To Converse...

Ensconced in my usual java shop perch, I was joyously oblivious to all the riotous early morning mental flotsam and jetsam trailing before, with and behind my co-dependent caffeine cohorts. At some point, the coffee engaged, neurons awoke, and electrons began to...well, not surge through my brain but surely lurch seems adequate to describe their collective efforts.

It was at this particular point in my pre-dawn cranial pilates that I happened to notice a young, cavity-prone couple sitting abaft my scuppers and that in fact neither had their speaking aids (i.e. cell phones) on their person. Ravaged from my efforts to ignore my rising blood chemistry, I was forced to notice that in fact, they spoke, and to each other. Up close. With words.

My curmudgeonly smirk was rudely dashed from my handsome face, and I sat stunned to see to young people, of opposite gender, speaking is complete sentences sitting across from each other in a public place with the apparent intent of communicating to each other without the emotional parachute of grotesquely abbreviated monosyllabic digital text-speak.

I sat, watched, and finally with brazen disregard to personal release forms and the possibility of being mistaken for a famous paparazzi absconded with this image of them. There they sat, so close they could have checked each other for ticks, osculatorially-exchanged DNA, or simply let the other one know they were experiencing a cascade of pheromone-triggered biochemical responses also known as happiness.

So, there is hope. There is hope that our future generations will speak to each other, will find a way to put down their silicon-based life coaches, and find the pure joy in the immediate vicinity of the opposite gender, and our species will continue to create classical music, literature, art and the occasional offspring capable of non-electrified speech.

And for the record, yes..the are both wearing Chuck Taylor Classic Converse Tennis Shoes..

Mustang

Stretch before you lift...

Well, its been almost a year since I put fingers to keyboard and attempted to present a congent display of graphically pleasing electron-based pixels. So, I decided to just write this as a form of warm-up, to see if I still have the strength to blog.

So much has changed, but I won't bore you with my own perspectives on life, but for one exception.

Twitter

I will admit, I am older. I will admit that technology is outdistancing humanities ability to adapt. I heard the other night at a lecture that there were 1 billion people on the planet in 1830, and in 2008 there were 1 billion teenagers!

Twitter..the current social craze of micro-blogging in a mobile sense, so that any and all might come to know your innermost movements, thoughts, ruminations and near-insubstantial ideas. If you were worried about government attempting to monitor us, in an Orwellian form, we seem to be voluntarily offering up ourselves like so many micro-chipped puppies on the loose.

So, in closing..while you all "tweet"..consider a simple fact..that in 2010 almost 30% of the world's population will be without clean water to drink, that 40% of the world right now does not have access to electricity, and yet..we twitter. Frankly, it is a fine name for such a thing...

Mustang