Working the Program

When my rented modem died on the morning of the Fourth of July, my second response, after the inevitable expression of numerous colorful terms, was to reconcile myself to at least one day without the Ubiquitous Umbilical, as this was a holiday and I didn’t feel inclined to wrestle with a call center’s third string operators.

 

“Oh, dearie me, whatever shall I do?” my Fluttery Old Maid Self bemoaned. My Stoic Self replied, “Suffer for a few days until Qwest gets a replacement to me. Us. Whatever.” So, being stalwart and true as only a crusty old pirate cap’n can be, I girded up for a few days in the Virtual Void. Now seventy-two hours have passed, and more, and I’m ready to swear off, at least as far as being able to log on 24/7. In other words, no more home Internet access for Ye Cap’n, at least for the foreseeable future.

 

“Golly gee whiz, Cap’n,” you ask in your charming if juvenile way. “What brought that on?” While hardware failure was the trigger, I think what was the clincher was the realization that the night before I had spent hours watching crappy movies, culminating in the viewing of “Godzilla vs Mothra” for the unknownth time. I had known for awhile on some level that Netflix, Hulu and other streamers no longer satisfy; the movies you want to watch simply aren’t available (although to be fair to the providers, and according to their own count of my ratings and viewing history, I have apparently watched so many movies and TV series over the years—5000 or so, and those are just the ones I can remember—so there just might not be all that many left). But after one of far too many bleary-eyed evenings in front of the screen, fixed on bad flicks, or just the old “bored and surfing for crap in general” routine, I think my Wise Old Grandma Self finally decided it was time to say, “Haven’t you had enough?”

 

Let’s not fool ourselves, for some of us, the Web can be an addictive thing, not so much for content as availability—kind of like Olde English 800 or Marlboro. In fact, I think it’s become a recognized phenomena in professional circles. So what’s the First Step in battling the Demon Net? The same as with any compulsive behavior: admitting you have a problem.

 

Done.

 

So then I took an inventory. On the “pro-home-access” side, I came up with: a) can watch good movies occasionally, b) can stream TV, too, particularly The Rachel Maddow Show, c) can chat with folks online, many of whom have become good friends, d) can do banking and ordering online from my desktop, e) can do extensive research quickly and conveniently. On the “con” side, however, I came up with concepts which, ironically, included many of the former, to wit: a) watching too many movies, most either total garbage or ones I’d seen before, to the point where the process took up far too much of my time, b) chatting can indeed take up too much time as well, c) too many “flame wars” with trolls and other idiots, d) too much “impulse buying” from Amazon, e) an expense of over $60/month, f) the ability of the NSA and other three-letter abominations, as well as corporate entities, to monitor my shopping and surfing tastes and thus manipulate my behavior–“Hey, since you like Hendrix, we have several posters, t-shirts, toilet bowl brushes…” I could probably go on, but you get the idea.

 

Be assured, there are some things I’ll no doubt miss, including Facebook friends, Hartmann-chat buddies and of course the Rachel Maddow Show, which I will no longer be able to stream; that last one will be particularly difficult. The cons, however, are far outweighed by the pros of Internetlessness, at least for me. On-line banking and mail-ordering, for instance, while not as convenient as before, will still be available enough at cyber cafes to still make the process effective; and if need be, there’s always the phone (which, by the way, also applies to said buddies, if they wish). Also, the results of any research project usually can wait until the next time I can get to Wikipedia; if not, well, I actually have an appreciable library of real books to utilize. And I really think an hour a day, three-four times a week, is plenty of time for social networking; remember, I’m not ending my web-presence as much as limiting it.

 

There’s this to consider, too: with age sixty coming up in a little over a month, I think it’s way past time that I got serious about THE MAGNUM OPUS, especially since I’ve been fooling around with it in one form or another for over thirty-five years. And not having the sweet siren call of the Web ever lurking in the background should aid that effort immensely.

 

Will I ever return? That is not impossible. But for now, the peace and quiet, and the freed-up opportunity to actually do other things I need and want to do, or at least have been neglecting, has made it worthwhile already. Thus it seems fitting that my modem chose Independence Day to resign itself to plastic heaven. Free at last, free at last, thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I’m free at last.

 

So, I’ll see you online…just not so much.

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