The winter doldrums have definitely set in

We are so over the month of January, and it hasn’t even been that bad. But all those bills from December arrive in the mail; the mailman has to wear a special supportive back brace just to get them out of the truck.

The football season is basically over; naturally none of your teams even made it to the first commercial for Metamucil.

And your addictive television series ends with the death of your favorite character; the series doesn’t pick up again until sometime in the spring and who knows by then if you will even see it, since your cataracts are making everyone look like a version of former Secretary of State Madeline Albright.

So yes, we are ready to move on to February. But to keep our minds busy in these gloomy winter months, many people have turned to the field of technology and especially social media.

This is about as dangerous as being swallowed up in one of those great sinkholes. It can be a sore subject today. Lots of people are concerned since they use this medium to substitute for a real life and real pretend friends. What with all the Twitter tweeting, Facebook, eBay, and hot singles sites, it’s no wonder we don’t even know how to say hello to an actual living, breathing human. You may as well cut out pictures from People magazine and place them at the dinner table for company.

And with all its pitfalls, it’s only natural to be concerned with the field of technology today.

Strangers hacking into what little mind you have left is a frightening thought. Fortunately not for you, but for them. No one even remembers what the term privacy means anymore. In fact, I recently saw it as a word to be defined on “Wheel of Fortune.” Of course not one contestant could guess any of the letters.

Anything that rings in your home will have been funneled from a Third World country, the phone, cellphone, the computer, the dishwasher and even your doorbell are included in this list. They even know your real dress size and the fact that you like a large pizza, extra cheese with Italian sausage.

It seems that social media has taken over any brainpower left in a person’s skull. Between Twitter and Facebook time, users share the most intimate, outstanding, dramatic parts of their lives.

OK, mostly it’s about if they are going out to lunch that day. But it still counts.

But all this stuff is amateur night compared to real technology, which no one on this planet has been able to bust through. And that is getting to talk to a real person at your local cable company.

Just being on hold is considered enough of an endurance test to qualify for the Olympics.

Personally, I like the phrase used by many companies that “Your call may be monitored for quality assurance purposes.” Who is monitoring it, a blood pressure machine or the EPA? If your call was really monitored by the company, the employee would be in a coma.

Now, I am not picking on the cable companies, but I have it on good authority that all the billions being spent on space exploration to Mars is because scientists now believe that is where the headquarters of all utility companies exist, including cable companies.

If the government was serious about security, they could just hire a cable company to be in charge of their intelligence. Believe me, no one would get through.

There would be no leaks, no Snowdens, no whistle blowers, only the voice telling you this call may be recorded. Yikes!

I think the safest thing to do with technology today is just to deflate your computer, iPhone and iPad and claim no knowledge of things like what day of the week it is, not that you could answer that question. Hot air is in and we just might need it for the upcoming month.