Letters, actual mail? Like with envelopes and stamps and stuff? That’s so twentieth century. I don’t write letters any more and no one writes to me, really (yes, I see the causal link there), but I remember how nice it was to open my post-office box at college and see letters. Do any of us get that same little bubbly feeling from an email inbox? Methinks not.

But I’m not going to wax nostalgic in this post. Reading Arnebya’s post made me think about why–despite annoying ads and strange video clips of cats and squirrels and the pesky and constant changes that facebook keeps imposing–I can’t quit facebook or twitter (I tried to quit last year. And it totally worked.  For like an entire hour I was tweet-free).

Here’s the thing: my job demands a lot of computer time. I write, I answer student emails, I put together lecture notes. I’m old enough to remember doing these things without a computer — when I taught high school, back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth, I was still using a DITTO MACHINE.  Brief pause here while those of you of a certain age remember the giddy inhaling of freshly dittoed worksheets.

Anyway. I spend a lot of time starting into the computer under the best of circumstances but since we’ve moved, my screen time has become something akin to an addiction. (And right there is why I don’t let my children read my blog. I spend too much time yapping at them about their own screen time to let them know about my own sickness.)

I have days where I look at the “likes” that other bloggers have on Facebook and wonder how they got so many thousands of people when I can’t even crack a second hundred; or why I too don’t have entire herds of twitter followers; or parsing the analytics on my blog like some kind of twenty-first century soothsayer, hoping that somehow overnight I’ve turned into The Bloggess. I wonder about “monetizing” and “branding” and syndication.

Yes. That would be a lesser-known use of social media: social media as self-flagellating device. How to make yourself feel bad in three easy clicks.

Sigh.

But then I realized the real reason I loves me some social media, and it goes even further back in time, earlier than the use of the ditto machine.

Yep, that’s right: “Romper, bomper, stomper boo. Tell me, tell me, tell me, do. Magic Mirror, tell me today, have all my friends had fun at play?”

That mirror she’s gazing into? That’s social media for me, over here in this half of the world. I look through my little facebook mirror and wait to see what’s happening in the world. Sometimes it’s as if I’m seeing things like those time-lapse photographs from space of the sun moving across the surface of the earth: I see the East Coast talking about their morning routines while the West Coast talks about their after-dinner drinks; the news rumbles in from points in the Mideast while the US sleeps; my brother in LA is going to the gym before work while my sister in NJ picks up her daughter after school. And my magic tweeting mirror offers the paradox of feeling utterly involved in the immediacy of people’s lives, even though I’m nowhere nearby.

There you have it. Social media may not be doing much for me professionally but I am no more capable of putting down my magic mirror of facetwitter than I am of putting my hair in that magnificent, Marie Antoinette-esque beehive.

(Of course, if you’d like to like Mannahattamamma on facebook, I’d be delighted to have you. Romper, bomper, stomper boo…)

You know what I learned? My life is a mess. I am, apparently, overweight, single, and broke. I’m in dire need of a credit line and unless I score on eHarmony, ain’t no Valentine’s Day gifts coming my way unless I order them for myself.  I’ve spared you the ads for penis implants, viagra, and hot Asian chicks (which I assume is not a reference to some kind of esoteric soup with claws in it).

I wonder to myself. Is this what the digital revolution was all about?  Billions of bytes about peckers and creditors, hoochies and hotties, fat and pharma?

No one looked twice at the bus and you know, why would we? It’s as if we’re immune to the daily onslaught of violent imagery, the splatterfest of “franchise movies” and video games, the endless unspooling of horrifying images from around the world as people try to blow up or otherwise decimate their fellow humans.

And I know, I know, there’s no causal link between video violence and real-life violence, or so say the experts who study this sort of thing.

But still. Still. The word justified, sprawled across the figure of a man clenching really big guns in either hand?

I suppose Wayne LaPierre would say that we need more ‘Muricans like the guy in this picture, double-fisting our weaponry to the mall, the bar, the school, hell, even to church. Never can tell when some choir member might go all blamblamblam on your praying self.

Yeah. Blamblamblam.

Justified.

The talk was sponsored by the Sheikha Salama Bint Hamdan Al Nayhan Foundation, which promotes education and the arts in the Emirates, particularly for girls and women.  Most of their events (perhaps even all their events) have evening sessions and sessions during the day, which are just for ladies.  I went during the ladies-only session and am still digesting its dynamics: the mostly abaya-wearing audience listening to these three digital dudes (none of whom I think was wearing a tie), who were all with the irony and the insider jokes about US culture, as well as advice about the power – both present and future – of social media. Even with all the complex contexts swirling around, the ideas these guys were talking about were fascinating, and it’s worth finding the hashtag #muntada to see what people had to say about the talks.

But. This post is not about how women in the UAE hold the keys to social media power in their well-manicured hands.

This is about the Chinatown bus. One of the Big Guns told a story about a friend who planned to do a lot of work on his laptop while he rode one of the (in)famously cheap busses that leave from New York’s Chinatown and run to Boston or DC.  He got on the bus and realized he’d forgotten his flash drive, which made him think that there had to be a better way to share files and documents between computers.

Maybe you’ve heard of Dropbox?

So I tweet this

A little later in the day, I find out that my tweet has been retweeted, which is always flattering, I guess. Or sort of. Or maybe, upon reflection, not at all, at least in this instance:

Yep. I’ve retweeted by Chinatown Busses.

Who knew busses could read, A; and B, when Alexis Ohanian said that the world isn’t as flat as Thomas Friedman said it was, but that the world wide web is, I’m not sure this is the sort of thing he had in mind.

I mean, what’s next? Being favorited by John Deere?

Stasha’s list this week reminds us that A) It’s the 50th anniversary of James Bond; and B) in the United States on Monday it was Veteran’s Day. I’ll remind you that in the UK (and Canada and maybe also Australia) it’s “Remembrance Day,” which is sort of like the US Memorial Day, as near as I can tell. Caleb’s grade sang “A Long Way to Tipperary,” which you know? There aren’t many Tipperary references in New York public schools, which is a shame. I love that song.

So everyone is remembering soldiers and war rages pretty much all around us, to greater or lesser degree, and god only knows what’s going to happen. Sometimes it really seems like the world is going to hell in a handbag, as my friend Chris likes to say.

The world needs a new superhero, clearly; I’m not sure that Mr Bond, even in all his Daniel Craig-ness, can save us.  But Stasha says to make a list of Bond things, and I have to confess: I don’t know much about Bond.

So instead of Bond, I give you a list about mom, your mom…and the Bondish gadgets that M, or J, or Q, or some other letter of the alphabet should invent, post-haste.

1. Saran Wrestler: This tool tames the recalcitrant plastic wrap that clings to everything, everything but the sandwiches being slapped together at 630AM for school lunchboxes.

2. Water Pellets: These pellets can be carried in a purse, bag, or pocket without being damaged, but when dropped into a receptacle and mixed with just the teensiest drop of parental spit, immediately liquify in order to satisfy the OMIGODIMDYING shrieks of the soccer players in the back seat of …

3. The Car. This supersonic vehicle plays a key role in the world-saving (or at least world shlepping) activities of momyourmom. It has been customized to suit her needs in several ways. The interior has been rendered impervious to melted chocolate, grass stains, cleats, farts, pretzel crumbs, ice cream drips, and blood. And, secondly:

4.  Sibviders: These transparent plexiglass dividers can be deployed to drop from the car ceiling and slide between squabbling children, effectively enclosing each child in a sound-proof, poke-proof box (with air holes).  A similar divider can be deployed between the driver and the passengers.

5. EnterTainAPen: This elegant ballpoint can, with a flick of a button, transform into a crayon-loaded cartridge, which is used in conjunction with–

6. ElastiPad.  Not to be confused with an iPad, which is bulky, or an iPhone, which is very small (particularly for toddler-sized fingers), the ElastiPad has a surface similar to a white board, but can be expanded or collapsed according to need; it provides the perfect drawing surface for the EnterTainAPen and can be utilized for line-waiting, traffic-jamming, doctor’s waiting room fiddling.

7. SibJitsu Training: An intensive immersion course that can be mastered by putting the instructional DVD under your pillow one night. A SibJitsu Sensei Master can, with one smooth rhetorical move and some fancy footwork, broker a lasting peace in the “didnotdidtodidnot” wars.

8. Tote Bag of Silence: A fashionable satchel that can be stretched into a soundproof bubble within which one can make and receive phone calls, texts, and emails in peace and quiet, during children’s sporting events, school fairs, and even high school dances.

9. Laundry Lenses: These x-ray glasses can be worn by whomever is doing the laundry in order to see if the pockets of dirty clothes contain gum, candy, crayons, ink pens, rocks, wads of paper, stickers, blue-tac, live animals, or Important Notes from Teachers.

10. AutoFind:  A small hand-held radar device that detects the whereabouts of homework, shoes, socks, soccer uniforms, the red five-pronged Lego piece that completes the 1027 piece ship, sheet music for the piano lesson in five minutes, glasses, hat, keys, lunchbox, sandwich from three weeks ago that has started to breed under the couch.

photo of Desmond Llewelyn & Bond gear source