Where's the off-ramp for the info superhighway?

At this point, I would settle for a rest stop -- a la Bob's Big Boy on the New Jersey Turnpike. Don't care how long I would have to wait in line for the ladies' room, or to purchase an overpriced cup of coffee that resembles dishwater.

So long as no phones were beeping, ringing or otherwise making sound effects and the place sounded neither like a day-care center or a bar, I'm good. I also prefer no screaming children.

Discipline, parents: use it or lose it. Once it's lost and you've set bad precedent for kids' behavior, you don't have your children anymore; they have you, by the short-hairs. Once upon a time, "children should be seen and not heard" was not considered a form of tap-dancing on your child's developmental self-expression.

Also, note to parents and anyone else who avails themselves of the rest stop. Have you counted the 16-wheeler rigs in the parking lot? Added up how much they pollute the atmosphere, vs. how much I have done in my 5-minute cigarette break? Think about it. Do the math: that is, if lack of nicotine hasn't destroyed your logical and cognitive abilities.

Two weeks back from Mexico, and I would like nothing better than to return to the land where my biggest decisions were a) is it time to swim now? and b)what should we have for dinner. A blessed two weeks sans phone calls, cell rings, and, what could have been sans Internet.

The only reason I used any part of my 30 minutes a day allotment for computer access was to empty out my e-mail box, so I wouldn't come home to 500+ messages that didn't need to be delivered, seeing how quickly the delete key jumped on them. And to show off my knowledge of how to create an @ symbol on a Spanish keyboard. Alt 6-4 -- that's my contribution to the global village.

As for you, the lady with the stroller behind me waiting for the rest-stop ladies' room: no one wants to hear about your errant son or your mother-in-law's latest insult, or the status of your physical/emotional personal life. If you can't use your inside voice well enough, then don't use any voice at all.

Otherwise, your conversations are fair game to all within hearing range. If you won't turn yourself down, vocally, anyone who wants to is free to join your part of the call. Thus is my belated conclusion after overhearing one "my Pap smear was clean" too many on the cross-town bus.

I have also listened too many times to various imbeciles who can't wait to exit the plane before announcing to his/her spouse, "honey, the plane landed." Planes take off; they fly; they touch down. This used to be considered common knowledge. (Granted, the airlines used to be a lot more reliable than thy are now.) Plus, I doubt you'd be able to place a call to say, "honey, the plane crashed."

If the plane has gone down, chances are good so will you. And the cell reception won't be at its strongest in the middle of, say, the Atlantic, or flying over/into the Rocky Mountains.

Just a thought on my part, one I have returned to face in the so-called real world, that vacuous space of TMI. Another note to business execs: if your quarterly numbers are going to suck, do you really want the whole world to know? Should we passers-by be told what company you work for, is it public, and do these numbers mean your stock price will tank?

This is potentially useful info. Perhaps it's also known as insider trading, but that's a slippery slope. If Exec A phones Exec B so that you can overhear him at the departure gate, that little piece of knowledge has lost all its pretenses to confidentiality.

Cell phones and privacy don't mix: hello GPS? Whether you like it or not, it's easier to reach out and track someone than to call someone, or touch someone. Cell tower connections are only one of several devices known to keep track of one's whereabouts.

In the old days, it was ankle monitors for house-arrest prisoners. These days, you don't need to be fingerprinted to have your whereabouts available to any government body that has authorized itself to subpoena your cell number or your bank statements.

That large withdrawal in Brazil will set off bells at your bank. Or, should you require Facebook while abroad, it will ask you a series of questions to ascertain that you have indeed left your laptop at home.

Until last year, my bank never needed to know in advance that I might be taking out money in a foreign country: now, without giving advance warning, I get one swipe and stash of cash from my bank card, and then, if they don't know I'm in, say, even Mexico or Canada, my bank card is dead.

Whatever happened to the notion that ATMs were supposed to make it easier to access money in different countries? My bank, in particular, likes to slap me with currency-exchange fees, not to mention a $3 or higher levy if I use a machine other than one with their logo branded on it, or the fact I never see the currency exchange measurement in use.

Moral of these anecdotes: Bite your tongue. Spare me your life story. Consider that while, artificial intelligence has come a long way, it is still, in the end, artificial.

Meaning, some computer algorithm, minus human input, decided to make you validate your travels to MasterCard and American Express -- what happened to serendipity?

Spontaneous travel works only for those with enough cash not to need to register with the plastic-card people. At this point, it may not work at all should you desire an airplane ticket. No, those people want your name, gender, birthday, and, insult of insult, they want you to type your passport number into their computer.

Really? Big institutions lose track of their data all the time. There is nothing so charming as knowing some Large Company/Organization Inc. has lost your social security number and, oh, we're so sorry to inconvenience you, but you'll have to keep track of any credit fuck-ups we've helped create, much less identity theft.

Why is it that the people responsible for holding on to personal information can't manage to keep track of it, then turn around and ask us to clean up after them?

That is clear evidence of the death of privacy in this century. That's where I try to draw the line, with a heavy ironic note that my scribbles in cyberspace could be considered a breach of privacy for everyone I have written about.

Here, on my blog, I control what you see and how the people in my life are described -- most have pseudonyms, and I am a character in some of these entries. And you know me as Alice, she who lives in Wonderland, aka New York City.

It's my choice to add to information overload; yours is whether to consider whether it is of sufficient interest for you to hang out here, perhaps comment in a way that will move me to write another post, or at least let me know these words are not written all in vain.

Consider what content farms pay for writing -- $25 for 500 words? You've got to be kidding. I may write here for free, but it's on my terms. 500 words on the topic of someone else's choice? Not at those prices. I'm not sure that the minimum wage even matches how little writers are paid.

Or how little they are appreciated: my friends who write books are hustling all over the country to promote them, not necessarily on the publisher's dime; another has learned she's good at Skype book clubs, complete with her own glass of wine.

Anyone who wants someone to read their latest article puts a link to the story on Facebook, hoping some of her 200+ friends will be moved to read it, "share" it, and make it go as viral as a written article can in the video age.

Given the global economy concept and Google's omnipresent search engine waiting its turn in the background, your article could go anywhere -- and probably a machine has translated it into other languages, regardless of nuances lost.

Since the info superhighway grows exponentially, it is almost impossible to find a place on the planet without it. What I need is a driver to find a way for me not to have TMI meltdown.

Difficult, however, for once the Internet has been unleashed, it is hard to stuff it back into a jar.

Losing my calls

Another gray day at home -- feel like I haven't seen the sun in years. keep staying home and nesting, if that's what you want to call it. that would, however, imply that I'm doing all manner of things at home. I'm not. I'm watching taped TV and Netflicks. I'm not reading. I'm not keeping up with my online scrabble games. What am I doing?

Making a transition between what once was and what will eventually be. Stuck in limbo, somewhere. Can barely remember what once was -- did the year of lymphoma take that from me? I assume that if I had really liked what once was that I would remember, I would want to do it again. But if that means financial planning, forget it.

For a time, it was a lovely gig. Then the economy tanked, and I felt like nothing I could do in the way of financial planning would be of any value to anyone, so I retreated from it. And took a long breath -- happy not to need to keep up on every tax law change, the health insurance bill from hell that has fucked me six ways from Sunday, and god knows how it's affected anyone else.

My phone just announced a text message, but I'm at the machine, looking at the time more often than I'd like, simply because it is there. Does it mean anything? Not so much -- only that I need to keep track because I have shrink appointment. and it's going to be by phone.

The sidewalks and corners are treacherous, and I'm not going anywhere outdoors that I don't have to, at least not today.

Tomorrow I'm supposed to do an open house at Spanish school, then go to a party in the Village. One of The Three Sisters called yesterday -- it's going to be a fondue party for reasons I have yet to discover. Apparently it relates to the Chinese new year, though I don't possibly see how. Still, it's The Three Sisters, my oldest friends, and, assuming strangers don't come streaming in the way they did at Xmas, it will be a good place for me to go, to see people who just accept me as I am, whether it's as cancer vic or trust fund kid or brilliant writer who just won't or can't get around to putting words on paper.

Paper? So 20th century. What I can't stand is how my computer has turned into a communications toy, so much that I rarely use it for the real, basic stuff -- the reason I went cyber in the first place: I wrote papers, short stories, essays, a novel...and kept track of all my financial data -- basic spreadsheet 101. And those functions still exist; I do remember the keyboard shortcuts for WordStar, before there were mice, before there was DOS, much less Windows.

There's so much other crap on the machine now that I've succumbed to computer as toy, seduced by the lure of FB, an invention that will end whatever productivity exists in this country.

Yes, folks, I am alive and typing -- but what my mind is trying to say, I don't have a clue.

I may try an exercise, looking at photos of Haiti and seeing what evocative descriptions I can glean from them, what memories they bring up -- and just write it all down, no rereading, but social commentary is okay, since it's all that I didn't know as I sat on the beach at Kyona, all those years.

That whole period of my life -- from Lake Placid to Haiti: that world is gone, gone, gone. And, having failed to plan for middle age, I come to it baffled. I come to it searching for a world that has different values than the one I see around me.

Jobwise, it doesn't seem to matter if you are intelligent. To me, it matters more if you can use the technology and not have it use you in offices or at home or any place on this earth. I suspect one may have to do more than fog a mirror, but it's been 20 years since I've had an office, so I don't know what constitutes good behavior at work. Twenty years ago, I could get jobs based on my brain, without having to pass a piss test.

Then, the piss test bothered me from a privacy angle. Now, there's no privacy left, so as long as I stay away from weed, which has turned into a huge no-no, I could pass the test -- assuming I resisted the temptation to throw the container directly into the face of the person who had requested it.

While I'm on this rant, I've had it with technology: with me, it's strictly need-to-know. These days, I learn as little as possible. Why bother? Nothing sticks except what changes and hence becomes obsolete knowledge as soon as I've memorized any of it.

Plus, I'm still battling my not-so-new "smartphone." It outsmarts me, and there is not much more to be said about it, except that while it may retrieve info accurately, it's not so hot as its alleged primary use: as a telephone. So I may speak to people when I'm not home, however well we got along before we had this whiz-bang opportunity.

I'm losing all my calls these days -- Verizon has yet to fix either phone line, after many conversations and three or four visits from their tech support people, who seem unable to manage to troubleshoot calls dropping out or getting static-y from landlines. Not sure if Verizon is getting metaphorical or just completely inept.

Honestly, technology consists of boys and their toys. Otherwise, we'd have robo-chef by now, not to mention silent vacuums and dishwashers -- all the things you need to run a household of any size. Clearly cleanliness is not high on the tech-lovers list.

If I were Queen, I would make sure that all the phone lines worked and the cable company could manage more than a day without the need to reboot. And I'd have a driver -- granted, it might be weird to have a driver take me to Costco, but I'd be safe.

Right now I can't do large stores -- the Petco store where we bought cat food for The Consultant's cats struck me as a shop for children's clothes when we first walked in. How to outfit your schnauzer. I'm assuming the margins are bigger on animal clothes than they are on animal food. I don't understand why she just doesn't get stuff delivered: she says, well, my ex was supposed to place an order this week, then makes an excuse for why the ex hasn't done her quasi-wifely duties.

Haven't figured that relationship out -- I know The Consultant is actively hunting on line, and I'm on hiatus from trying to date new people. After The Artist and I went our separate ways, I ran out of emotional space. I wanted simplicity, and I got it. I'm know I'm not in the best mood to be bright and shiny and sexy the way I have to feel if I'm going out on a date.

Bigger question is, what do I want in the way of a relationship, and what kind of mixed signals am I getting from The Consultant, who has made it very clear, and I've agreed, that we're good in bed together and fine for dinner, but no angels are getting their wings.

Except perhaps last weekend, when I took her out for dinner and she deliberately picked a "romantic restaurant," and the whole time we were out, she held my hand, or my arm. This is moving into the PDA world, and I hadn't thought we were there. Still not sure: are we there yet? or are we going anywhere?