Roll over “Friends” at the top of the screen
Click on “All Friends”
on the left, click “Make a new list”
Follow the prompts, make one called, say, “Coworkers” or “Exes”
Put anyone who currently falls into the new list category into it.

THEN:

Roll over “Settings” (top right)
Click on “Privacy”
Click on “Profile”

You should see the list of categories you can specify settings for.

Under, say, “Status Updates” click “Customize”
A box will pop up, with a section for “Except these people”
Start typing the name of your list (e.g. “Coworkers”).
It should autofill.

This will allow you to let everyone see something except for a list. (or an individual like your mom or whomever). The reverse is to make a list of people who can see things. Makes no difference to Facebook.

It might be more difficult to get a job and whatnot, but the world has not stopped turning. Why not use your more abundant free time (that phone won’t ring anyway, even if you step away from your desk) to invest in your social life or pursue your artistic goals? Now is the time to integrate art into everyday life.

Tip #6: Think about the recession as a party with another name.
Just because you have less disposable income doesn’t mean you can’t have as much fun. Some of the poorest people I know could teach us a thing or two about getting the biggest bang for your buck, enjoyment-wise. The key to staying entertained during times of less is creativity. I can’t stress this enough.

Here are some activities that don’t cost a lot, but can bring much joy:

- Throw a party. Why go to a bar and buy drinks when you can drink in the privacy of your own home or office for a fraction of the price and eliminate the undesirables that lurk in the outside world? Assign your party a theme or special feature, and the party becomes an event.
- Card games. Care to join us for a game of poker? The buy-in will remain $7 due to the recession. Don’t like poker? Try Uno (or my personal fave, pinochle).
- Take a walk. This activity has served me extremely well during the many, many impoverished years I spent in New York and elsewhere. A city is an amazing place—now’s the time to appreciate it more. Spring is coming—are you ready? Take a look around your neighborhood or another. What havoc has gentrification wreaked this week? Visit a faraway neighborhood or even another borough. Mega-dérive!
- Flea markets / thrift stores. I hate it when other people have the same stuff as me. Flea markets can help you out of this rut. They are also good for looking at random things such as other people’s snapshots, socializing, unique artwork, affordable furniture. I got a dresser this weekend for $25.
- Ride a bike. Hours of entertainment, reduced reliance on taxis, big savings. Cancel that gym membership and commute to work on your bike. Also, if you get really bored or really broke, learn how to fix your own bike. There are a lot of places in NYC that will teach you basic bicycle maintenance skills for free (among them, Dumbo’s own Recycle-A-Bicycle, where I learned how to fix a flat tire and the meaning of the word “truing” three years ago). Self-reliance is of the essence during times of squalor!
- Make something. Start crafting. This week I made a quilt square and a lot of pom-poms. You can craft with your friends and it’s like having a party, but more productive. You can make projects together. If you want, you can even sell the things you make for extra cash.
- Art openings. Their usefulness is trifold: inspiration, networking (more money!), and free food and drink.
- The Met. It’s still pay as you wish. Have you seen the new Greek and Roman galleries yet?
- Ever heard of the library? It’s full of books, movies, classes, free bathrooms, weird people. Go there one afternoon and don’t buy anything. Cancel that netflix account and order your movies (or books) from the library. You can order them online and have them shipped to your local branch. Keep them as long as you want — just be sure to renew!
- Develop a new creative pursuit. Learn how to draw, take photos, make some LOLhunkz, start a band, grow your own herb garden, refinish furniture. Ease your anxious mind by focusing your attention on all those activities you never had time for before.

Share your tips!

What Type are you?

“Boys often classify and describe girls according to the way the girls act around them: Shy, A Flirt, A Pal, Natural.”Here is a breakdown of the four types of girls:

• a SHY girl “may have wonderful things to say, but she’s afraid to express herself. No one will ever get to know her if she runs from the spotlight when it shines on her.”

• a PAL will sometimes “hide behind her torn jeans and baseball glove because she’s afraid of risking a boy-girl relationship.”

• a NATURAL girl “may resort to flirting on occasion, but she can be a good friend, too. She is sincerely sympathetic and can be serious or funny depending upon her real emotions.”

• a FLIRT’s “main concerns are her clothes and looks, and her main preoccupation is getting a guy’s interest at any cost.”

Below, Andy, Andrew, Renda and Holly are typified.

Andy is natural! But shy – and, it should be noted, a totally rotten flirt. Without a single flirtatious outfit in his closet! And that’s what TeenWorks picked up on: AP’s inconspicuous fashion sense. Apparently blue jeans, a button-up and a sweater makes for the Shyest Outfit of All (a title that reads like a Belle & Sebastian b-side), because AP was consistently docked points for having the most wallflowered fashion sense. Highlight: “Your style of dressing is ordinary and drab!”

Andrew, on the other hand, is one heckuva pal – naturally. Sure, they laugh at his jokes and enjoy his cutting up, his clowning around. But if Sloat wants them to know that he has a gentle and romantic side, he’s gotta cut the mock insults and talk about his ideas and feelings. Highlight: “Wear a dress occasionally!”

Renda is a bit shy, a bit of a pal, a bit of a natural gal – anything but a flirt. Highlight: “You’re having trouble with the lock on your bike. Three guys from your class walk by and offer to help. Renda says, ‘I don’t need help. I can do it myself.’” Sorry boys!

Holly is the only one of us showing the slightest tendency to flirt. Sure, she’s a bit of a natural, and has moments bordering on shy, but mostly it’s just wink, laugh, lightly touch you on the shoulder. Whoa! Highlight: “Your style of dressing is frilly, flouncy and tight!” Yes!

Very Less Than Zero.

Teen Works: an exciting program that answers questions on fashion, beauty, dating, friendship and lots more…Virtually no information exists on the internet about Teen Works, but it played a seminal role in this young woman’s pre-teen years. Teen Works was a big binder full of all the stuff I wanted to know: makeup tips, how to slouch your socks, what boys really think, how to mix and match for optimal funkiness. Every month new inserts came in the mail, and more secrets were revealed to us. Last month I found a copy of Teen Works at my local Salvation Army. Every week, 801a will use this binder to revisit our adolescence.


This week, we completed a quiz called “How Well Do You Know Your Best Friend?” Some of us were better than others at figuring out who our best friends were. Some of us changed our best friends midway. All of us completed the quiz. Below, we share our data with you.

——-
Out of a polling group of 5:
——-

If your frIend could get up her nerve to invite the guy she likes on an inexpensive date, she’s most likely take him:

——-

How many presidents of the United States can your friend name?

——-

Your friend sometimes wishes she:

——-

Chocolate chip, oatmeal, peanut butter… How many different types of cookies has your friend made?

——-

Your friend would describe her home life as

——-

When talking to a guy, your friend is most nervous about:

——-

Does your friend know who won last year’s World Series and Super Bowl?

——-

Is your friend planning to go to college someday?

PART II: Fill in the blanks

Her favorite TV SHOW is:
Andrew: 30 Rock
Geoff: Arrested Development
Renda: Man vs. Wild
Holly: Something on the Discovery Channel, I guess
Andy: Whatever baseball game is on TV.

Her FAVORITE SONG is:
Andrew: something by Pernice Brothers
Geoff: something by Stars
Renda: Every Day I Die at Maggie’s by Ariel Pink
Holly: Every Hall and Oates song ever made
Andy: D.A.N.C.E. by Justice

Her FAVORITE RELATIVE is:
Andrew: aunt
Geoff: brother
Renda: nephew, “The Baby”
Holly: mother
Andy: mom

Her FAVORITE PERFUME is:
Andrew: no earthly idea
Geoff: no answer
Renda: We picked it out at Bloomingdales. It comes in a black bottle. I told him ladies would like it.
Holly: from Commes des Garcons
Andy: musk – some sort of raw and natural scent

Her ALL-TIME FAVORITE TEACHER is:
Andrew: Tom Perratta
Geoff: Don’t know
Renda: Renee
Holly: don’t know
Andy: Wilhem Dilthey

Her FAVORITE ACTRESS is:
Andrew: no idea
Geoff: Goldie Hawn in “Overboard”
Renda: Debbie Harry
Holly: Don’t know
Andy: Maggie Chung

Her FAVORITE FLAVOR of ICE CREAM is:
Andrew: Strawberry
Geoff: I can’t picture her with ice cream
Renda: Ben and Jerry’s with cookie dough with cherries and whip cream, home made caramel, mixed together
Holly: green tea?
Andy: anything dumb and childlike, like Slimer’s Ectoblast ice cream

———-

Notes: Andrew changed his best friend while taking this quiz. He learned more about friendship. Holly’s best friend was a vague composite of several best friends, until the fill in the blanks when she just chose one of them.

BLIND ITEM TO BE REVEALED NEXT WEEK: Who are these best friends???

Holly S.’s post-feminist musings veer dangerously towards iVillage territory in “For the Guys”, her analysis of how happy relationships result from each partner meeting universal needs. Holly S., via Dr. Laura, identifies the essential ingredients to a successful relationship with her usual acuity:

Dr. Laura contends that for most men these needs are met through feeding their appetites for two main things: food and intimacy; that men are really basic and simple creatures in this regard. In short, feed these appetites and you’ll not only make him happy but yourself too. . . If you break down the caring for your man to include such a simple thing as cooking for him, you’re showing pampering and attention that tells him he means something to you. Guys like that and they’ll brag about it to their buddies that their woman is taking good care of them. The bragging and contentment is ten fold when the other need is met.

Recap: The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Guys like to brag about sex. Holly S. provides some simple instructions to men (and women – apparently she believes that we share some similarities) about how to sustain our relationships. Ladies: cook for your husband. Guys: say thank you, buy flowers for your wife, also buy her some stuff from AVON (coincidence? Holly S. is an AVON rep, apparently!), but don’t spend more than $20. Hint hint Blake, Holly S. would enjoy this birthstone necklace ($7.99!), some Skin So Soft body lotion ($9.99), or even this handsome 6-piece Nylon Bundle (a steal at $19.99).

Jewelry and flowers – contrary to popular belief – are NOT the only gifts for a woman… The women of the world who require pure diamonds and gold already have a lot of it and can easily afford it themselves.

Nice theory, but I’d have to disagree with Holly S. about her gift options: they definitely would not fill my “pamper reservoirs” for any period of time. I still believe that the best gift you can give a girl is never asking her to pay your rent.

Internet celebrity Andrew Sloat brought this flyer back from the AIGA conference on Tuesday.

He gave us a fine recap of a talk by the phenomenal Canadian typographer Marian Bantjes. Bantjes started out her talk by expressing astonishment to be there, and credited it to the fact that four years ago, she quit doing everything she had been working at and “followed her heart” – that is, she sold her design firm and started with her crazy beautiful typographic-inspired illustrations. Now she’s making amazing work, a super-success story. Inspired by both the HP flyer and Marian Bantjes, I got to thinking about following your heart.

On Following Your Heart: A conservation with myself.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
Five years ago, the intern version of myself received some choice advice on my last day of work for Ryan McGinness. Over lunch, I asked him all kinds of questions about working, about how to find what you love in life, and be able to make the kinds of things that you want to make. Deep stuff, for sure. He told me to “follow your heart.” At the time, I thought this was the biggest cop-out of all time. About two years ago, I realized that it was actually pretty good advice, even though it’s a cliché. It’s really something to think about during trying times when you’re not sure what to do.

What do we mean when we say that we’ve followed our heart?
Yesterday, Renda said that computers can do almost anything. The only thing that they can’t do is love (CORRECTION: Andrew said this). I think she’s right. Computers definitely cannot follow their hearts.

But how would you define following your heart? What’s the difference between following your heart and simply taking action or taking risks?
This question is really about certainty versus uncertainty. It also has to do with the possibility of regret, and the degree of investment you have in your actions. There are times when it’s hard to be sure what to do. Perhaps there are two equally good options available to you. Perhaps the choice is between maintaining the status quo and abandoning it in favor of an uncharted future. Or maybe there is something you’ve been thinking about for a long time but are afraid to do. And a time comes to act upon something that’s only existed theoretically up until then. Where “following your heart” – versus simply taking risk or taking action (ie boldness, tk on the RSS feed) – comes into play is in the perceived degree of regret as a result of that very action. To employ another cliché, in order to follow your heart, you have to risk breaking your heart.

But how reliable is the heart anyway? Why should we trust in our hearts? What is a heart anyway, and why do we seem to think that it holds the solutions to our problems?
For these types of questions, it’s sometimes good to turn to poetry. I often think about part of a Dylan Thomas poem called “Should Lanterns Shine.”

“I have been told to reason by the heart,
But heart, like head, leads helplessly“

I have always thought that the implication here is that both heart and head are flawed and unreliable navigators. Here, reason and emotion are the two sides of a losing coin toss.
You can certainly follow your heart and fail. But if you fail while following your heart, you most likely won’t regret your action, only the mistakes made in the practice of that action. You acted upon what you knew to be true at that moment in time. And when you act upon truth, your action is genuine and – here we go again – heartfelt. The important part: you believed in something.
That faith gets at the crux of what following your heart means, and how you can do it. It’s when you do something because you have to, because it’s the only honest option, because the greater regret would be inaction rather than failure. People don’t usually look back wondering what would have happened if they would have stayed in their miserable situations.

How does one achieve the wisdom necessary to follow their heart?
First, you have to listen to your heart (self-assessment may be the most difficult part). Then you must follow your heart. No matter what happens, your heart will go on.