I'm Sorry, The Number You Are Calling is Temporaraily Out of Service

Is it just me, or does everyone seem WAY too connected these days?  I mean between cell phones and instant messaging and MySpace and Facebook and Twitter and Twattle and Hoobob...I mean JESUS CHRIST!!!  How fucking connected do you have to be?????   We are so inundated with technology that it is making it hard to concentrate on just normal, daily life.
     I am starting to get annoyed by all of this bullshit, and I am completely into it at the same time.  I have been captured by the Social Network alien who is now experimenting on my brain and turning it, slowly, into mush, later to be eaten by Zombies.  I just can't take it anymore.  You walk through the grocery store and there are at least ten phones going off at once, and everyone is checking like, "Is it mine?  Is it mine?  OMG, I can't miss a single second of THE SOCIAL NETWORK!!"  On the train everyone is checking voice mail, e-mail, texts, talking on their blue tooth.  STOP THE INSANITY!!  I swear, if I hear one more person talking on their phone about the surgery their mother just had, or their break up with their significant other, or the boil on their back, I am going to ram the phone straight up their ass and make them eat the blue tooth.  And Oh My Holy Jesus, do we need any more gadgets than we already have?  Every time one comes out, my heart gets a little blacker.  I try so hard to remember what it was like before cell phones and internet and e-mail and chat.  What did we do with our time?  What did we do while driving in the car?  What did we do while we were with our friends?  The saddest thing is, I probably haven't even had a cell phone for more than 10 years and the internet for maybe 7.  So that is 26 years without a cell phone and 29 without internet and now I feel crazy without them.  SAD.  I just wanna chuck that shit off the nearest bridge, but even the thought of that makes me nervous and anxious.  I would rather die than live one day without being connected. 
     The awful truth is that if you are not using some form of technology to "plug in" you can become thoroughly disconnected.  Conversations don't feel the same anymore, people don't just talk. No one even knows how to deal with conflict in the most basic ways.  I know for me, I can not even think half the time because I am so concerned with what the hell is going on on the internet, or on my phone, or chat, blah, blah, blah.  Without those things I am crippled, to the point of becoming a fumbling idiot.  I have lost the ability to make friends with people unless I am on some sort of "social" network.  What does this say about me, or people in general, that we are so easily able to shut down and close up?  Has the technological world been just what we have been waiting for as to not deal with others face to face?  Or is it just some new thing that will eventually be the ruin of society?  I don't know, but I feel myself slipping deeper and deeper into the depths of despair being swallowed up by my gadgets. 
     One day, I am going to shake off this mechanical nonsense and go run naked through a field of flowers, or lay in the grass and let butterflies dance in my hair.  But...not today.  I need to catch up on my Facebook...