April 5th: The Dread White Whale

Braeburn was idle when I first awoke,
Sitting, awaiting those seven keystrokes
that would allow me access into the system
where I could check all the new updates,
in cased I had missed them.

I first checked the weather. To my grim dismay,
I saw a flat 34 and still snowy on my display.
With a mutter and grimace, I went to the news
updates: thousands on thousands before me,
and I'd not even yet laced up my shoes.

So I swiftly connected to the iGoogle site,
peering ahead at the forecast for night,
while the Youtube widget did load and demand
that I see this penguin get whacked in the head;
so many things beyond my command.

My inbox was there, right on the screen,
Filled with new messages I'd never seen.
A few were all business, though some were for fun,
but most were just junk mail that slipped through the sieve,
so I wrote in iCalendar of my upcoming run.

Then a black pop-up bid for attention,
Tweetdeck, it was, working hard for its pension
of devoted CPU workload. It had to inform
That Twitter and Facebook had updates,
and I let in my throat a heavy sigh form.

Twitter and Facebook, more than likely the same,
Only slightly different in appearance and name.
Each offered the same little pop-up of information
which tell me in 140 characters or less
of the tedium everyone feels at their station.

Honestly, how can it be that in a world so infused
with keeping tabs on our friends, we refuse
to interact more directly than this? Are we
truly so disinterested that we watch for these Tweets
Only to say "it's intriguing, but not happening to me"?

Whatever happened to talking by phone?
Waiting to talk until we got home?
Why are our hearts so frozen with ice
when we have all the means to communicate
in every single digital device?

And why does this white whale cause distress?
If Twitter is down, isn't that all for the best?
Instead of wailing and cursing this internet place,
why not just put down the Twitter, Facebook, and cell phone,
and go to a friend's house to talk face-to-face?