I’ve been disconnected from the Internet since Friday evening. You’d think this wouldn’t be a traumatic experience, but you’d be wrong. Not having the ability to look up useless information or even use something as simple as e-mail had a jarring effect on my psyche. You’d think being connected to the information super-highway for eight hours of my day would be enough, but it’s not. There this crazy need inside me to be connected as long as I’m awake, to send e-mails, to look up info, to send inane digital reminders to myself to and from work to make sure I don’t forget something.

Yes, I have heard of a post-it note. But no, it’s not the same. My name is Kevin Hendricks, and I’m an Internet addict.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it’s time for … Link-o-Rama!

I’ve been collecting all sorts of random links this week, and now it’s time to share. On your marks, get set, click!

Demotivators – This one was passed around the office with a knowing chuckle today. It’s the latest in corporate demotivating merchandise. If Dilbert had a motivational calendar on his cube wall, this would be it.

Happy Tree Friends – If you thought SouthPark was bad, you haven’t seen anything. Happy Tree Friends is a flash cartoon that features nauseatingly cute little forest creatures being maimed and slaughtered in truly disgusting style. They’ve even got a DVD available at Best Buy. It’s sick, twisted and morbid, but worth watching. Once.

Dear Raed – I haven’t determined exactly who this is or what it’s called, but it appears to be a blog written by a Baghdad citizen. There’s been some journalistic discussion as to whether or not it’s legit, but it appears to be. If not, it’s some darn good reading anyway. It’s an interesting view of the war from the inside.

The New Wave of War Protesters – An article from Relevant magazine comparing half-baked and quasi-committed protesters to Sunday morning Christians who compartmentalize God. Challenging words.

Q&A w/ “Keeping Faith” Co-Author Frank Schaeffer – An intellectual father and his son write a book about their relationship after the son joined the Marines. This is a chat with the father and provides an interesting commentary on military service, protests, and the working class volunteer army.

Random craptacular web sites – Need I say more? The link generates random homepages from AT&T users. Craptacular, craptacular.

I’ve been way too busy lately. But that’s okay. Lots of interesting stuff going on. Two fun links for you today, and that’s all.

Homestar Runner — It’s dot com (that’s all I need to say)

The Homeless Guy — a blog from an actual homeless person. Very insightful.

Read “Candy from Strangers” (on salon.com)

Does this strike anyone else as scary? It just doesn’t sound very healthy. Or maybe I’m just bitter–no one’s ever sent me anything because of these thoughts.

When God Hides His Face: an amazing article that recently appeared in Time magazine comparing a Nashville couple and the trials they’ve recently gone through to the story of Job. Sounds a bit far fetched, but Time did an amazing job. It’s reprinted on beliefnet.com.

Dulce de Leche Caramel M&M’s: Mars is now marketing M&M’s for Latinos. Why is this important? Well, it’s not really, it’s just fun for all those M&M aficionados.

Retro Desktops: Check out these old school desktop images. Just when you were getting bored with the most cutting-edge desktop, now you can just go retro.

I used to think that computers were great for everyone. Everybody should run out and get a computer and put the wonder machines to work. Grandmas and Great Uncles should learn how to e-mail and check up on the weather where their grandchildren live. Ah the computer age.

That’s what I used to think. Then I started answering e-mail at my job. I’ve come to the conclusion that people are idiots and shouldn’t be allowed to own a computer unless they’re thoroughly trained, preferably in a rather demeaning way so they understand the power of the computer geek.

My biggest beef is with AOL users. It seems the prerequisite for joining AOL is that you have absolutely no brains in your head. It doesn’t help matters that AOL makes things difficult. In normal e-mail programs links are highlighted and you can simply click on them to launch your Internet browser and check out the website a friend sent you. Not in AOL. The links don’t work. The only way to make them work is to use HTML e-mail, which is an even bigger nightmare. You would think AOL people would be aware of this problem and so learn how to copy and paste links.

Copy and what? That’s right, most of the idiots don’t know how to copy and paste. It’s rather frustrating. Part of my job is to explain to them how to copy and paste. One person wrote me back thanking me and praising me for teaching them how to copy and paste. They said they’d been copying and pasting all day. Wow. One person even thanked me for taking the time to write out the instructions for how to copy and paste. They were amazed I took so much time to do it. One of these days they’ll realize I just copied and pasted the instructions.

It seems there’s a lot of not-so swift people on computers. I had one person write in and say tell me our computer called them an invalid user. I was tempted to start my reply with “Dear Invalid User…” Today someone replied to my e-mail with “Dear Kevin of Webmaster…” This month we’ve been giving away The Prayer of Jabez. Someone e-mailed me about the free offer and the subject line said “The Prayer of Jezebel.”

I suppose I shouldn’t be so hard on people. Computers aren’t exactly intuitive for everyone. This evening one of the elderly people in our building stopped my wife and I and asked us to help her find the address bar. One of these days some snot-nosed kid will be laughing at me when I can’t figure something out, so I guess I should be nice. But sometimes you need to vent your frustration. I’m tempted to write a book.

Have you ever wondered who started those annoying little emoticons? :-) I suppose it’s a comfort the guy didn’t get rich from it.

In one of my classes today we were discussing the demise of the author and the internet was drawing heavy flak. In modern literary theory the work has become more important that the author who wrote the work, and such ideas are being reflected in all of society, and especially the internet. In business collaboration is encouraged, making it impossible to give individual credit. On the internet personal property is becoming more and more public as ideas are “borrowed” and many people fear out right robbery. Being a web page editor I felt obliged to defend the internet. After all, it’s not the internet’s fault that people are crooked.

Of course the whole discussion wasn’t simply an attack on the internet. But what I did come away with is an understanding of how the internet has changed our ability to break the law. If someone is going to steal copyrighted work, they’re going to steal copyrighted work. In the pre-internet days that meant photocopying a magazine article or simply retyping it yourself, or making a cassette of your friend’s record, tape, or CD. Now with the internet we have massive information deliverable instantaneously. Hence it’s easy to steal written work, and more usefully, recorded songs. Look at the proliferation of mp3’s and the fuss it has every major recording company in. Trading songs without buying the CD isn’t anything new. Bootleg tapes have been around since tapes were invented. Mp3’s have just enabled people to get the exact songs they want faster, easier, and cheaper. The internet hasn’t brought about any new disrespect for personal work, it has simply allowed that disregard for the author to magnify itself.

People complain about the internet being such a threat to copyrights and an individual’s work. But we’re not dealing with anything new. We’re dealing with plain and simple human ethics, the same thing we’ve been dealing with since the apple.

Have you ever learned something that allowed you to attack your work in a whole new way? I love opening my eyes like that. I love to fiddle with web pages and HTML. It’s a little hobby of mine. I also love to pretend like I’m a graphic designer. The combination presents some special challenges because designing in HTML is like swimming with one arm tied behind your back. It’s easy to think of a cool way of doing something, the hard part is making it work. Today I learned a whole new way of manipulating things. It’s actually not new, and it’s not really that profound. It’s just one of those neat little tricks the pros use. It was there the whole time, I just never knew it. It’s kind of like Geometry. If you think hard enough, you could figure out all those theorems yourself. If only I were that smart. I think tomorrow I’ll be spending the day playing with my new toys.

I’ve spent several hours in the past few weeks looking up Christian web sites for a school project. I’ve found the whole thing kind of depressing. In the past hour it’s been a frenzy of links, partners, counters, banners, and a Christian version of everything. I’ve never seen so much repeat content and interrelated webs. I suppose that’s what the web’s all about, but it’s just weird. How many online Christian music stores do we need? Do we need a site for Christian mouse pads? How about Christian backgrounds for your desktop? How about a Christian Banner Exchange Program? A Christian web counter? I’ve found Christian alternatives for virtually every site you could possibly be interested in. I can’t help but ask a few questions here. Is this healthy? Should Christians really be sucking in on themselves like this? Shouldn’t we be using the net to reach out? I also wonder how many of these sites are trying to make a fast buck? All most every single site accepted advertising. On the positive side, a lot of the sites I saw were well designed, at least from a graphics point of view. Of course you also have to take everything I’m saying with a healthy dose of irony. You are, after all, reading this on a Christian site on the web.

I just can’t help but wonder what happens when we flood the internet with cheap Christianity? Is it doing any good, witnessing to people online? Or do we need to step away from our computers and actually talk face to face with our neighbors?