Y'wanna know why Friendster sucks? Because they don't have a customer service e-mail address. Oh, no, that'd be too much work for them! Instead you have to sift through their 13 pages of FAQs and hope that one of them addresses your issue -- which, by the way, has never been the case for me!

I hate Friendster!

So, here's the scoop:

When I used to have a Friendster account, I also had a blog, and since I wanted to be able to format my blog and do some reasonably cool stuff, I had a blog for which I paid $8.95/mo. When I followed the online process to cancel my account, I tho't that would also cancel my blog.

I tho't wrongly.

Turns out the blog aspect of the whole Friendster thing is actually run by a company called Six Apart Ltd. (SAL). For some reason, you have to contact them separately to cancel your blog.

I wrote to Friendster's suggestions e-mail address ('cause, as I already said, they don't have a customer service one) saying they should probably let customers know this at some point during the whole canceling-the-account process. Friendster's suggestions team wrote back saying, yeah, y'know what, you're right! We probably should! Weird that we don't. Huh. Head-scratcher, that!

So I went to SAL's site to ask them to stop charging me for my Friendster blog, as the account had been canceled.

A couple of months went by, and I saw that I was still being charged $8.95 every month by SAL. I finally had enough and contacted my bank to dispute the most current charge and any future charges. As a result, my debit card has been canceled and my bank is issuing me a new one, which means that, for the time being, I HAVE to either write checks or carry cash; otherwise I can't buy anything.

Convenient, no?

HELL NO!

And to top it all off, SAL is insisting that the account still exists, and therefore the blog still exists. I went around and around with them, saying, look, if you Google my site, it comes up with a, "No, it ain't there!" screen. IT DOES NOT EXIST!

SAL responded, well, sure, the blog itself doesn't exist, but the corresponding photo pages still exist, so we therefore get to keep charging you. If you want us to stop, you have to go back and cancel your Friendster account using their online process.

Anyone else beating their head against the wall yet? Damn!

So I went back and contacted Friendster -- which, if you'll recall, does not have a customer service e-mail address; I keep having to contact them through their suggestions e-mail address -- and explained the issue. I got a formulaic response saying that the suggestions department doesn't handle these kinds of questions, and I needed to go back and contact customer service.

And, yes, say it with me now, there is no customer service e-mail address to contact!!!

*sigh*

I seriously could cry.

Ex-Friend texted me last night.

...

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

...

I'm having a little freak-out over it.

So, here's what happened.

About two or three or four months ago -- I don't remember how long; I'm horrible with sensing the passage of time -- I got a friend request on MySpace from Danny Kaye. Of course, it wasn't the actual Danny Kaye, but still, I LOVE Danny Kaye! And so I went to check out the profile for this Danny Kaye.

On the MySpace profile, there was a video of Danny Kaye and Harry Belafonte doing a little ditty on The Danny Kaye Show. It made me laugh out loud, it was so campy and playful! It just made me happy to watch it, and I had an undeniable urge to share the joy with someone.

Enter EF.

Danny Kaye is EF's favorite, from childhood. EF LOVES Danny Kaye, and introduced me to a lot of Danny Kaye stuff that I never even knew existed. It was one of the many things that the two of us shared between just us. It was loving and special, like we were part of some secret club that no one else really got.

So, it was completely natural, if a little unfortunate, that the person with whom I wanted to share the Danny Kaye video most in the world was EF.

And then, I thought about it some more, and realized, hey, what's the big deal? So you send EF a video! That doesn't mean that you have to be friends with EF! It's totally safe; there's no way EF will ever try to talk to you again, anyway. And if you use your new e-mail address, who knows? Maybe the video link will get put in EF's junk mail box instead of the inbox, and EF will never, ever, ever know you sent the dadgum thing in the first place! This is totally fine!

I sent the video to EF.

I believe my e-mail said something to the effect of, "I saw this and it made me laugh, and I just had to share it with someone. Naturally, you came to mind, and I figured, eh, what the hell."

Months passed. And then I got this text last night:

"thanks for the danny kaye video. i hope you've been well you have been in my thoughts."

My immediate reaction:

RUN FOR THE HILLS!

My actual, carefully crafted response:

"Glad u enjoyed it kid. Hope ur good too."

Calm and cool, right? Right! In my text message. I'm calm and cool. Right.

God help me.