The Effect of Social Media on Relationships

There is a new guy in your house now be you married or not. He hangs around waiting for someone to talk to him. He is always on. Even if someone forgets about him for a while it is amazing how fast he can be up and ready to go. And you may have just had a fight with your husband or wife and Mr. Saturday Night steps in. He is always fun. Always interesting. And his is chock full of information. It's like the guy sits around reading and he never complains.

And just like that he is at your dinner table. You are eating your mashed potatoes while he is munching on the steak and your wife is talking to him not you. Your husband is engrossed in a conversation with the guy like you don't exist. And you really don't since this guy moved in. He never goes to bed. You see your spouse up at night and the guy is in the bed! Enough is enough you point out but that just makes it worse. And the guy always has a light on.

Even when you travel he comes along. You think he would get a hint but there he is piping up with his funny little noises. Even when you make love the guy is flashing lights at you. He has no boundaries and the worst thing is you get the feeling your wife/husband/boyfriend/girlfriend would rather be talking to him than you.

Your only chance is to go someplace where the guy cant plug in. Maybe then he will get the hint and just turn off. Maybe then you can have a decent conversation. At least until he gets his batteries charged.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The PItcher...Sometimes a dream is all you have
 

Living in our phones

So you are rolling along and the lady with the STOP sign holds up her hand. And so you sit there and wait and while you wait you check your phone. And there is nothing there but there might be and it is better than just sitting there because existence has become boring. And while you are waiting you see a woman who looks like she could kick your ass and she is wearing a bandanna in the smoky light of just paved hot tar and she is looking at her hand and you realize that in the middle of the hot sun breathing in the heavy petroleum wafting on that steaming asphalt she too is checking her phone. And it hits you...nobody lives in this world anymore.

Because there might be something in that phone that will take her out of this world. She might be taken away from getting cooked on a street and sucking up all sorts of toxins while hot spewing tar and asphalt is laid down by a giant machine with then guys hanging off it and suddenly you see that all these guys are staring at their hands too. They too are looking for the magic life that screen provides. Take me away. Take me to Oz. It might you know and there might be a wizard and a rainbow...anything is better than this crappy existence.

And if no one is living in this life anymore where are we living. Some sort of cyber world where a promise of something greater is just a text or an email or a tweet or a picture away. Something than this grinding malaise of the every day that is existence. And so we see cops and firemen and construction workers and soldiers and sailors and painters and sculptors...the world squinting at their hands because that little world holds so much promise.

So you check your phone one more time as the lady turns her sign from STOP to SLOW. And you proceed on and pass through the crappy world of the every day. But cheer up. There is a text or an email quivering on the horizon. Bailing us out once again.

www.williamhazelgrove.com


 

The Hyperactive Moment

We do not live in the moment anymore.  We live in the hyperactive moment. One moment to the next. We know longer know what the moment is. Computers have done this to us. The speed of our lives is such that we can not afford to stay in the moment. We have to be to the next or we will get left behind. Sure. Go ahead and lose that phone or that computer. You will be living in a tent. There is nothing less than survival at stake.

We think about it. On vacation. We slow down some then. And we think about slowing down and enjoying the moment but even then our phone is going off. Even then we are afraid of missing something and we look to the next moment. That is why we are always checking our phones. The present moment is no longer enough. There must be something better  coming.

And we wonder why kids have ADD. Is it the kids or is it the speed of our life. We cannot afford to have our kids take their time. They will be left behind and nothing less than their survival is at stake or so we thing. So we run even faster. Lose another moment to the next and before we know it we are all out and we are not even sure we have lived at all.

Rocket Man...the American dream upside down

www.williamhazelgrove.com

 

Tech Stress

It  comes every xmas. You have more devices than you can handle and each device requires a good week learning curve. You are overwhelmed and weirded out as you sit on your couch in front of Its A Wonderful Life with your Lap top, Kindle Fire, Ipad, Smartphone. You are trying to get those pictures to upload to flickr on your television while solving the problem of your password with your Starbucks app and why wont your G mail autopopulate on your IPad and isn't it weird the way your book disappeared that you downloaded on your Kindle and why in the hell wont the songs you downloaded from Amazon dump into your I tunes. And on top of that your IPOD is eating songs. You have a bad case of....tech stress.

Throw Windows Eight into the mix and you have a perfect storm. And all these problems are a time suck at the very time you want to spend more time with your kids and significant other. Just a minute honey...Im going to just check the email. Where did it go. It was right here. Why are there two desktops on Windows Eight? And where is the START button. And how come you cant close any of the apps. Better switch to the Kindle. But it is not picking up the WiFi. Now just a minute...let me just figure out why it doesn't see the signal.

And you feel strangely overwhelmed. These devices should make our lives easier but we become incredibly upset when a password doesn't work or we cant open our online banking. Someone might have stolen our identities or somebody tossed us off facebook or locked us out. Who can forget the image of people in New York after hurricane Sandy fighting over outlets for power for their smartphones. Almost like it was food and water.

And it is now. Tech is our sustenance and nothing less than being left behind is at stake. We only have so much time to master our new tech because something else is on the way. Well we do have the holidays. Now, lets see. That app that is supposed to block texting when Im driving is not opening up. I wonder why that is?

www.billhazelgrove.com
 

The Black Ice of Tech

You know what I am talking about. That black ice that looks back at us from our latest bit of tech: our Ipad, out Kindle Fire, our smart phone, our Ultra book. It is a polished granite of black ice that mirrors the world in heartless black and white. We see a strange irony in the very device we are using to transport us to points distant reflects back to us our very terrestrial existence. We see our face and it is not something we want to see. For the black ice gives us who we are at that moment and the years as they have gone by.

And we have become like Rushmore. Craggy chiseled visages staring out from the black onyx as we frown at our keyboards or dab our Ipads with smudgy fingers. The tech is just fine, it is the human behind it we care not to see. And it is a distraction this face staring back at us on the plane train or in the car or in the coffee house. It is peering around our work in progress or appearing magically as the screen goes dead. And there we are. That person who we spend so much time avoiding.

And mostly we just close the lap top or put away the Ipad. But occasionally we stare and see that human. So un tech. So flesh and blood. Tech rolls on while we roll under. And the human face has no chance against that sleek black marble. We are there grimacing, frowning, grunting, groaning, trying to get across our point. And we feel a great relief when that screen flares back up and takes us way from ourselves. And we all know what is going to happen.

The hope I die before I get old generation will demand a screen that does not reflect back those years. There will be a filler, the screen saver that will save us from that awful image under the black ice. Our mortal soul.

www.billhazelgrove.com
 

Tech Dads

The old dad who fixed everything around the house with and adjustable and Philips head and a hammer, adjusting training wheels on bikes, the errant leaky faucet, the malfunctioning lamp that just wont stay lit, have been replaced by the tech dads of 2012. Tech dads around Christmas are not the men staying up late to put together the bike. The tech dad is hunched over his laptop solving tech problems for his kids much the way the old dads used to solve problems with a wrench.

Take Christmas day. I set up two notebooks complete with getting them online and punching in encryption codes and changing screen savers and passwords. Not a big deal really. The tech dad nightmare was my seven year olds Mp3 player. I get why Steven Jobs did such a great thing with the IPOD, because the old technology barely worked. Two hours to get the little bugger to talk with rhapsody and download music then I just started sliding over my own mp3 files from my laptop.

Then it was on to the remote control helicopter. No biggie really except extremely difficult to fly. Many crashes. Then onto setting up the digital camera so it would download. Not extremely difficult. The Uverse guy shows up and I have to transition all computers to the new provider. Rebooting and passwords and encryption keys. Setting up the phone to Tivo and control the television. Some tech issues to resolve between televisions.

The mp3 player craps out. The notebooks cant find the WIFI and my sons speakers need to be hooked up and his phone wont sync to the axillary jack on his receiver. Encryption keys and rebooting and the tape monitor circuit for the phone and recharge the mp3 player. All is well until the wife's laptop crashes.

Tech dad is on the job.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man...I have one word...plastics!
Hemingways Attic...surviving as a writer

Anthony Wieners Wiener

It isn't so much that Anthony Wiener snapped a picture of his own wiener and shot it out into cyberspace via twitter it is that the media machine between Palins Wallyword vacation takes a break and puts Wieners Wiener page one in cable and network land. The wiener in question hacked by the crazed hacker who shot it off to the unsuspecting innocent is now abroad in some cafe on the left bank with a mask on and a handheld, laughing into his latte as Wiener explains his wiener to Wolf Blitzer who looks like he never had a wiener and if he did it had a beard.

But famed nobody Andrew Brightbart could not wrestle this wiener to the ground as twitter pulled in every network and newspaper in one hundred forty character hubris or the equivalent pixilation which makes for a very grainy wiener shot indeed. Anthony Wiener on explaining his wiener told Wolf and anyone who would listen that a hacker prankster punk took a shot of his wiener unbeknowst to him and tweeted his weiner to all would follow a Wiener. But is it your wiener Wolf persisted. Lets just say I wont dignify that with an answer Mr. Wiener responded.

And even as Lawrence O'Donnell berated the Wiener followers and Weinter cabitzers for being so fascinated with Wieners wiener he led with the story also to say no one should lead with a wiener story and haven't we fallen to a new low? Indeed. Mr. Wiener held fast to his hacked punked pranked story but did not specifically deny the wiener in question was his wiener bringing more wiener speculation from the Wiener watchers and followers.

At the end of the day all we know for sure is that a mans' wiener was compromised by being tweeted by someone and we cannot be sure that the wiener was not Anthony Weiner's weiner who tweeted his own wiener but that it is someones wiener even though Anthony Wiener will not say that is it not his wiener but that he was punked hacked or pranked by somewhere out there in cyberspace by someone who possibly took Anthony Wieners weiner and tweeted it for all the world to see. The moral to the story is that no man  should ever tweet another man's wiener. Especially not Anthony Wieners wiener.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Are Computers our Titanic?

She was unsinkable. Technology had reached a point in 1912 that man could conquer the seas. The largest ship in the World set off for New York and never reached her destination. The Titanic went to the bottom taking 1500 souls with her. Our unsinkable creation went down like a stone against mother nature. That black berg waiting out on the dark icy seas reminded us that we were still just puny humans against the forces of the Universe. The great War started several years later and we saw the dark side of our vaunted technological prowess when millions of men perished under machine guns and high explosive shells.

And now we have another disaster. The tornado in Joplin. Our Titanic is the computer, the cellular phone, the IPAD, IPOD, IPHONE. We cannot be wired enough in our digital cocoon. We master the world with out handhelds and have apps that tell us the weather, the stars, the history of the World. What more could we want and yet with all our wired technology over 125 died in Joplin and people are still dying from storms and tornadoes. And probably ninety percent of those people had a phone or a computer just before their house or their hospital or their KMART imploded from the negative pressure of a F4 tornado. So with all our vaunted technology, we are still running for our lives.

Could it be we now live in the same bubble the people who sailed on the Titanic lived in?The bubble of the digital age exists mostly in our mind. It has little to do with the physical world. If you put a computer in a field it is essentially worthless. You can not eat the computer and once it runs dead or loses contact with a hotspot it isn't even as good as a primitive Morse code transmitter. It is just a hunk of plastic. That's what we carry with us now. Hunks of plastic with batteries. You can bet those people in Joplin running for their lives, you can bet a bunch of them clutched these hunks of plastic that didn't tell them to find shelter or what to do when a mile wide tornado is bearing down on you. Where is that app RUN FOR YOUR LIFE. Should have downloaded that one.

But the computer seems very puny against the monster force of a tornado. The computer is a human generated device for humans to communicate with. It is programmed and powered by humans. The data is provided by humans. It seems sometimes we believe God is providing us with our apps or our songs or our directions or our maps or answering that weird question about Liberace or who really is the fastest pitcher in the world. Sadly, it is not God. It is just another mortal with a plastic device. And so we are left with our super fast digital age confronting storms that destroy towns in seconds. Snuff out lives with the indifference of the Universe.

And we can relate to those people who plunged into the icy Atlantic from their elaborate ship complete with heated swimming pools and bowling alleys. The Titanic was the most advanced ship of it's time, it was their IPAD, their IPHONE, their bluetooth. And yet those people thrashed around in a cold dark sea that cared nothing for them or the fact their magnificent ship was headed for the bottom of the Atlantic. Humans live in their own world and maybe that is because the world outside could care less if we live or die. Where is the app for that one?


http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Rocket Man will blast off this summer



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