Are you being anti-social?
ritaanz
2,665 Posts
Hey Paulie, how come you are not accepting private messages?
ritaanz
2,665 Posts
Comments
My daughter would freak in a very big way if she didn't have not only a TV and a car but also a laptop, an iphone, and, her personal favorite, an ipod.
I grew up on a farm and didn't even have an indoor bathroom until I was 16. (You don't know how cold really is until you've been to an outhouse in the middle of the night, in January.) I was 9 when we first moved there and there was no floor inthe kitchen, just dirt. No water in the house either, except for the well on the back porch. We had to drop a bucket down it to bring up water - very cold water. We got running water in the house when I was about 11 and hot water when I was about 12. We thought we had died and gone to heaven.
For entertainment, we had a TV with 3 channels and, due to the bent antenna on the roof, they all came in snowy! We did sometimes get a kick out of watching the cows graze and sometimes a bird would fly by while we sat on the porch, but mostly, it was swatting mosquitoes for sport that kept us from going bonkers.
When I was a teen, we had a party line. Anybody remember those? All the neighbors knew what was happening to you almost before you did. (There was always a sneaky listener on the line.) These days, we all just spill out everything we're doing 24x7 on Facebook, My Space, Twitter, and Linked In. It's getting so everyone knows what I'm doing almost before I do. Must be deja vu, all over again.
Question(s):
Could you live happily without electronic devices? If so, which ones could you give up? Which ones would you just absolutely have to keep?
Think about it.
Sharon
Lordy, I read that and realized I am officially an old codger.
My friend recently posted her FB status as a complaint about the noisy teenagers next door. Got everyone from high school going on about "get off my yard" and the underage shenanagins of today's youth. It was hysterical!
Thank you, Jo, I will cherish my codgerhood with pride. =D>
Sharon, I do remember party line telephones, that's what we had until I was in my early teens. More than once I remember a neighbor kid being sent around to all the houses on the party line checking to see if somebody had left their phone off the hook, because when one person on the party line did that, nobody could use their phones!
I'm not as connected electronically as most people I know; I don't do Twitter, or have FaceBook or MySpace pages, and I don't even use my home computer all that much because I am on the computer all day here at work so I prefer not to spend much time on it at home. I rarely use my cell phone, I only use my MP3 player when I go to the gym, and while we do watch some t.v., we only watch a small fraction of the 100+ channels in the cable package we pay for. We watch DVDs from time to time, and we play video games occasionally, but I could (and have) lived for great lengths of time without doing either of those things. I have a piano that I haven't played in years so I'm kind of getting back into playing again, and I also like to do other low-tech things like crocheting and sewing from time to time.
There are probably quite a few gadgets I could happily live without, but it's hard to go backward once you get used to having them, so I won't be giving up my cell phone, MP3 player, etc. any time soon!
There are probably quite a few gadgets I could happily live without, but it's hard to go backward once you get used to having them, so I won't be giving up my cell phone, MP3 player, etc. any time soon![/quote]
My mom encouraged me to read by telling me that my older sister had read all the Oz books by the time she was my age. Never one to pass up a challenge, I read them all as well. That got me hooked. From those I moved on to harder stuff like The Little House books, Nancy Drew, The Bobsey Twins and The Hardy Boys mysteries - anything I could get my hands on (even Encyclopedias)! It is sad that so many kids today expect to be entertained rather than finding ways of using their imagination and entertaining themselves.
You can never go back. I now use my iPod in the car and enjoy it on my daily commute (with an adapter that plays through the radio). At least I haven't started listening to talk radio in the car...yet.
Codgers unite! **==
I read a bunch of the Nancy Drew books while growing up, but mostly read what was on my mother's bookshelf. I'll never forget the day she caught me reading [I]A Tree Grows in Brooklyn[/I]. She thought it was too mature for a girl of 14. I reminded her that it was about a girl around that age and, as I recall, I pestered her for weeks until she finally relented and let me read the rest of the story.
Some of my favorite authors are Ayn Rand, Christopher Moore, Tom Robbins, and Margaret Atwood. Maeve Binchey always writes a good story and Dick Francis writes a terrific mystery. John Jakes never disappoints and John Irving has given me some of the best "laugh out louds" I've ever had.
There is a nifty little book written by Ira Levin that is completely different from his other books. It's called [I]This Perfect Day[/I]. It's been out of print for a long time but a used copy can be found on Amazon. You should read it, especially if you're into books about future societies.
The funniest book I ever read is [I]The Horse is Dead[/I] written by Robert Klane. I loaned my copy to someone years ago and never got it back and I still look for it whenever I go into a used bookstore. I can buy a used paperback on Amazon, but am not prepared to pay $125.00 for it. Besides I read it almost 40 years ago and I'd be very disappointed if I paid that much and no longer found it to be funny.
What's the funniest book you've ever read? What is the best booK? Which book has had the most influence on your life? Who is your favorite author?
Sharon
[FONT=Verdana][SIZE=1]I love Dick Francis as well and have many of his books. I will read anything, but I do enjoy a bit of the fantastical in novels - Dean Koontz and Stephen King are some of my favorite authors. I recently read a book by Laurie Notaro called - [I]There's a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell: A Novel of Sewer Pipes, Pageant Queens, and Big Trouble. [/I]It is a truly funny story about a woman who moves with her husband from Phoenix to a small town in Washington state - her attempts to make new friends and how she solves a long time mystery. [/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana][SIZE=1]Books on tape may become my best friend unless I break down and buy some readers
What is this XM you speak of??
Why, codgers do not use satellite radio!!!
Wow, I am going to have to read that book. It sounds like fun just by the title.
Wow, I am going to have to read that book. It sounds like fun just by the title.[/QUOTE]
What a great title! I'm going to have to find that one.
I read just about anything, but my favorite author for years has been Terry Pratchett. Sadly, he was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's a couple of years ago and has stopped writing. I LOVE Christopher Moore and Neil Gaiman, I like Gregory Maguire, some John Updike (I've re-read "Couples" at least once every five years since I first read it in 1972), some Anne Rice, and pretty much all of Stephen King's books, among many others. I've been buying a lot of authors lately who are new or who I've never heard of before and have found some real gems but also some that I just couldn't get into, but that's half the fun of it. I like quite a lot of young adult fiction, but I read the first two "Twilight" novels recently and it was all I could do to get through the second one before I gave up on them. I normally love vampire stories but didn't like her writing very well and kept wishing somebody would just kill off the main female character and get it over with! I'm not really into so-called "chick lit", although there are a few undeniably chick-lit type authors like Jennifer Weiner whose writing I can appreciate. (I don't like "chick flicks" either....my favorite movie I've seen lately was "Watchmen"! Speaking of which, now that I've seen the movie, I want to read the graphic novel.)
I'm one of those readers who will not be going to an electronic medium for reading my books any time soon...I like the feel of books, actually holding them in my hands and turning the pages, even the smell of them. I don't listen to books on tape and you aren't going to catch me buying a Kindle. I guess those things have their places, but I am truly a BOOK lover and not just the stories contained in them. As you can probably guess, I love hanging out in bookstores & libraries!
Why, codgers do not use satellite radio!!!
They do when their 8 track player is broken and they can't find anyone to fix it.
Neil Gaiman is wonderful. His American Gods is fantastic. Also, his Good Omens. I'm reading Terry Pratchett's books on my Kindle. It really is a great little device. I'm very sorry to learn that he won't be writing any more. His books are so very imaginative.
Have you read Jennifer Crusie? If you like Jennifer Weiner, you'd probably like Crusie as well.
Frank,
Anthem is very good. If you haven't read it you should. Compared to sci-fi that was written in later years it's not as great, but when you consider that Rand worte it in the 30's it adds merit.
Have to go for today but will check in tomorrow.
Sharon
Me, too! The bathtub is one of my two favorite places to read and nap.
I am one of those backward folks who has never been on Twitter, but now that you've mentioned that, I may have to check it out!
Twitter is interesting, give it a try. It is a way to follow what people are doing every minute of the day; except my friends (and I) are too old to tweet that much - there just isn't that much to say!
I stopped reading in the tub after an accident with a textbook... who knew that a 6th grade spelling book could cost so much??
Just curious. What's your beef with Ayn Rand? She wrote some very good tales and made quite an impression on a lot of folks in the process.
Sharon
"Atlas Shrugged" was 1,100 pages. A better title might have been "Atlas Couldn't Lift This Book."
Sharon