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COUNTY AGENT GUY

By Staff | Feb 9, 2010

Moore’s Law states that computing power will double roughly every two years. What this means for we, the consumers, is that we can walk into any electronics store, look at all those twinkling new gadgets and truthfully declare, “Buncha junk! Everything here is so yesterday!”

Technology is evolving at a rate that leaves the average human brain little hope of keeping up. And if the average brain has little hope, one such as mine – rapidly aging, shrinking by the minute, suffering from synaptic scattiness – has no chance whatsoever.

Now what were we talking about? Oh, yeah! Technology! Good thing I wrote that down.

The inexorable march of technology has brought us great advances, along with a huge number of intrusions. For instance, pretty much everything nowadays is labeled as “smart” and connects to the Internet.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that even includes such things as vacuum cleaners, which could lead to domestic difficulties:

“Honey? What’s this on the credit card bill? Did you order something from VoluptuousVacuumBags.com?”

It’s not enough for some of us to be continuously connected via cell phone or Blackberry. There are those who also use those so-called “Blue Tooth” ear devices, which makes it appear as if an electronic parasite buried itself deep inside the auricular canal.

Whenever I see someone wearing a Blue Tooth, I think “Wow, looks like he got assimilated into the Borg Collective. Either that or he’s trying to achieve a Vulcan mind meld with the Internet.”

My opinion is that those who go about in public wearing a Blue Tooth aren’t the least bit “cool” and instead are a living illustration of the word “dork.” Besides, walking around and talking to an invisible friend is the bailiwick of the mentally disturbed.

Another technology I have a huge problem with is this thing called “texting.”

I have tried texting and found it cumbersome at best, especially when spelling words such as “Izzy” or “loco” or “foil.” How is it that all the words I’m trying to spell (correctly!) consist of letters that require three button punches apiece? You’d think it would help that I’m all thumbs, but no.

That’s not my biggest issue with texting; I can certainly live without a process that takes 15 minutes to produce 15 words. My bone of contention regarding texting is with people who feel the need to text while someone else is sitting there talking to them!

Could anything be more rude? The texter is basically saying, “It’s been nice chatting, but these tiny squiggles that just randomly popped up on this little electronic screen are much more important than you. I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m now going to ignore you for an indeterminate period of time while I use my thumbs to exchange squiggles with this other person who isn’t even here.”

Thanks to texting and Twittering, we now have a whole slew of new acronyms creeping into our lexicon. Some young people text so much that that have actually handed in English papers that contain texting acronyms!

These youngsters are losing their grip on reality. Such behavior is right up there with having a conversation with an invisible friend.

Many of these acronyms don’t make much sense to us civilians. Here’s a sampling of modern texting acronyms, along with how we farmers might use them.

LOL, or Laughing Out Loud. If a farmer had invented that acronym, it might mean Lots Of Lard, as in “Time to sell that hog. He’s got Lots Of Lard.”

OMG, or Oh My God. A farmer’s wife would use those letters should she happen to espy a raccoon in her sweet corn: “OMG! Outa My Garden!”

BFF or Best Friends Forever. Farmers might use this to refer to a corpulent agriculturalist: “Alfred has really packed it on. He’s turned into quite the Big Fat Farmer.”

GOL or Giggling Out Loud. Also used by farmers to describe someone who is elderly and curmudgeonly. “Floyd has really become a Grumpy Old Lout!”

NBD or No Big Deal. Also utilized to describe a canine who has some behavioral problems: “Ol’ Shep is Not a Bad Dog. He’s just misunderstood.”

IMHO or In My Humble Opinion. A common expression farmers use after an unplanned cattle chasing event: “And then I saw that the cows were headed for the highway, so I ended up chasing them a whole mile In My Hot Overalls!”

WTH or What The Heck. Also shorthand for the act of rehydrating a group of bovines once they are back in their corral: “Them cattle was really thirsty, so I turned on the spigot and Watered The Herd.”

I could go on and on, but you get the picture. But it’s been GR8. CU L8R!

Nelson is a freelance writer from Volga, S.D. Reach him by e-mail at jjpcnels@itctel.com.