Famous Person Shares Handy Tips for Remaining Famous

It’s easy. I see the fundies and their increasingly comical reactions to try and stay relevant.

Screaming about how the new tech is nothing but evil. Pretending their hardest that it doesn’t exist. Clinging bitterly to antiquated notions.

Oh right, that’s also my parents who, thanks to the old media (especially the TV news they watch), are so afraid of the internet they don’t even want to go on it. And the one argument we had, I told my old man his mind was old. He lost it on me (but I was right.) I’ll give him credit, at least he keeps his beliefs intact (like some of the hardcore Amish) and still refuses to find out what the internet is unlike Fundies who gobble it up and then still refute the science behind it like the hypocrites they are.

I got in a bit of a back-and-forth yesterday with a friend who is 14 years older than me (I’m 55) about her belief that “all lawyers are evil” because “they’re ONLY TRAINED TO ARGUE” and Congress is all fucked up because 80% of the members are lawyers.

She refuses to use the internet to find out what the truth is about the numbers (it’s not even close to 80%) or that the ACLU is not a labor union but attorneys who fight for civil liberties. She doesn’t even begin to want to understand what a “blog” is. It’s really annoying because she’s a reasonably intelligent person and the internet is really not that difficult to move around in.

With my first Mac, a Performa, I got a disc to install eWorld. It was AOL given a bath in Apple. I first got online with a Zeos notebook that took me two days to hook up the modem. I’m totally up to date with all things Mac having recently purchased a new iMac that is pretty much a Performa that died, went to heaven, and came back as Maximilian Schell. However, I cannot get into Facebook though I should. I don’t understand Twitter – my dogs make more sense – or Instagram. Or podcasts for that matter. I find the endless sharing too creepy. Plus anything that smacks of self-promotion causes me to hide in the cupboard under the stairs. And yes I am boasting. I do seem to regard that as some sort of badge of authenticity. Most likely we all keep up with new technology till the point in our lives come where we don’t. Much as we do with our clothes. There comes a point in a man’s life when he simply shouldn’t wear jeans any longer. I am going to have to get over myself and get with this but I’m putting it off as long as I possibly can.

I realize that I am not persuaded by the iPad. Probably because I use it as if it’s a lobotomized computer instead of the thing it is. But I don’t really understand what that thing is is.

BTW. Linkedin – aka geezer facebook – is hardly less creepy that its sophomore broheim.

@Benedick: To understand Twitter at its finest, you would only have to read the late Roger Ebert’s tweets. If the goal is eloquence in 140 characters, he nailed it consistently.

@matador1015: I don’t get Roger Ebert. Leaving aside his personal struggle of which one can only be admiring his professional opinions were tripe. He had nothing to say. Based on nothing he sucked the life out of those more talented than him. Two thumbs up your fucking arsehole.

@Benedick: If you don’t know why you need one, you don’t need one. I know why, and I do.

@matador1015: Ebert gave great Tweet, although Tweet of God remains my fave. The Spanglish-challenged Mayor Bloomberg that appeared in the wake of Hurricane Sandy runs a close second.

@Benedick: There’s also Andy Borowitz’s compressed humor/satire.

The Internet was made for those souls who want to feel connected to humanity without having to know a single human being.

Did Richie Havens die today?

@Dodgerblue: Did he have an unusually large thumb, or is that the combination of fading memory and whatever else I might have been doing when I first saw “Woodstock”?

Nice job w/mobile. Got android working

OT: my grocery store went public.

@ManchuCandidate: So what’s up with the “terrorist plot” in Canada City with the railroad? I’m loving all the commenters on the NYT website saying it’s Fatty Harper’s way of trying to scare the electorate into not liking the new Labor guy.

@SanFranLefty:
I wouldn’t be surprised. Gotta distract from the F35 debacle that had gone from 9 bil to 42+ bil

@gunnergoz: Right.

@blogenfreude: You didn’t get in on the IPO? I’m like at the deli counter and they’re all like ‘You want something good?’

@SanFranLefty: It was Canada. They bored them into submission. (No offense to anyone anyone who would be offended by that)