Confessions of a Cyber-grump

If you smell smoke it is because I have just emerged from Cyber-Hell. I’m grumpy. No cell phone coverage or computer for two weeks. There is dial up here, but two relatives died waiting for a picture of a puppy to download.

I am always arguing with my friend Randy Elrod about the foolishness of twittering my last trip to the bathroom to the world. I LOVE all my cyber friends but I don’t care if you just ate a Twinkie of 1860 vintage that you just found in a Cajun bait shop. I believe we have become relationally stunted because we have replaced real flesh and blood relationships with inferior cyber- relationships. But after two weeks in a populated area, without internet or cell phone….

I am ready to confess!

I want to find that “Can you hear me now” guy, drag his rear to this location, and beat him senseless……. in a Christian way.

I will still argue that we (me too) waste way too much time doing trivia on the internet. Time that could be used actually meeting with and socializing with real people. Maybe the answer is in balance. Commerce certainly has exploded on the net as well as the ability to find and develop social and business networks. In this age we need the internet. So let’s put up some phone towers and what ever it takes to help keep us from the black hole I was just in. But let’s also rip ourselves from the keyboard and take time to hug real people, to kiss children and family and to meet the man or woman down the street.

I have to go now. I have 4,280 twitter notifications that have accumulated of where people are eating, what they are drinking, and where they itch. By the way, if you are interested, I am sitting in a library. I picked at a scab for a while. Now I’m downloading Randy’s coverage of the Bejing Olympics. The pictures are astounding. Lord forgive me.