OMG and LOL

Dear Miss Kitty,
I met a man a few months ago and we are dating. We are having a great time, however, we live in different cities and don’t see each other as often as we would like. He likes to text and sends me cryptic email. A few weeks ago, we got in an argument and I am sure it had more to do with the communication style he likes, than anything else. I don’t want to be old school, but this texting is awful and I really don’t want to do it. Do you think I am just being old-fashioned here?
Carol, Santa Barbara



Dear Carol,
Talk about lost in translation, no longer do we just keep up with the Jones, we keep up with enough information to make a 1950’s KGB agent want to defect for Club Med on a permanent basis. On the nightstand isn’t the complete works of anyone with a modicum of literary talent but our teckie toys, just in case an “important” email or text message arrives. Our religious devotion to these paragons of progress rivals that of 16th Century French Monks in solemn prayer over a batch of Benedictine!

Being part and parcel of the communication age isn’t doing anything but taking us further and further away from being the social animals we are. That is if we are going continue to evolve. My god, if it isn’t already hard enough to communicate with each other, our language has been slaughtered into OMG, WTF, and LMAO. Great, the original tribal Ugg, after years of evolution has now been reduced (or is back to) Ugg. How far haven’t we come?

Modern life is not really our life of complete choice because most of it is manufactured by others, perhaps more so than any other time in history. People whose job is to keep us glued to their world in their way. If we are conditioned to their world we are also programmed to use the products they sell. This is both a direct sell in the case of an iphone with iapps that somehow you must have, or any one of the millions of ads that stream into our lives every second, promising to make life better and better. It is no wonder that our collective patience has grown as thin as a Swedish pancake?

Darling Carol, Boys and Girls, did you know that Trichinoses is a nasty disease that folks used to get from eating pork? Apparently when an autopsy is performed, the brains of its victims will be perforated by worm holes made by the worm’s pursuit of its food. Are we putting holes into our relationships in the pursuit of “better” communication?

It doesn't have to be that way; some of us can manage to live without the bombardment of this endless invasion of our lives. We can with some effort shrug it away and use the TV, cell phones, Internet as much as we dictate in a way that is appropriate, without sacrificing what is real intimacy.

Try this for one weekend; no activity that involves any outside influence. That means no phones, no Internet and no TV. You might find that an old hobby that you had forgotten, a book that you have been meaning to read, a hike in the hills, or writing a letter (hello a letter!) to someone might be all you need to take back your life and have the time of your life.

Have a naughty day!