Facebook And My Private War Against Cable

This is an article that argues that those who refuse to join Facebook are being snooty and refusing to adapt to the future. In December a friend of the family died who had never had either a cell phone, an answering machine, and indeed had only rotary phones in his house. He did not miss them.

So it is with Facebook. Of late many friends and family have implored me to get on Facebook. I have explained that my net prescence is such that anyone can find me by googling my name (if they know it). Moreover, when first asked to join by an over 40 news gatherer I replied "Should I get pierced and acquire a tattoo as well?" Facebook and its accolytes strike me as creepy. Like the Invasion of the Body Snatcher's pod people it is not just that they want to do it but that they insist you do it to. I also am not one who needs old acquaintences popping up unnanounced.

Which leads me to the JJV family's private war against cable. Years ago the cable man came to Greenwich during the dinner hour. My mother was so offended by this (and T.V you had to pay for) that she swore she would never get cable. And we never did.

I adopted this family prejudice and also never got cable. The 70's dissapeared. The 80's came and went. The Bush administration passed. The first Clinton administration was in the rearview mirror. My mother relented and got cable. Years later, for what I thought would be a brief time, I moved in with a friend on the Hill. A man unlikely to deny himself trendy pleasures he inexplicably had cable! (Apparently many people in the voluptuary environs of the midwest where he grew up had cable before it was trendy).

On Saturday mornings, sometimes hungover, I would watch the Cajun Chef, which is very soothing. Medicinal, you might say. There were 24 hour news shows. ESPN beckoned with late night polo matches and and excitable Europeans yelling Gooooooaaaaalllll!!! once during a confusing and boring game of some kind. D.C. did not allow comedy central but there were also always movies on, particulary Ted Turners AMC for which he will be pardoned all sins when he dies. I have never lived without cable since. After twenty years my private war against cable ended.

If Facebook is still around in 20 years, and circumstances conspire against me, perhaps I will again relent. But I will go down fighting. Facebook, non pasan.


Update: The comments will inform you I confused AMC (commercials) with TCM(no commercials). I differ with the blog master on Turner's eternal punishment for colorization given that he desisted in the face of Jimmy Stewart, Katherine Hepburn and a number of classic hollywood types (I believe Maureen O'Hara testified that John Wayne would have had him shot). Here is a statement on what happened on the issue: http://www.bellaonline.com/ArticlesP/art39913.asp