My initial reaction to your question was to say "you should be more careful confirming friend requests" but then I realize that I have the same situation and these darn friends just creep in, one, two or three at a time. I mean, they're friends with 37 of your existing friends, they have to be cool, right? Or... maybe not.

You're right that there are a variety of options in terms of what you do with someone who is showing up in your newsfeed more than you want, all on that handy pop-up menu adjacent to their update, with selections ranging from "all updates", "most updates" or "only important" to "unsubscribe from" or "unsubscribe from status updates from". All useful, and good if you don't want them to realize you've unfriended them: if you simply unsubscribe, they have no way of knowing that has happened (other than to quiz you on whether you saw one of their updates).

But sometimes watching someone's FB updates really brings home that you don't want to be friends with them. Okay. Here's how ya deal...

In my own News Feed, here's an update I received from "Care W.", someone who I'm frankly not sure ended up on my friend list in the first place:

I kind of have a low tolerance for insipid inspirational images and quotes, so this is a perfect opportunity to gently sever the tie between us. To do that, I click on her (his?) name on this update, which takes me to their timeline:

The key button to click is the little gear wheel to the right of "Call". Click on it and a menu of options appears:

As you can see in the image above, select "Unfriend..." to do the deed.

It'll confirm that you want to -- gasp -- break your social graph by unfriending them:

Sure you want to do this rather than unsubscribe from their updates? Okay. Click "Remove from Friends" and it's mission accomplished:

Now when you view your News Feed they won't show up any more. There. That was easy. Oh, and if you want more Facebook tutorials, I have a lot of Facebook help on this site, and, of course, a popular Facebook fan page which I invite you to "like".