If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

I'll set the scene for you:

A 3 bedroom cabin with 7 people and 1 gigantic Labrador. 5 laptop computers, 5 internet browsing smartphones. 1 xbox. 2 TVs.

This is post-Thanksgiving at my house. The family is together for the first time in many months. Are we bonding? Absolutely not. Rather, we're all glued to our respective electronic devices. For a time, I refused to join the crowd. Instead of opening up my laptop and feeding my internet addiction, I flipped through the pages of my wine marketing book. Certainly, I would rather be re-reading Harry Potter or catching up on some Edward Cullen, but I'm trying to be a mature grad student and enhance my mind to get the leg up on the other hundred thousand people that aspire to be wine marketers. Before too long though, I realized that this was too good of a rant opportunity to pass up. And that was good enough of an excuse to fire up the ol' Toshiba. Because really, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, right?

We're not Black Friday people. First of all, after all the wine we had last night, we were not about to pull ourselves out of bed for a bargain. I have no interest in bolting through the aisles to get my hands on the latest trend. I love a sale every bit as much of the next person, but the opportunity cost of fighting crowds of Octomoms looking for a 2 for 1 Pull-My-Finger-Elmo doll is exponentially higher than any sale is worth. My worst nightmare is arm-wrestling Redneck Peggy Sue for Wal Mart's last copy of Ernest Goes to Burning Man Special Edition DVD. Note to my readers: if you ever find me in the situation, please drag me over to the tools department, find the biggest wrench you can, and hit me upside the head to put me out of my misery because I couldn't live with the shame.

I'll further describe the scene to you, clockwise. My father sits immediately to my left with his laptop. This time he's not playing Mavis Bacon, thank God. He's reading about Tiger Woods and his car accident this morning in which alcohol was allegedly not involved. Ok -- seriously? It was 2:25 AM after Thanksgiving, and he crashed into a tree and fire hydrant in front of his own house. Yeah, my bet is that Tiger had been into the sauce. Although, he is part Asian, so maybe we can just blame the horrible driving on his heritage.

My cousin sits to the left of my father, browsing his iTouch, finding the most obnoxious sound the device can make. This is, of course, interrupted by the periodic public display of images of "hot girls in snow" or "hot girls doing the weather report" or "hot girls carving the turkey" or pretty much any image of some scantily clothed skank doing whatever scantily clothed skanks do. He recently took a shower, and I have a few inclinations as to why.

To his left until very recently was my aunt. Her laptop was on her lap, and I can only assume she was deeply immersed in an online crossword puzzle. A quick piece of advice: never, NEVER steal her crossword. Especially if you like all 10 of your fingers.

I just got kicked out of my perfectly warmed prime real estate couch spot because my cousin wants to show my dad a website, that just absolutely had to be shared.

One more couch cushion to the left is my mother, playing some Boggle knockoff on her iPhone, as she receives text messages from my brother who is across the room on his MacBook. His headphones are on, but I can still hear the Daft Punk.

My uncle is in the kitchen doing who knows what on his laptop.

Every time someone even moves toward the remote to switch on the TV, the rest of us cry out in protest. How dare someone interrupt our internet time with something as archaic as a television. Agreeing on a TV program is unheard of.

A few hours ago, someone suggested that we play a game of Rummy Cubes, a pre-internet family favorite. A few of us were down to play, but upon the stipulation that the game waited until we were done doing whatever we were respectively doing on our computers.

2 hours later and we haven't moved.

This is what technology has brought us. This seems to be a recurring theme in this blog.

Oh well, pretty soon someone will decide that it's beer thirty and the river of booze will begin to flow. My brother and cousin, manly men that they are, will pop open their Mike's Hard Lemonades, my father will get into the gin, my mom and aunt will find whatever is left of the Pinot Grigio, and me....well, I think today I'll start with straight tequila. Then we'll all start talking politics, and reminiscing about the time that Grandpa threw the hamburger across the dinner table. Ah, family.

It's 27 days until Christmas eve. By that time, I am quite sure that we will have acquired another 2 or 3 electronic devices to further excuse us from talking to each other.

Happy Thanksgiving. Or should I say...where's my beer?

The de-evolution of modern civilization, and we only have modernity to blame.

Technology will be the death of our civilization.

I love technology, don't get me wrong. I have panic attacks if my cell phone battery dies and I don't have a charger around. I check my email obsessively. DVR literally changed my life. I don't know how people survived pre-internet. I would die without my iPod in my car to match my playlist to my every mood.

But despite my affinity for the above, I still stand that technology will be the downfall of our civilization.

We are so lazy, it's shameful.

Last night, I called my mother to inform her that I had survived a truly horrific final exam. I can only imagine that she was doing one of 3 things when I called:

1. Spider solitaire in her office. The woman is addicted. God forbid should you accidentally clear the high score list, it will get the death stare and a month of dishes and trash duty.

2. Facebook. Yes, my mother has Facebook. And if you post a movie quote or a song lyric as a status update, she will take it literally. No, Mom, I don't REALLY have an anaconda, and trust me, if I did, it wouldn't want none if you got buns, hun.

3. Tetris on the circa 1999 GameBoy that she "bought for my brother" but promptly commandeered it once the novelty wore off and Pokemon became "uncool" upon entering the 8th grade. Her thumbs have carpal tunnel, and don't interrupt her when she's on level 37, even if the house is on fire. Level 37 is more important than 3rd degree burns.

I finished my conversation with my mother and asked to speak with my father, to hassle him about the upcoming football battle between his alma mater and my own. (Go Ags, beat the Hornet!) I can only imagine that my father was doing one of three things:

1. Sitting in his chair, watching American Idol reruns, clippping his toenails, and dumping the clippings in the container where he also stashes the dog toys.

2. Sitting in his chair, watching The Bachelorette, throwing a mangled and saliva ridden stuffed duck across the room as the dog intently stares, waiting for her chance to make a 5 foot retrieve.

3. Sitting in his chair, watching Huntin' with Hank, his computer on his lap, playing Mavis Bacon Teaches Typing. Mavis and my father are BFF, and yet the man has yet to surpass the hunt and peck.

Bottom line, I would bet my life on the fact that my father was sitting in his chair, watching some form of low quality, second rate television.

What appalled me was my mother's response to my request to speak with my father:

"He couldn't find the cordless earlier. Call him on his cell."

Seriously?

Not only was my father unwilling to pry himself from his chair for a slight moment to find a working cordless phone to talk with his firstborn, but my mother was unwilling to walk the 34 feet to the family room to hand him the phone on which she was speaking to me.

This, friends, is what our world has come to.

My parents are both able bodied people with fully functional legs. Still, it was too much effort for either of them to use said legs to get up and find a phone.

I didn't call my father's cell out of protest of this abomination. However, I am quite sure that he would have answered because much like myself, the man can't be more than a foot from his cell or his blackberry, lest should the Queen of England call wanting to refinance Buckingham Palace.

Again, technology will be the death of our civilization. We are going to start devolving as a species.

I estimate that due to email and text messaging that we will lose our ability to speak within the next million years. What's the point of talking, if you can just text what you have to say? The phone call is a thing of the past. It's so 2000. The downside of this text message revolution, however, is the fact that we are all going to have severe thumb problems in about 20 years. Our thumbs were just not built for rapid and repeated button pushing. I recommend right now that anyone going into medicine should seriously consider specializing in hand orthopedics, because thumb reconstruction surgery is going to be highly lucrative within the next two decades.

Thumb surgery is going to be the laser eye surgery of the 2020s.

On the positive side of text messaging, my 83 year old grandfather is getting quite good at it, and I couldn't be prouder. My grandfather could out-text your grandfather. I guess he realized that if he wanted to keep in contact with his grandchildren, he had to get with the times. The technology addiction is spreading like the swine flu from the Gen Y, straight on through to the Gen X, hitting up Baby Boomers, and not stopping until it infects whatever people older than the Boomers are called.

My advice: Do your thumb calisthenics before bed and try to speak aloud for at least one hour daily. Help save the human race.

You can keep your dog in your purse, but don't screw with my candy.

I saw a car inside the grocery store today. It was one of those stupid Eurotrash hippie magnet tin can on wheels Smart Cars. I'm not down with those. They're lamesauce. Hey Smart Car driver, if I sideswipe you with our ski-bum tank of a Suburban, you're going to be freeway debris and I'll drive away without ever feeling the dent.

Who makes these things, Hot Wheels?

Everything is getting smaller these days. Except for those things that are getting bigger of course. But enlargement of things is fodder for another day's rant. (That's what she said?)

I'm OK with the cell phones getting smaller. It leaves more room for gum and mace in my purse.

I'm OK with clothes sizes getting smaller. It gives us something to aspire to. That is, if what you're going for is looking like you're pregnant when all you've done is swallow a meatball . (Ahem, Nicole Ritchie).

I'm OK with the average size of dogs getting smaller. I'm all for purse dogs. They give me something to laugh at, and they're great for practicing kicking field goals.

I'm even OK with cars getting smaller. I'm not going to drive one of those dinky little things, but at least when their douche of a driver takes up two spaces on a busy street, I can rally a few bystanders together, and we can pick the poor thing up and move it to a handicapped spot to guarantee a whopper of a ticket to Liberal Joe, the Smart Car dufus.

Generally, I can deal with the decreasing size of many things. But recently I have been enraged by one particular downsizing. It violates everything that is good in this world. I refer, friends, to...

The Fun Sized Snickers.

Have you noticed how much smaller it has gotten? Not cool, Mars. NOT COOL. The chocolate to nougat to peanut to caramel ratio was perfect as it was. Why would you change something like that? And don't you dare say to combat childhood obesity, because that is a giant load of crap. Children are obese because their parents don't make their whiny little asses eat their broccoli. The size of the Snickers has nothing to do with it. The Fun Sized Snickers are not nearly as fun as they used to be. They should change their name to "Not As Much Fun Sized Snickers." Or to "Extremely Disappointing Snickers." I think I will adopt Almond Joy as my Snickers boycott sponsor. I thought about Milky Way to try and mimic the Snickers flavor compilation minus the nuts, but then after careful research, I found that Milky Way is also Mars owned. The same goes for Twix. 3 Musketeers wasn't even an option. All for one and one for GROSS. 45% less fat, 100% less taste. Then I thought about Baby Ruth, but I just can't bear the image of Bill Murray pulling it out of the pool, taking a whiff, and then taking a giant bite of what appears to be a solid log of human waste. And Pay Days are not widely available, so I just can't chance it. I can only stomach a limited amount of Butterfinger, and it makes a mess which is undesirable when trying to look like a lady while om nom nomming a candy bar. Almond Joy it is. Pure coconut decadence with a side of the essential proteins of a nut.

Speaking of candy, did you know that Nestle owns Jenny Craig? Now that's just hilarious. Again, we find ourselves on the subject of marketing genius. Nestle markets its candy bars, people buy them, eat too many of them, can't fit into their clothes, sign up for Jenny Craig, and again Nestle profits.

Folks, Nestle is profiting on both the weight gain and the weight loss of America. Now that's the way to conquer the business world. Next merger? Smirnoff and Alcoholics Anonymous. Or maybe Marlboro and Nicorette. Or Chiplotle and Chipotl-away. The possibilities are endless.