Happy New Year

Published 8:00 pm Thursday, January 2, 2020

New Year’s resolutions are like good intentions —excellent for paving the road to hell. While I am not into resolutions, I am always annually committed to evaluating all activities and responsibilities and seeing how I can attempt to become more efficient and productive for the coming year.

If you will pardon the presumptuousness, I think you may have heard this before if you have visited this space — it will be business as usual when it comes to social media. I don’t have time for such. I ain’t gonna take time for it, and if you are offended, then I say (insert your own expletive). 

The internet remains a source of interesting information which I sometimes use for things which are part of my daily function. 

People are often sending along “words to live by,” historical information that supports their own political viewpoint. And, if I don’t pass it on, something bad could come my way.

What is so functionally uplifting about the Internet is the resource that it is. Quick and easy — you ask a question, and it fires back quicker than a Colt 45. It has made us more efficient and enables us to produce so much in a short period of time. You can quickly find out who lives on an inner city street in Muscogee, Oklahoma, which can be troubling. There is no privacy anymore. Technology allows the bad guys to find out all about you, where you live, what you do for a living and what your favorite grocery store is and when you visit it, even if it is 4:30 a.m.

I would give up all that technology offers if I could be assured of maintaining my privacy.

Having said that, there is one nagging question about the Internet which remains incorrigibly debilitating. There are no more printed phone books. I can no longer let my fingers do the walking through the yellow pages if I need to find the number of a repair shop or call you on your birthday by consulting the white pages. If I want to call you and invite you to lunch, there is no chance. I have to email you for your phone number or pay to get your phone number. Technology also is making us rude and callused. Cynical and curmudgeonly.

I am not into Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and all the rest of the technological avenues which allow one to brag about where they have been or where they are going and what they are up to.

Sorry, but I don’t need to know what is going on in someone’s life and I don’t want to share with others what I do personally, who I vote for, which politician I loathe. If you have a cure for cancer, if you know how we can keep teenagers from murdering innocent people, or how we can neutralize mass murderers and eliminate hunger, I’d like to hear from you.

Otherwise, take your Internet drivel and shove it.