Assimilated

It's true what they say: resistance is futile. I've always been a late adapter. Sometimes even a non-adapter. My cell phone only makes phone calls. No pictures, no texting, no video, no gps, no internet, no voicemail, no precisely calibrated death ray. Hell, we don't even have a microwave. This usually works out really well for me, because I get to act all smug and superior. Plus I save a lot of money that can then be blown at the thrift store. Or the liquor store.

But sometimes, refusing to adapt to what's become standard in society just makes you a giant pain in the ass. Like when answering machines and call waiting came out and some people wouldn't get either one and you just got an annoying busy signal when you tried to call. Or when plumbing was invented and some stubborn clowns just kept insisting that their outhouses were just as good. That's fine for a while, but eventually people will stop calling because your phone is irritating and stop coming to visit because your backyard stinks.

Until today, I have been resisting Facebook. I have lots of great reasons: privacy issues, their outrageous terms of service, the ridiculousness of 'friending' people you haven't seen since third grade and don't really care about at all and the bizarro pseudo-world that is online social networking.

Like the Dukes of Hazzard and all other good things, my resistance has come to an end. It's a fact of life as a military accessory that friends depart at dizzying speed. PCS season is here and every day there is another friend being packed out by a kimchi-swilling, sidewalk-hogging moving crew. And snail mail, telephones, even email are part of a lost world; a civilization gone with the wind. But they are all on Facebook, and now I am too.

Somewhere, the Queen is pleased.