this photo from his myspace page which I suppose answers my last question.

This turned out to mostly be about myspace. But you already know that.