Sind sie auf Facebook??

   At the end of each five hour super lecture that I give here at Gymnasium Untergriesbach, I like to ask for questions from my students.  I have made the mistake of expecting questions like "do you surf to school?" or "do you study super computers at MIT?" or even "do you have a gun?"  No, my preconceptions about what the students what to know have been thrown out the window.  The favorite question that I get asked in every single class that I teach is "Sind sie auf Facebook?" (are you on Facebook?)  I have forgotten that the world has become addicted to Facebook.  For all I know, there is a sinister plot in the making to be carried out by the grand overlord of the Facebook world, Mark Zuckerberg.  At the end of each class, it has become a habit for me to write my name on the board for the students.  They quickly pull out their smart phones and ipod touches to punch my name in the search bar and send me friend requests.  After this initial flurry of digital activity, they get together in groups around one smart phone, and stalk me while I'm still in the goddamn room!  It's really quite uncomfortable.  I sit at the front of the room and twiddle my thumbs while they giggle at iphone screens and glance up at me, only to laugh as I stare quizzically back.
   What happened to asking questions to me in person?  What happened the natural curiosity of having somebody completely foreign standing in front of the class, ready and willing to give full and interesting responses complete with personal anecdotes?  My only guess is that the kids will find everything that they are looking for on my profile, pictures, wall posts, and interests page.  But don't they know that I am not the person that is forever chiseled on the cyber walls of the internet?  I am much more interesting than my facebook profile, or at least I would hope that I am.  Facebook, for me, is a means of maintaining loose contact with old friends, and making new, shallower contact with new people that I meet.  It is a tool.  In no way should it be a way of life.  Christ, haven't any of these kids seen the Matrix??  Look what happens when people merge their lives to computers! Next thing you know, you're taking different colored pills with a black dude named Morpheus in some shady part of town and waking up in a wasteland run by computer octopi... *sigh* My only hope is that a zombie apocalypse destroys the internet infrastructure that we cling to like needy children at their mother's tit.  I guess I'm a hypocrite, since this is a blog.  But you, the reader, already knew this fact from the first entry I published.  The main message I'm trying to deliver is this: STOP FACEBOOKING AND START TALKING TO FACES; IT'S MUCH HEALTHIER AND WILL KEEP THE WORLD FROM BEING RUN BY COMPUTER MACHINES!! Peace and love.