Thursday, January 21, 2010

Zombies & Personal Electronic Instruments.


The force that drives the zombie to bite a human being
is the same force that drives a human being to turn into
a slave to the computer, the cellphone & the other things people
look at & can't stop looking at & checking every two seconds.

The thing about zombies isn't simply that they
need the blood or brains of a human being for sustenance & survival,
or that in obtaining it they create another vampire or zombie,
or so I understand it, but that they are irretrievably self-centered
& occupied with their own internal processes & urges. I.e., zombies
are the rudest things there is.

I finally got a cellphone out of fear I'd be stuck broke down in
my car somewhere at night & not be able to find one of those phone
booths they used to have. I made the mistake of giving people the
number. If they want to call, fine, but they text. I don't text.
If I want to write I'll be making out a grocery list, or working
on a novel, or doing a tenth step. Getting sucked into the realm of
texting, in my opinion, is like getting bitten by a zombie--you
become one yourself.

Texting is bad enough, but somebody checking their cellphone
every four seconds when I'm talking to them in person, that's over.
If somebody can't have a face-to-face conversation with somebody
else for a few minutes without fixatedly checking their cellphone,
then they are a zombie and good-bye instantly to them from now on.
I cannot wait till I get the chance to do that, and it will be
very soon.

Never talk to anybody when they're at their computer, and this includes
me. If you do, if you have to talk to them then, ask them if they can
not stare at their screen for a couple minutes of human being conversation.
They won't be able to do it. Even when I turn sideways to talk to
somebody, I'm still looking at my computer out the corner of my eye,
in case an email comes in or somebody posts to that wonderful thread
about commas, or I lost track of that metaphor that was forming in my
big genius head. Anybody who you try to have a conversation with when
they are in front of their computer is a zombie, or, in my case, part-zombie.

Do not become a zombie. Or do not become any more of a zombie than
you absolutely have to. Unless it is already too late.

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