Oh, You Creepy Electronic World, You

So a few weeks ago I was buying my very first hair dryer at Walgreens. That's it. Just a hair dryer, nothing else. As I'm collecting my receipt from the nice checkout lady, the receipt printer spits out its usual coupons. This time, much like other times in the recent past, it printed coupons for baby formula. I'm standing there, holding my hair dryer, thinking...wait a minute. Baby formula? I just bought a HAIR Dryer. How does it KNOW? (Cue eerie X-files theme. This song is by Mark Snoooowww...)

The checkout lady tells me that It (the omniscient receipt printing machine) knows what your credit card is buying. Which for some reason, just icked me to pieces. It knows what you're buying. What if I bought nothing but prophylactics for a month? Dozens and dozens of boxes of them? Would it print coupons for Hustler?

While ruminating about this "I'm watching you"-type network, I thought about the little column-living ads in Gmail, Facebook, and Amazon that tell you what you might like to buy and do. Also creepy, me thought. I mean, I open an e-mail from a teaching friend about National Writing Day, and all of a sudden, GMail is offering me creative writing courses and opportunities to publish my book. Like, back off, man! What's with all the pressure?

Still, I was a little tempted to follow the suggested link that read: "Choose your own adventure. Help write the story one snippet at a time. Www. 1000000monkeys.com." The web address alone is intriguing. Too bad I have other things to do with my time this evening. Like click "publish post," turn my personal home-brainwashing machine off, and curl up on my big brown couch with a new book of poems (W.S. Merwin.) Yay, Me. Boo, creepy electronic world.