Tag Archives: Social Networking

The Decline and Fall of Humanity

28 Friday Jun 2013

Posted by in Blog, Crap I Didn't Learn, Essays, Humor, Life in the Foothills, LifeStyle, Satire

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

art-social-20media-620x349I don’t mean to scare ya or nothin’. That is not my intent. And I’m not complaining actually either. Hardly. Just a little.

Mostly, I’m just wondering.

I been kicking this around the old brain pan for a few days. You know what I mean. A thought raises an interesting idea, but it doesn’t really seem to connect or go anywhere. So it just lays there, floating around in the hungry sub-conscious, peeking out every so often to inquire if any new facts have come along that it can connect to. You know what I mean.

Actually this blogging is symptomatic of it. It’s that idea that really valuable ideas are generated on the fly, just letting the old fingers fly over the keys, caressing them in synchronicity such that they produce words in an order that makes intelligible sentences if not intelligible thoughts. Blogging is defined by talking out of your ass about any subject that comes to mind with no filter and no grade at the end. It eschews the very notion of editing. What you write today is not even what you believe tomorrow.

But isn’t life becoming that. If you want proof go to The Tale of My Heart, and her post, Proof of the Doomed Society.  We now go nowhere without our smart phones. To have a dead battery stops the world until you are recharged and redownloaded. Google announces it is shutting down its reader and panic ensues. HOW WILL I GET MY NEWS? Newspapers are for wrapping gifts to be avant-garde.

It’s all about the sound bite. It’s all about the photo snapped. A picture is worth a thousand words you know. And we are all photographers now. News agencies depend on us. They depend on us to snap the “I was there at the critical moment when death arrived!” My opinion, written in the semi-formal but oh so official looking template from a free blogging platform is sought by journalists who sit in Starbucks with laptops aglow while sipping the latest de rigueur in designer coffee blends.

We are all so with it with our “clouds” and our insta-messages. No one is disconnected. No one is alone because there is a vast matrix of interconnected “friends” instantly at hand. You aren’t lonely any more are you?

socialmediaSo connected am I that I have to “manage” my social media, and set up filters, because you know, you have your business socials and your college socials, god forbid your high school socials, your hometown socials, your family socials, your kids friends parents socials. Filter!

I live in a city where I as an Anglo, am a minority. So I’m doing my best to learn Spanish, even more urgent since my new housekeeper (meeting her Monday) doesn’t speak any form of the King’s English. So I have a program for that.

A nice virtual “coach” tells me “way to go Sherry” and “now you’re really moving!” at the end of each lesson, although I can call on her at any time for words of encouragement. And boy, do I feel encouraged!

I bought a piece of software to organize all my recipes and connect my pantry to my grocery list, to my ingredient list, to my blog, to my brain. I will have the most interactive and clean little piece of recipe joy in a few months after I have painstakingly “captured” all the nearly 300 recipes I’ve published on my web site. And then interfaced them with the pantry inventory that I will spend days painstakingly adding. I will be able, so they tell me, to put in ingredients from my inventory and it will “find” recipes that I can make with nary a foot in the food store.

No more stuffed little 3 x 5 boxes crammed with newspaper recipes and handwritten ones that one day you will sit down and copy to a card. No more of that. And while you’re at it, no more sisters sitting around with kleenex with “mom’s recipe box” going through each and every one, laughing and crying at the memories induced by “Aunt Tilda’s Wild Jello Swirl” and the fun that was at the family reunion back in ’93. No, Mom’s recipe box is online, and prints out professional looking copies, instead of the one that used to be in the box–you know the one–with the chocolate frosting stain on the corner where it fell in the bowl when Alicia grabbed it out of Becky’s hand that time?

No more of that. Let’s hear it for the INTERNETS!

Let’s hear it for technology and connectedness and never having to look someone in the eye who you are calling a jackass.

But hey, I can play games and I can “beat” other people, real or otherwise, and do I really care? I win!

And after all, I did learn how to fold a fitted sheet. That’s something to be proud of.

And I did learn 7,329 more ways to cook chicken.  That’s something too.

And if I want to, I can publish a book, and not have to wait on some snotty editor to tell me I write like shit. I can ignore that. After all, what do they know about this rockin’ civilization at this point?

Gibbons was wrong. Rome didn’t fall. It just re-invented itself.

Don’t we all?

Every week?

It’s all just evolution, can’t you see that?

Related articles

These were all generated as “related” so I’m relatin’ ’em.

It Wasn’t Supposed to Be This Hard

02 Thursday Sep 2010

Posted by in Archaeology, Essays, fundamentalism, God, Humor, LifeStyle, Media, Sarah Palin, Satire, The Wackos, What's Up?, World History

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

I figured that if we knew from day one that life would be as tough as it is, there would be a huge uptick in the suicide rate among seven-year-olds. Thankfully the little darlins’ are protected from the awful truth.

I’m thinking of holding a contest to name the number of days we have waited since the inception of our brake problems until the fix date. Winner gets what’s left of my sanity. New date for “it’s done” is now tomorrow. I ain’t takin’ bets I tell ya.

Oh, since nobody seems to have come upon it, there is a new post on 1000 Shitty Things. It’s not half bad, so take a look if you are looking for a bit of giggle in your day.

As the cartoon suggests, I’ve been spending considerably more time on Twitter lately, and trying to be a better Facebooker.  There is always a price to be paid, given that God begrudgingly won’t extend the number of hours in a day. I’m doing my best. I continue to stay pretty current with what most of you are saying, although my comments are few. Our server was down for six-hours plus yesterday and that explains the lack of posting.

Twitter has actually become a favorite with me. Mostly due to the retweet device which brings me  just tons of new and interesting tweeters through my friends. I ran into this one guy that is hysterical. Goes by the moniker Jesus_M_Christ. You can probably find him in a search. Yesterday he said something along the lines: “I flirted with atheism for a while, like all boys, I too rebelled for a time against my Dad.” He says amusing stuff like that daily.

 I’ve been reading the usual political nonsense, as no doubt you have. More and more, I find the American “voter” a study in utter stupidity. As one would expect, as time has gone by, little by little the tide has turned and now more people think the GOP has a better solution for our economic woes. Quite a feat when they have proposed zero, done nothing, and only moan about the good old days when the rich got the breaks and the rest of us paid. It’s magic I  guess. Or it shows beyond any doubt that voters base their “opinions” on star dust and on reading tea leaves.

Which only goes to beg the question as to why so many of us bother to engage in this art? of political commentary. We are a voice crying in the wilderness of arid minds it seems. Yet we labor on. Except in our case, we may indeed by more worthy to tie the shoes of the average politician than they are. Did  you get the metaphor?

There are not many Margaret and Helen posts these days, but they are always a gem. Do go and have a laugh, and of course, hear the truth as only they can give it.

Just heard this lovely quote on Keith Olbermann regarding a Beck follower:

I just love Glenn Beck. He’s explaining to us all the real American history they didn’t bother to teach us in school.

Choice is yours: laugh hysterically at how anyone could be so stupid, or weep copiously at what passes for knowledge in this land of waving grains of wheat. (I think copious is a grand word don’t you?)

I have to admit the truth (treat this as a confession of sin omnmipotens Deus) that Vanity Fair, just makes me get all squishy and excited. I love their brand of bitchy biting commentary on just about anyone and anything. They are doin’ the Palin! Oh yeah, don’t miss this dishin’ of the dirt from the masters of New Yorky arrogant, sophisticated, ‘oh no you dint!’ kinda schtick.  Worth the price of admission (oh, we are free aren’t we? Whatever, go read it and enjoy).

We had a troll the other day who added his two cents about the wonders of Beck and his “reclaiming our honor” garbage. Apparently Stevie was unaware of TV and that you don’t have to be physically present at an event to know what happened there. He suggested that my question about Beck’s receptivity among Christians was questionable given his Mormonism, was somehow inappropriate. In the small case that Steve is not back asleep under his bridge, I offer this from the Evangelical world. Apparently their concerns about Beck are deep.

I don’t know quite what to make about this next entry. A drunk Yahweh? or drunk Hebrew Testamental writers? Either suggests that, well it suggests SOMETHING. Coming from Biblical Archaeology, it can’t be dismissed as simply nonsense can it? Apparently ancient Israelites were swillers of the beer. Yep. I didn’t say it. I just report it. Make of it what you will.  And before OKJimm can say it, I will, “I’ll drink to that!”

Well, there is lots more in the news, but I’ve read it all, and there is nothing else you need know at the moment. Trust me. You do don’t you? Signing off to go and fix Taco Salad for dinner. Ain’t that man lucky to have me?

And who said: “I’m wearing my push-up bra today. I want to get my way.”

Related Articles