There’s a mighty thin line between craze and crazy
We’re living in an age of amazing technological advancements and it’s turning us all into morons.
The problem is that technology has leaped light years ahead of common sense.
Cell phones, for example, are quite handy for reporting UFO sightings or if you can’t remember what kind of cleanser your wife asked you to buy at the store.
But that’s not how we use these devices.
Kids mostly use cell phones to send illiterate text messages to friends, such as…
“R U shur Jimmy haz hrpeez?”
No wonder WASL scores are in the toilet.
Sadly, adults don’t handle technology any better. I often use my cell phone to make prank calls to my mother – while I’m in HER HOUSE.
We’ll both be in the kitchen talking. Then I’ll secretly dial her home number on my cell phone, which is hidden in a pocket. Hearing her phone ring, my sweet mom will shuffle into the dining room.
What happens next will be a variation of …
Mom – “Hello.”
Doug – “Can I have a drink of water?”
Mom – “Oh, you idiot!”
Technology is evil.
Computers are just as bad as cell phones.
Most employees use them to e-mail lame jokes to their co-workers.
(Unless, that is, you work in the Kootenai County Prosecutor’s Office. Then you’d be e-mailing smut to co-workers.)
Speaking of computer abuse, the other day my friend Joe called me at home. He frantically urged me to drop whatever I was doing and go online.
Had we declared war? Had Paris Hilton busted out of jail?
No. He wanted me to watch Kylie Minogue’s “Agent Provocateur” lacy lingerie commercial.
Well, I was shocked. Shocked at how easy it was to see the two-minute video just by Googling the words “Kylie Minogue” and “underwear.”
I know I’m sounding old fashioned. But I grew up in the Sixties, a much more organic era due to all the hippies who wouldn’t wear deodorant. We didn’t need computers to have fun in the Sixties. Mainly this was because the smallest computer was still larger than the Paulsen Building.
The biggest difference is that we knew how to enjoy the Great Outdoors: hiking in Vietnam, say, or having mud sex at Woodstock.
But now every moron in the world has a blog and thinks he’s Ernest Hemingway.
There’s probably no turning back from technology. But it may not be too late to make one small difference.
And that’s why I would like to close today’s sermon with an appeal.
I’m talking to those people who have evolved from the conventional hand-held cell phone and are now walking around with Bluetooth gizmos hooked to an ear.
Please – while the planet has any dignity left – take those silly things off your heads!
These earular communication devices are nerdier than the fanny-pack craze of the 1990s.
Remember when all those goobers wandered around with little nylon goodie bags strapped to their waists?
It was like a major segment of the population had forgotten the concept of pockets.
Earphones are even more witless. That’s because the wearers walk around in public carrying on animated conversations with what appears to be NOBODY.
Society used to have a word for such behavior.
Schizophrenia.
Now, thanks to wireless technology, it’s impossible to distinguish a brain-fried babbling meth chef from, say, a commodities trader.
The other day I saw a friend standing all alone on a downtown corner. He was waving his arms and yakking loudly.
“How sad,” I thought to myself, “poor Kevin has taken a long walk off the short pier of sanity.”
Then he turned, revealing the infernal plastic orb clipped to his ear.
Disgusted, I went home and began writing this column.
After I replayed the Kylie Minogue video a few more times.
Hubbada-hubbada- hubbadda …