DigiCOMmenatry V. 1.3.
DigiCOMmentary V. 1.3
by Lynn Walford
Digital Personal Relationglitches©
In this digital age, many of my relationships haven been reduced to terse e-mails that state, “I’m too busy to call you, ” or that famous wireless axiom, “I can’t talk, I’m out of free minutes,” proving that I’m not worth the cost of the communication.
I’ll admit, I’ve used, the “my battery is dying,” excuse with my sister who could talk for an hour without taking a breath. I’m also guilty of identifying my location when my cell phone rings, “Hi, this is Lynn, I’m in the bathroom at Wal-Mart.” But no matter what I do when receiving or sending personal messages in any digital media, it just doesn’t feel right.
Dear John, I Love You :(
In the old days (pre-1990-something) job rejections, test scores, break-up notices, love letters and birthday cards came in the mail. Now, although I’m glad to get a link to an e-greeting card, it seems to take forever to get to the point after ads and silly animations. I haven’t had to e-mail a “Dear John” letter but I did e-mail an implied interest in someone, and never did get a response, which I assume is an implied rejection.
Somehow, I can’t delete the message from that Web SoulMate finder service with the RE: proclaiming, “We guarantee you will fall in love, or your money back...” It’s hard to take e-mail seriously, when love comes with a money back guarantee.
Will You Look at That?
Daily messages telling me how to enlarge my penis (when I don’t have one) have reduced my faith in e-mail communications further. After opening what seemed to be a letter from my friend Jenny and seeing another Jenny with an enlarged penis, I wished photos could never be included in e-mail. My friend, who sent me 83 megabytes of photos of his new-born nephew, had his status reduced greatly, when after I begged him to limit the size of his e-mail dumps, he continued to send stupid jokes (all of which had to be opened in a different program) and enormous JPEGS, including a portrait of semi-nude scarecrows with anatomically correct pumpkin boobs and bootys for Halloween. He felt no qualms about sending a close-up of Janet Jackson's nipple jewelry without a clue of what I would see when it was opened. It took a while for me to figure out what it was because it didn't show a face!
Party in 3 Minutes/Welcome to the Dead Poets Society
Mass e-mailing is the method of choice for news and social events. However, they don’t always give you enough notice. One JAVA-programmer friend sent out a mass e-mail at 5:55 pm for a gathering at a dance club that night. Since I’m wired intravenously to my e-mail client, I could have had time to get to the Sunset Strip in Hollywood but those already on the freeway missed their invitations.
Recently, the greatest numbers of mass e-mails I’ve received are hospital/surgery and death notices. The sysop of a list of existential angst Noir poets e-mailed the details of an old poet’s morbid demise including the hospital location and visiting hours. Members of the poet’s family then pleaded, “Please stop visiting him in the hospital. He would like to rest in peace!”
You Didn’t Get it?
Many people participating in personal or working relationships via e-mail assume that when an e-mail message appears in sent box, that it was received—WRONG. After I installed the latest version of Norton Anti-Virus, two editors and a representative from the Public Relations department at my ISP, informed me that they didn’t receive my e-mail even though it appeared in the sent box. “I didn’t get your e-mail,” is another one of those phrases that are read/heard all too often. Did they delete my messages by accident thinking it was for natural Viagra or did the messages just evaporate?
I could phone my friends on the old fashioned landline, but they are never home. Then comes the quandary, if I leave a landline message, should I try the cell also? If I leave messages on both phones then I look really desparate...
Beam Me Up TechnoHunK
More forms of digital communication are coming with TabletPCs, integrated wireless phones and PocketPCs. I’ve owned a PocketPC for a year and I only beamed a file or contact information twice, once at a PocketPC tradeshow and another to test it. I doubt if I’ll ever beam a TechnoHunk at CES the words, “Would you like to Bluetooth me now?”
Some frustrated digiphobes assert that personal communications are best done in person. However, I’m not ready to give up all digital communication yet. A strange thing happened after my writers group awards ceremony, where I was a presenter. We had to write jokes a few minutes before we gave out the awards. I split infinitives with film and TV writers. Shortly following the event, our president e-mailed me a link to Hallmark.com. Although I had to sit through an ad and a long animation, the original writing in the card is what got me. I was thanked for my gracious, funny work and called a “sparkling star.” It was better than any Hallmark moment I ever experienced---even on digital TV.
More DigiCOMmentaries available at http://www.freelancewriternow.com
by Lynn Walford
Digital Personal Relationglitches©
In this digital age, many of my relationships haven been reduced to terse e-mails that state, “I’m too busy to call you, ” or that famous wireless axiom, “I can’t talk, I’m out of free minutes,” proving that I’m not worth the cost of the communication.
I’ll admit, I’ve used, the “my battery is dying,” excuse with my sister who could talk for an hour without taking a breath. I’m also guilty of identifying my location when my cell phone rings, “Hi, this is Lynn, I’m in the bathroom at Wal-Mart.” But no matter what I do when receiving or sending personal messages in any digital media, it just doesn’t feel right.
Dear John, I Love You :(
In the old days (pre-1990-something) job rejections, test scores, break-up notices, love letters and birthday cards came in the mail. Now, although I’m glad to get a link to an e-greeting card, it seems to take forever to get to the point after ads and silly animations. I haven’t had to e-mail a “Dear John” letter but I did e-mail an implied interest in someone, and never did get a response, which I assume is an implied rejection.
Somehow, I can’t delete the message from that Web SoulMate finder service with the RE: proclaiming, “We guarantee you will fall in love, or your money back...” It’s hard to take e-mail seriously, when love comes with a money back guarantee.
Will You Look at That?
Daily messages telling me how to enlarge my penis (when I don’t have one) have reduced my faith in e-mail communications further. After opening what seemed to be a letter from my friend Jenny and seeing another Jenny with an enlarged penis, I wished photos could never be included in e-mail. My friend, who sent me 83 megabytes of photos of his new-born nephew, had his status reduced greatly, when after I begged him to limit the size of his e-mail dumps, he continued to send stupid jokes (all of which had to be opened in a different program) and enormous JPEGS, including a portrait of semi-nude scarecrows with anatomically correct pumpkin boobs and bootys for Halloween. He felt no qualms about sending a close-up of Janet Jackson's nipple jewelry without a clue of what I would see when it was opened. It took a while for me to figure out what it was because it didn't show a face!
Party in 3 Minutes/Welcome to the Dead Poets Society
Mass e-mailing is the method of choice for news and social events. However, they don’t always give you enough notice. One JAVA-programmer friend sent out a mass e-mail at 5:55 pm for a gathering at a dance club that night. Since I’m wired intravenously to my e-mail client, I could have had time to get to the Sunset Strip in Hollywood but those already on the freeway missed their invitations.
Recently, the greatest numbers of mass e-mails I’ve received are hospital/surgery and death notices. The sysop of a list of existential angst Noir poets e-mailed the details of an old poet’s morbid demise including the hospital location and visiting hours. Members of the poet’s family then pleaded, “Please stop visiting him in the hospital. He would like to rest in peace!”
You Didn’t Get it?
Many people participating in personal or working relationships via e-mail assume that when an e-mail message appears in sent box, that it was received—WRONG. After I installed the latest version of Norton Anti-Virus, two editors and a representative from the Public Relations department at my ISP, informed me that they didn’t receive my e-mail even though it appeared in the sent box. “I didn’t get your e-mail,” is another one of those phrases that are read/heard all too often. Did they delete my messages by accident thinking it was for natural Viagra or did the messages just evaporate?
I could phone my friends on the old fashioned landline, but they are never home. Then comes the quandary, if I leave a landline message, should I try the cell also? If I leave messages on both phones then I look really desparate...
Beam Me Up TechnoHunK
More forms of digital communication are coming with TabletPCs, integrated wireless phones and PocketPCs. I’ve owned a PocketPC for a year and I only beamed a file or contact information twice, once at a PocketPC tradeshow and another to test it. I doubt if I’ll ever beam a TechnoHunk at CES the words, “Would you like to Bluetooth me now?”
Some frustrated digiphobes assert that personal communications are best done in person. However, I’m not ready to give up all digital communication yet. A strange thing happened after my writers group awards ceremony, where I was a presenter. We had to write jokes a few minutes before we gave out the awards. I split infinitives with film and TV writers. Shortly following the event, our president e-mailed me a link to Hallmark.com. Although I had to sit through an ad and a long animation, the original writing in the card is what got me. I was thanked for my gracious, funny work and called a “sparkling star.” It was better than any Hallmark moment I ever experienced---even on digital TV.
More DigiCOMmentaries available at http://www.freelancewriternow.com
