Tweet dreams

Posted by A.

There was a time during the 1990s when I was seriously addicted to Tetris. I played it so much and so often that my dreams became consumed with falling shapes fitting or not fitting into holes.

And during my final semester of college, I  spent so much time reading, in order to prepare for exams, that my dreams were filled with pages of text. For one straight week I dreamt in the written word, instead of images.

Well, last night, I experienced a completely new experience. I had a social networking dream that equaled the stereotypical dream where you’re running from something, but you feel like your stuck in molasses. I was desperately trying to post a tweet, but something was trying to prevent my fingers from pushing the buttons on my Blackberry keypad to get my message across. I woke up in a cold sweat with a cramped hand and not even a twitpic to show for it.

SMADHD

Posted by S.

You may be thinking, what is SMADHD? Break it down for me. Smad-hud?

Nope.

She’s Mad At Dad in Hi Def?

Wrong.

OK, OK, it stands for: Social Media Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and I believe that’s my affliction.

Too much Twitter. Too much Facebook. Too much networking, trying to communicate in the ether with social media mavens with followings five times as large as mine. Trying to get noticed. Trying to spread the word. It’s too much! When will it end??

But I can’t stop. I think I’m addicted. I like looking at the bit.ly stats of the links I send out. I like checking my Klout report to gauge my influence on Twitter. I love meeting new tweeps! I love getting new Facebook fans! It’s like an alternative reality that I have a little bit of power to control.

The funny thing is, I am not alone. There are many out there who suffer from SMADHD, but they have no way to diagnose their symptoms. So, I invented this acronym to describe the problem.

The only real treatment is to log off. Break loose. Take a breather. Maybe go to a desert island with no Internet and no cell phone reception. We as a society are already walking around plugged in to our hand-held devices for a majority of our waking hours. Our screen time is longer than our face time. What will be the implications? The floor is open.

Web 3.0

Posted by S.

Change is afoot. We are gradually heading into a media-centric society. Though we are well into the information age and the digital age, we have not yet transformed completely into dutiful robots, tuned in only to our hand-held devices.

Chang is a-coming, however. Watch for social networking feeds and status updates to appear in Google searches. Watch for changes in the way Facebook and Twitter are used. Watch out to not lose yourself in the midst of the uploading, downloading, posting, updating and texting. There may be more to life than pixels. Maybe. Maybe not.

It could be the revolution we’ve all been waiting for.

The joy of napping

Posted by A.

I am not a morning person (Fortunately, I am a coffee person).

I used to be a night person. But I’m not really one of those anymore either.

I’m generally pretty sleepy in the afternoons, especially after lunch. I think about napping on a fairly consistent basis throughout the day.

I might be turning into a house cat.

Something’s amiss

Posted by S.

Strange things are happening. Something is in the air. Hubby woke up at 6 a.m. and announced: “Let’s get up.” He made lunch at 10 a.m. He handed out our after-dinner vitamins at 4 p.m.

I know that our internal clocks are off a bit due to the daylight savings time switch two weeks ago. But this is a little worrisome. Perhaps tomorrow we will go to bed at 3 p.m. and wake up at 1 a.m. for dinner.

With this schedule, it seems anything is possible.

The new lexicon

Posted by S.

I get into a conversation more often than I’d like about our changing language.

There was a local NPR talk show discussing the loss of languages in our world. Apparently  half of the 700 world languages are standing on the brink of extinction. But there’s no mention here on the sprouting languages that are replacing ancient tongues.

For instance, look at the title of this blog: BTW, WTF. It’s symbolic of our changing language. Teachers, parents, elders complain about the youth not being able to form a complete sentence. But in the modern world of texting, Facebooking and Tweeting, where brevity is king, language is being condensed, abbreviated, implied and omitted.

If you look at Hebrew, you will notice its absence of vowels. Sure, there are vowel dots on some texts, but true Hebrew is written in a condensed form where the vowels are implied. In Braille, also, the code for contracted Braille omits letters and vowels. A single symbol can stand for an entire word. This may be a moot point, in that we are still using these language families to construct true sentences, with a subject, a verb and a predicate. But perhaps we are failing to understand the hidden nuances in the modern language that is rapidly being developed before our eyes, actually on our LCD and touch screens.

What does “LOL” or “BTW” or “snd me txt” leave out? The message is clearly there. We are still communicating and gleaning meaning from these language codes. Of course, Shaw and Shakespeare would wonder what we were saying, but as long as we know what’s going on we can save our fellow human from being eaten by a mastadon.

It’s people!

Posted by A.

Halloween has come and gone. Thanksgiving is around the corner. Soon it will be New Year’s Eve, then boom: 2010.

Is it just me, or is time moving faster and faster the older we get? There was a point in my life that 2010 sounded like a futuristic date straight out of a sci-fi film, a date when society would be so over crowded we would be forced to eat dead people in the form of green Triscuits or a date when robots would rule the world. But here we are, and 2010 isn’t a sci-fi plot device — 2010 is next year, two months from now.

Some days seem to take forever. I sit watching and waiting for the numbers in the bottom right hand corner of my computer screen to change. It seems like they never do. Yet, the last year flew by in an instant.

The holidays may be markers of the year past, but  even those are quickly fading into oblivion. There’s nothing futuristic about them at all.

Religious tolerance

Posted by A.

I feel like a large portion of my teenage and young adult years centered on defending my beliefs, or lack thereof. I have reached a point where I am not only comfortable with what I do not believe, I’m also comfortable with what others do believe … until, of course, it crosses the line into proselytizing, hypocrisy or fundamentalism (but that’s a whole other blog subject).

I have met a lot of deeply religious people of many different faiths who are the kindest, most generous and loving people I have come to know. But, I will never understand their beliefs or share them. It’s simply not who I am. I am still, I hope, a kind, generous and loving person.

I was fairly young, about 5 or 6, when I strayed from the path of religion. There wasn’t a particular incident that set me on this path. It was more just a moment of clarity. I became an observer with a critical eye, and started to see my own religion, Judaism, and many other things, from the outside looking in.

The outside looking in isn’t typically the most exciting or popular place to be. It’s actually downright lonely and overwhelmingly quiet. But it is the place I was meant to be. It made me who I am.

In high school I wrote an editorial for the school paper about my support for the separation of church and state. After the article ran, someone shoe polished my car with some not-so-flattering comments. At 16, I already felt awkward, different and ostracized. This only succeeded in driving those feelings deeper.

That same year, I left the school choir and lost many friends because I wasn’t comfortable singing songs that blatantly preached about Jesus. I didn’t think school was the time or place for that. The choir teacher disagreed loudly, and the Clark County school board backed her up.

As a result of such experiences, there were times I had deep disdain towards religion.

I also had positive experiences with religion. I grew up in a Jewish household, attended Hebrew school and later worked at a Jewish newspaper, where I had the opportunity to visit Israel. I felt amazingly at peace in Israel, even during a time of war.

I think it surprised no one more than me when I started working at the Jewish Bulletin. A lot of my friends and family, meanwhile, found it strange that I so became so enamored with covering hate crimes. But for me, meeting other victims of religious intolerance was a cathartic experience. It also taught me that I was channeling my own form of religious intolerance. It taught me about acceptance and even a little bit of appreciation.

Religion is a topic that ignites rage, passion, fear and fury in even the most mild mannered people. It has certainly done so in me at different points in my life. I’m sure it will again. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Dialogue is healthy.

There are people, religious and non religious, with wonderful things to offer. It would be a shame to discard any one of them just because their views are different.

Religion trumps art

Posted by S.

Not to be a party pooper, but I think to drive traffic one should just talk about religion. I have experienced unprecedented traffic on my blog due to one post in particular talking about religion. It’s strange. Weird. I dont’ understand it. I find art more interesting, mostly. Religion is just a filler.

So, here’s a survey:

My husband the outlaw

Posted by A.

The police showed up while my husband was painting a commissioned mural yesterday as part of a beautification project. As he writes in his own blog, one of the store owners called the cops and told them he was a tagger. Clearly he is not — he’s been painting utility boxes and more in the shopping center for the past few years. The police were totally cool about it and cool with him, but the store owner was still cranky and filed a report. So my husband is holding off on finishing the mural until the police iron out all the details/legalities. I imagine it must drive my husband crazy to know he has this unfinished piece just sitting there. What’s even crazier is that this store owner would make a fuss about art. Apparently some people prefer a life without color.

*Update: The police found that the wall is legally public domain, so he can start painting again!