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I promise to someday do more with this space than link to various articles from The New York Times, but until that day comes, take your rehashed news and like it. Bitch.

Meant to send this along a week or more ago. It’s an article about one man’s attempt to spend at least one day a week in technological darkness - no computer, no television, no celly. His description of the experience is worth a look. I empathize with his difficulties. Stop reading my blog and go for a walk.

Do not use your walk as an excuse to buy a latte. Bust up that Starbucks!

About a year ago, I was having lunch with a friend, and was just starting to launch into my usual “communications-technology-is-killing-communication” speech, when she stopped me pre-rant. “I know what you are going to say,” she said. “And it’s so much worse in Asia.”

My friend is Korean. She was born and raised in the United States but has worked in Korea and Japan for much of her life. And according to her, the average citizen of each of these countries - and especially, the average young person - is completely dependent on his or her cell phone as a source of not only communication but entertainment as well.

Now, I don’t have statistics to support that claim, but let it be known that my friend is both observant and intelligent. Even if her point of view is somewhat exaggerated - probably in the face of the possible ramifications of what’s in that point of view (something that admittedly often happens to yours truly) - there’s very little chance that she’s not somewhat right. I’ll leave it to my Korean and Japanese readers, and my half Korean and half Japanese readers, to add some more perspective or information if they feel the need.

But back to the point, before it stabs us:

Novels written and distributed via cell phone are starting to dominate the best seller lists in Japan.

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Following is a list of links that you may find interesting. I emailed them to myself over the course of the week, because I had been planning to discuss each one of them separately, but that ain’t going to happen so here they are.

• The Sad Fact Link: This article from The New York Times is about vanishing blue collar jobs. The topic of vanishing blue collar jobs is certainly nothing new, and I’m sure that there are plenty of economists and sociologists and politicians and historians who will tell you that such phenomena are just a natural consequence of business. And that could very well be true. But truth won’t provide the people covered in the article with the traction they’ll need to keep from slipping into poverty. Neither will $800, Mr. President. Again, reader(s), read The Conscience of A Liberal.
• The Gleefully Relevant to This Site Link: The value of this article, as far as I am concerned, isn’t illustrated so much by the article itself as it is by the comments that the article inspired (almost 250). The main topic of the conversation is narcissism among young Americans. Unfortunately, the article itself isn’t as insightful or as thought provoking as it could be, however it did spur some conversation (again: see the comments section). Some very interesting ideas are tossed about in those comments, by both the old and the young. Check it out. And forward the link to ten of your friends or you’ll have (purple) diarrhea tonight.
• The Not A Huge Deal But Still Sort of Pathetic Link: This story is about the recent addition of Stephen Colbert’s portrait to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery. The situation itself is funny. The painting is only going to hang for a short while - between the bathrooms. But when you learn that twenty year olds “…might look at the rest of the museum, but really came for Colbert,” it gets less funny. Or maybe it doesn’t. Maybe no one cares about portraits - except this guy with his bobble head rhinoceros.
• The Other Blog Worth Reading Link: I started reading Patrick Walsh’s personal blog when he started writing for Cinematical.com. He’s a good, funny, intelligent writer. More importantly, he’s a readable writer. It really blows my mind (and cups my mind’s balls) when I see how many mediocre writers are out there getting their work read - when that work is hardly readable (as in, incompletely conceived and poorly constructed.) A good writer should be able to conceive and construct almost on the fly. Anyway, Patrick Walsh claims he is not a pedophile.
• The Good Example of Something Positive That Can Be Done to Offset American Technological Waste Link: Recycle that (mobile) shit.

Happy Weekend. Check out those links. After all, Saturdays are for catching up on what’s going on in your world.

Add this to the list of posts reprinted from Yesterday’s Salad. It’s from a while ago but the experience it details provides a good example of how backwards our “progressive” society and economy can be when simple tasks get spread out among a throng of people - each of whom is perched in front of their own computer and/or toying with their cell phone.

* * *

Early one morning, a few weeks ago, I dropped my cell phone in the toilet. It was a pre-pee-or-poop drop, so I dove in. Alas, it was too late.

That baby really slid down there. It was almost as if it knew how worthless it was, being 1) old 2) unattractive (gasp!) 3) a cell phone in the first place. The thing almost disappeared down the toilet hole, and when I finally got it out, it started calling my parents all on its own. I don’t believe this was a coincidence. It was my lady’s toilet I had dropped it in, and I think my cell phone, knowing how worthless I felt it to be, was seeking some sort of tattle-tail’s revenge.

“He’s at a lady’s house early in the morning, parents. Do you have any idea what that might mean? What would your own parents think if you had done that? Sure…times are different…but look what happened to Uncle Al! Oh, and, mom-parent, he didn’t lift the seat - but despite all of what I just said, you’ll like the lady - she yells at him for peeing on the seat. He grumbles at her about how he can’t win, that she always nags him for leaving it up, so he just leaves it down now. Then she says that she means to put it back down when he’s done - and then there’s a little more back and forth, then they argue, and then he tells her how sexy she is, and she, after agreeing, says something similar in turn, and then they’re both in the bathroom, and, well, you don’t want to know what happens then, unless you do-”

That is what my cell phone would have said, if I hadn’t ripped out its battery. Such a vindictive cell phone. All the more so, I believe, because of what I would have to go through to get a replacement. I feel like it knew this, and purposely enjoyed a last laugh even as it died.

So, because the majority of our lives seem to now revolve, if not around our cell phones exactly, at least around conditions wherein constant and around-the-clock communication is not only possible but imperative to our day-to-day survival (what if my car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, or worse, the edge of nowhere, otherwise known as the abstract state of being that I am slowly falling into as I sit here talking about someone or something that was doing something to someone who was talking about them doing something that they didn’t do but was only talking about doing…or something) - anyway - because of all this, I decided to wait a week to replace my phone.

I also decided to wait a week because in a week I would be eligible for a free one hundred dollar upgrade from Verizon (who, by the way, totally ruined the nickname that Vertical Horizon was planning on using for themselves while touring…before they fell off the face of the earth…because they’re full of fluff) as a result of my plan being up for renewal.

Please follow that link, because:

1. I need to know what they are all looking at…especially if the horizon has been rotated to run up and down.
2. I need to know if that’s Roger Clemens in the back-right of the picture.

Back to the handed task: I waited the week. But how did I survive? Well, I’ll tell you the truth. I used my work phone and a landline. This left me susceptible to incommunicadoness when I wasn’t at work or at home. It was like a vacation in the past, and I liked it. My lady: “Wait, so if you’re not at work or at home…I can’t talk to you?”

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