May The Text Be With Ewe. I Meant ‘You’

Stanko & Tibor - All Text


Dateline: Somewhere north, dreary, rainy, late December, late afternoon, late for my latte, late with the latest comic. Must text my thoughts before the medication wears off.

To Text Or Not To Text. I’d Say To Text

First off, I haven’t seen the new Star Wars flick yet, but when I do, you can be sure there will be a comic about it. Probably something involving interspecies fondling, I’d reckon. However, until then, not an ounce of text, not a drop of sweat or electronic ink will be expended on the subject. But if Star Wars had used sheep as the actors, I think they would have gone with “May the Force be with Ewe.” Just a random thought from having taken a LOT of sinus medication late.

So often it is the case that we have reduced our lives from speech and complex sentences to this thing we call “text messages.” We are racing for the ultimate in brevity and at the same time, stupidity. It’s remarkable how with the advent of texting, we mobile device-addicted, semi-sentient, 23-chromosomed monkeys have managed to simultaneously make communication more efficient by reducing it to the textual version of grunts, and at the same complicated our lives with all the misspelling and consequent misunderstandings and inadvertent embarrassments that we transmit from device to device.

Silence Is Golden. But Gold’s Value Has Plummeted

In theory all this texting leads to less speaking, thus removing from the world vast amounts of noise pollution, and potentially thwarting the release of CO2 from all the exhaling we do when we speak. In theory, it should lead to more silence and less blathering and bleating.  And as the saying goes, silence is golden. But have you seen the value of gold in the last 6 months? Dropped like a stone. Why, Star Wars movie tickets for opening night had a higher market value.

Can you just imagine how much texting went on by all those hard core fan boys and girls before the official opening night? Real communication, like where people talk to each other? I doubt it. Well, until the movie started and then there must have been millions of people humming the movie theme and simultaneously wetting themselves with joy. Which probably limited some of the texts.

The human need to text, to let one’s thoughts run free through the electronic ether, seems to grow unabated. Those thoughts, about as deep as a thimble, escape virtually unchecked, and more often improperly corrected by the smarter-than-thou auto-correct feature every so called “smart phone” has enabled by default. We get the meaning across sometimes, and other times the word “important” is somehow auto-corrected to “incontinence.”  This does not help out in the world of intercultural business communication.

Steady As She Goes

The outcome of this need to communicate intense brevity – without the use of our voice boxes, and instead replaced by our not terribly dextrous fingers on tiny keyboards – will lead us all to ruin. Why do I say that?

Because by having taught my mother to text (so she doesn’t call us as often to ask if I put the chicken back in the fridge, lest it develop deathly bacteria), we have enabled her to write to us ever more frequently, ever more pointedly, knowing full well that when we hear that “bling” indicating a text has come in, we will rush to the mobile device, only to shake our heads in bewilderment when the words “Just wanted to see how you’re shoeing” appear, and we roll our eyes as our blood pressure spikes.

Happy Holidays.

Steadily unbalanced and virtually yours,

Jean-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Druker

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