"Yes, Asheboro, There IS A Cyberspace!"

I'm quoting my good friend, Sir-Buzz-of-the-Asheboro-Armfields, here - who, along with several other Asheboro home boys and girls, have been regaling me with tails of the Courier Tribune's most recent fantastical, truly AMAZING discovery (it's in red because it's so fantastical and amazing) . . .

. . . the Internet actually exists!?!  WHO KNEW? And there's this new-fangled thing called social media - where people blog and Twitter and text and You Tube (*and MySpace and Facebook. etc).  Oh, and it's all EEEVIL and should not be done at work.  Why you could get fired or sued if you say something bad about your employer and get outed/caught. 

On the cutting edge, award-winning J.D. Walker is apparently re-hashing really old news from 2002.  Next thing you know, Ross Holt will be inviting the all-knowing Ed Cone-of-the-Cones to the public library for a lecture.

I'd love to hear our Edward, the guy who inventing "Coning", give a lecture on cyber-bullying.

I hear, through the grapevine, that employees in Asheboro city and Randolph County county offices have only recently been told that their Internet access is for business purposes only - and their e-mail "accounts" at work are not for personal use (those pesky public records laws that Governor Sleazely used to ignore can come back to bite).

Of course, on this blog I've proudly acknowledged that "Housecalls" is considered "contraband" at work - and is actively blocked by a program called "Websense" (there are actually ways to get around that besides taking Acer to work, but it's not that big of a deal) . . . which kills everything from CNN Entertainment stories to EBay.  I"m a medical subversive, don'tchaknow (and tickled pink about it).  I also NEVER use corporate e-mail accounts - instead choosing to use my own web-mail account.

(Insert Update:  As I wait very patiently on a delivery, I was able to watch the Space Shuttle Discovery land - it makes me cry every time - AND update this post to tell you so - from work.)

You see, a long time ago, while working in Memphis, I got up from my computer after finishing a note (logging out as I did it), only to see my boss immediately sit town at the terminal, plug in a code, and start sifting through the history, individual by individual.  I immediately chastised him, "Why *****, you DIRTY FASCIST dog, you're spying on me!?!"  With a wicked smile on his face, he looked up at me and very drolly said, "Why no, Mary, I'm not spying on you.  I'm spying on the other 85% of my employees who are doing something they shouldn't on the parent company's dime.  And some of it's pretty good stuff."

I've told my pals that the articles in the Courier are really old hat stuff - all about stirring up fear and discouraging dissent amongst the masses.  Social media is a real threat to the powers-that-be in Asheboro.  They cannot buy it and control it in the way they have our newspaper.

The uproar over "sexting" reminds me of an old story.  When I first came to Asheboro, I walked among medical giants like Dr. Fred Graham.  On day, I strolled onto Randolph's third floor to see a patient and found the nurses in an uproar/quandary.  One of their teen-aged patients (I think she was diagnosed with a "urinary tract infection" but cannot be quoted on it) was HAVING SEX in the room with her boyfriend (the likely source of the "UTI").  They had complained to Dr. Graham.  But Fred, being Fred, had blown them off, telling him that he knew the little girl and her family very well - they were right-fine-upstanding folks who went to church and everything - and she didn't do things like that.

Things like that didn't happen in Asheboro. Teen-agers don't act like teen-agers.

The nurses wanted to know what to do.  Of course, since the girl was not my patient and Dr. Graham wasn't actively killing someone there was nothing for me to do. 

Fast forward fifteen years.  Ozzie and Harriet have divorced - but still have "benefits" . . .  and have ditched the kids and flown down to Mexico for an extended course in methamphetamine production & drug trafficking.  Kids are sexting and watching porn on school computers (Charlie Sheen is their hero)  And Asheboro has alcohol now . . . and barfights every weekend .  . . something for Annette Jordan to both lament and smooth-over, as the old, much-maligned "dry" crowd sits back and disgustedly says, "I told you (right people) so".

Makes my little ole' subversive blog look relatively tame, eh?