For the past many years, I’ve selected books to read by one of two ways: Either it’s a book by someone whose writing I already know I like, or it’s a recommendation from someone whose opinion I trust.  Well I did something different recently, and there were mixed results.  While on the phone with the now-married Mike Honcho, we started talking about which books by author Christopher Moore we had not yet read.  After a minute, I pulled up his listings on Amazon and found a couple.  At the bottom of that page, Amazon made some recommendations for me based on the purchases of other people who had viewed that same page.  One in particular stood out for some reason.  Oh yeah, I remember why: it’s called Rampaging Fuckers of Everything on the Crazy Shitting Planet of the Vomit Atmosphere.  Intrigued (because honestly, who wouldn’t be?), I read the description and found myself laughing out loud at the synopses of the three novellas that comprise the book.  “What the hell?” I thought, and I ordered it for my Amazon Kindle.  (I specifically ordered it for the Kindle not just to get it right away, but because I didn’t think I’d want to have that title visible on a bookshelf in our house.)

So I read Rampaging Fuckers… and thought it was ok.  It’s over-the-top and absurd as hell (which I knew going into it), and I’d say I truly enjoyed a grand total of about 50% of the content.  The second story in particular (which is a kind of disgusting twist on the movie “Innerspace”) was my favorite of the three, even though its synopsis originally interested me the least.  In any case, all of this is prologue to a line I read and enjoyed in this book: “Kids today, they can’t even read unless it’s spelled wrong on a phone.”  It’s rare for me to put a book down in order to jot down a line that I like, but that’s what I did.  Well technically, I put down my book-storing mini computer in order to send an email from my phone to myself about a line that I liked, but that’s essentially the same thing.  Despite that last sentence that I wrote, I don’t consider myself to be a part of that “mass instantaneous information” group.  Sure, I send text messages to friends, but never in the “C U L8R” style.  And I’m in my 30s, so I had a nice chunk of life before people tried fitting everything in 140 characters or less. 

All that said, it’s hard to escape what communication has become to our society.  This was made abundantly clear to me a couple of days ago.  My friends Jon and Erin stopped by on Saturday to meet our new children, and they very sweetly brought over some adorable outfits as gifts.  The next day, my lovely wife put a thank you note out on the table for me to write, which I did right away.  About half an hour later, I was sitting on the couch when Jon came to mind for some other reason.  Immediately I thought, “Hey, I wonder if he got my thank you note yet.”  I’m apparently so used to emails and text messages being composed, sent, and received within a matter of seconds that it was a foreign concept to me that I would actually have to (gasp) wait for something to be picked up, mailed, and delivered.  “Oh no,” I thought, “Am I really one of them and didn’t know it?”  Dismayed, I shook my head and went back to the Scrabble-type game I was playing on my iPod touch with my friend Lisa.  Yes, it’s another form of instant technology, but at least it’s still a place in which ”LOL” isn’t a real word.