I can’t keep up with technology. What with Facebook, iPod, Twitter, iPhone, blah, blah, blah. I’m still an archaic fan of books. That’s right, I’m a bookman. The idea of perceiving abstract shapes in the form of letters, bringing them into my mind and ferreting out the meaning of this abstraction is what made the former “books only” generation so much more intellectually grounded than this “modern” breed.

Ask a kid under 16 if he reads books, and the response is likely, “Books? Books, oh yeah. I read about books on the Internet.” Don’t get me wrong; I am pro technology. I just believe it is often focused in the wrong direction. I only bring that up since, with all of our advances, we still have some technology that hasn’t moved since the middle ages.

How about the administering of necessary drugs to help us fight off disease? We have the miracle of antibiotics, which is cool, but they are still administered through a sharp pointed hollow tube that is driven into our flesh like some kind of inquisitor’s tool of torment. Uhh, where exactly are we putting our best and brightest ideas when it comes to making life less painful when possible?

Let’s see. We have a painless band-aid like patch that allows you to “smoke” through your arm skin, because Lord knows expecting someone to do without nicotine infringes on their right to be addicted. But when it comes to the good stuff, the healthy stuff like a curative substance that has the added benefit of not being addictive and doesn’t cause cancer … I’m afraid we’re going to have to stab you.

Hygiene is another technology that has advanced by leaps and bounds over the centuries. Even poor people have indoor baths, showers and toilets. Toilets that used to be holes in the ground now allow you the convenience of shipping your unmentionables down a manmade stream to the sewer and out of your life. Great breakthrough! It just seems by now in the 21st century that when we conclude our “business” we shouldn’t still have to clean up after ourselves using our hand in an ode to the caveman.

I know the French took a stab at the elimination (no pun intended) of the manual dung cleanse with the introduction of the bidet. This has never caught on in the US that I know of. At least I have never come across one. And to be honest, the thought of having the same toilet water I’m trying to get rid of suddenly splashed up my hind end somehow doesn’t fool me into seeing it as hygienic. Not to mention you still have to sop up your irrigated derrière with paper that has become the equivalent of an ever-so-efficient spit wad.

As a Christian I realize that God made humans in His image in order to continue on Earth the creative process that He started with The Word. So next time you spend your morning paying for the Mexican restaurant’s salsa you ate the night before, it may be a good time to put your noggin to good use inventing something that can yank all of humanity out of the dark ages when it comes to bathroom backwardness. You might as well, you’re going to be there for awhile.