Cyber-Loafing Monday Blues

So I was hanging out on Cyber-Loafing Monday, you know, just loafing.  In cyberspace.  It’s not like the old days when we loafed on weekends in the back yard, in our swimsuits with the sprinklers on.   

Now, we do our idling of time surreptitiously, under the cloak of a business suit and a laptop, in the cloud.  If you have your computer facing the right direction, you can fool a lot of people into believing you’re working on what - the “Jones report”?  Right.  But not to worry.  They’re probably loafing too. 

Evidently enough folks arrived at work last Monday, got their coffee, logged on, and went directly to wasting time, that researchers detected a surge in web surfing, a disturbance in the force, as it were.  (I wonder if they said, “Surf’s up!”)   

This weakness in our work ethic is attributed to sleep deprivation brought on by the spring-ahead impact of Daylight Savings Time.  But before we get too down on ourselves, let’s think about this.  First of all, who are these “researchers”?  Who documents all those clicks of mice?  Mark Zuckerberg?  I wouldn’t put it past him.  And let me just say, that those who are doing this kind of tracking of slackers are no better than those whom they impugn!  Me hopes I doth not protest too much. 

Honestly, which spy nerds in what dark room are charged with noting that each year, the Monday after implementation of Daylight Savings Time, we exert more effort surfing the web than engaging in the work we’re paid for?  One could argue that that monitoring itself constitutes cyber-loafing in its purest form.  

These phenomenon geeks go on to tell us what we already know but won’t confess - that the bulk of our furtive frivolity is frittered away on entertainment sites!  Translated:  We’re catching up on celebrity gossip!  

Only to prove my point, and for the credibility of this writing, I took a few moments this morning to explore the trend, for my readers’ sake.  Here you have it: TMZ reports that Jermaine Jones is off “Idol” for concealing his criminal record; Charlize Theron has adopted a baby boy; Oliver Stone, Chuck Norris, and Snoop Dog are all supporting Republican candidates; and a poll reveals that Americans think the top three most overpaid in their fields are Kim Kardashian, LeBron James, and Snooki.  And their fields would be reality TV, professional basketball, and vacuous immaturity. 

OMG.  That is a waste of time. 

Anyway, it’s great to have Cyber Loafing Monday formally anointed.  Now we can mark our calendars and do it again next year!  It may not be baseball, but it’s a pastime. 

Since the practice of naming new habits and linking them to days of the week is open for the entrepreneur, I have some suggestions for the remaining weekdays that may resonate with the desperately deskbound:  How about “Angry Birds Tuesday”?  Come on!  You know who you are! 

“Solitaire Wednesday”?  “Talk like a Thug Thursday.”  (Am I trying too hard?)  OK – “Fandango Friday”!  It’s prep for “Cinema Saturday.”  

And thanks to the World Wide Web, whenever we’re in search of a reason to celebrate we need go no further than the special days-of-the-month calendar available online.  This much-needed resource offers an array of parties-in-the-making seeking dedicated party planners and causes awaiting their champions.  

For example we just missed a salute to hiking gear: March 14^th - International Fanny Pack Day.   

My sentimental side speculates that a sweet and tolerant husband somewhere memorialized March 31^st as "National She's Funny That Way" Day.  

Making the most of these newfound tools, I’m trying to envision a way to celebrate Elvis’s birthday, January 8^th, in conjunction with April 11th - "International Louie Louie Day."  On second thought, it’s probably best not to envision such a thing. 

Respecting the value of global relations, April 26^th commemorates “Hug an Australian Day.”  Appropriate to our traditional income tax deadline we find that April 15^th also marks “Take a Wild Guess Day.”  And, in the realm of public service announcements: April 24th – “National Hairball Awareness Day,” a venerated occasion in the Plath household.  

At last.  I’ve got it!  Here it is:  The pushback from Cyber-Loafing Monday:  “Get a Geek into the Sunlight Sunday.” 

Mark your calendar.  It’s got legs.

Is Time Running Out for the Beautiful People?

Here’s the beginning of our ignominious end - NBC News anchor Brian Williams teased viewers this week with the headline of an ominous lead story coming up on the nightly news:  certain hip replacements are failing and will have to come out. 

Easy for him to say.  Seems thousands of bionic men and women now face the daunting prospect of enduring a double surgical procedure to remove and replace their…replacements. 

So what’s next for Jane Fonda and all the rest of us boomers who’ve succumbed to deteriorating joints and metal-on-metal replacements for our ailing bones?  Jane’s a perfect representative of the post-boom phenomenon.  She’s had knee and hip replacement along with back surgery.  She’s 72, healthy, and looking great.  But that may be more aptly attributed to her cosmetic surgery.  She’s owned up to having the bags under her eyes deflated.  

What if all manner of high-tech enhancements developed and implanted over decades of the boomers’ era turn out to have a shelf life, as it were?  What if it’s not just Jane Fonda’s hip and knee replacements that will need recycling?  What about her baggy eyes? 

More than a few folks have had similar elective procedures.  Sure they’re non-essential and totally vain.  But are they susceptible to the ticking clock, too?  Are we approaching the Y2K of the self-conscious aging elite? 

If we don’t get this under control, we could wake up to the luddites’ nightmare:  All our technology turns on us, rebelling in the most unfortunate and unattractive ways. 

Remember Eddie Murphy in the remake of “The Nutty Professor”?  He had what we all want – a magic elixir – one sip and voila!  Thin!  Sexy!  Funny!  But of course, no Fountain of Fitness can exist in the real world. 

Murphy’s Professor Clump, as his newly svelte alter ego Buddy Love, seized the opportunity to pursue the girl of his dreams, the one his flabby, unfortunate self could not hope to impress.  But alas, in a crucial, public moment, just like Jane’s time-sensitive hip, Buddy’s potion breaks down.  Before our eyes, the professor bulges back to his prodigious former self, body part by gelatinous body part. 

Given the impending expiration of our man-made yet mortal appendages and restitutions, we could find ourselves in the same discomfiting circumstance. 

What if nose jobs expired, for example?  Right in the middle of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” Kim’s pretty proboscis might just revert to its original, lumpy form.  A whole new kind of reality could present itself if the Plastic Surgeons of America sent a recall notice for the scaffolding underpinning Bruce Jenner's face work.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Imagine all the serene conversations in Hollywood bistros and suburban country clubs when, out of nowhere, a timer goes off and dozens of lifted foreheads advance to their rightful, age-appropriate positions, coming to rest somewhere in the neighborhood of one’s delicately plucked eyebrows.  In Washington, Nancy Pelosi would blink, giving Republicans in Congress false hope of victory. 

Why, those eyebrows themselves would travel into real estate appropriated by tacked-wide-open eyes, creating uninvited squints even in the shade of Carrera sunglasses. 

What if Botox … oh, never mind.  It does expire.  We know already that.  The wax melts and you’ve gotta keep getting shot up if you want to maintain that expressionless guise of indifference. 

Otherwise, Joan Rivers might disappear altogether. 

Hair transplants!  That would be hilarious!  What if those perfect plugs just unplugged, on cue, like so many spontaneous champagne corks, no matter where the “plug-ee” might find himself?  Like an electrified porcupine coming undone on the fairway, or the boardroom!   

In an apocalyptic scenario, voluptuous lips would shrink back to their original, severe Frau Bluchers.  Silicon breasts would collapse leaving folds of skin and yards of unfilled fabric limp in their wake.  All those pinned-back ears would once again flap free. 

Reminiscent of the cages being flung open at the zoo, all God’s creatures would run in gleeful abandon, returning to their natural states. OK, maybe not gleeful. 

I decline to reveal where I might wind up in such a scenario.  Parts of me could be susceptible to the fall of the empire, shall we say?  But which parts and where they’ll land remains a confidential, eyes only, need-to-know Top Secret.   

Suffice it to say that I keep the joints greased with glucosamine and the clocks wound tight.  Vigilant.  Ever vigilant.