Strolling through the walkways of one of our illustrious shopping malls last night, I was bludgeoned on the head.

The instrument used to whack me was a nicely crafted bit of Consumer Nonsense such as often seems to happen to me. The attack was unprovoked (or not very much so) and left me in a bit of a daze for hours after. Let me explain....

Is it possible to have an opinion with joining a Cause?

Case Study: Same-sex Marriage. It is not acceptable anymore to merely accept this and generally agree with it. The Socially Acceptable Model is to "celebrate" it. We must loudly proclaim our most underscored, emphatic, and rainbow-painted glee. We must show Vindication and Exaltation. Otherwise, we might be mistaken for a Scalia-style dissenter.

And God forbid we actually do dissent...

I wonder if I know less today that the things which I have forgotten.

I used to remember phone numbers. I also remembered birthdays, street addresses, spelling, and peoples' names (although I was NEVER very good at that). Now I no longer need to remember. My phone holds ALL the phone numbers to which I have ever been exposed. It remembers for me. Street addresses are not nearly as relevant as email addresses - and email addresses are on their way to being completely supplanted by IM, Facebook, or chat identities.

The world as we know it ended seven months ago.

The world's legion paranoid masses announced the end of the world for May 21. I am not sure anymore why the world had to come to an end seven months ago, but it seems this month we will get another shot at putting our cosmic lives in order and getting ready for the New End of the World on December 21.

When they come, how will they look upon us?

Interestingly, after over a decade's presence here in Serbia, I begin to take things for granted which might jar the senses of a visitor to this strange planet. Now that my family from America is coming to visit, I begin to look at things through their eyes. And I wonder at the sight.

Accused as I stand of a certain streak of inflexibility, I should like to say a few words on behalf of a little known attribute of human behavior which should, when properly applied, also serve to allow us to part company with the Great Apes along the Darwinian path.

I refer to The Plan.

When the loan officer at the bank offers you a load of carrots instead of cash, you will know that this is a Crisis.

Business is booming for the Prognosticators of Doom these days. All I am hearing from all sides is that the End is Near, speeches about the Demise of Consumerism abound, and that we are sliding into a time of feudal lords, manor houses, indentured servitude and mediaeval bartering.

Too late.

I got a message on Viber 27 seconds ago. When do I respond? Immediately? What is the etiquette? Is there any etiquette?

People who have an active and useful memory of the 20th Century (like me for example) used to send letters to each other, a process by which weeks and months could pass in between missives. When we got email and could send a letter instantly without relying on the post office, we started to think about "response times". One company I worked for mandated a maximum 48-hour response time for emails. This was soon sliced in two and 24 hours became the etiquette. After that, you were being lazy. Or rude. Or both.

Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Ivica Dačić is a time traveler. Few people know this.

Speaking at Takovo, celebrating the 2nd Serbian Uprising (where they actually managed a good slap at Ali Pasha, leaving the Ottoman Turks to slowly lose interest and drift home 63 years later), the Deputy Prime Minister said:

According to what I could discover (and I am sure there is some overly-befriended Facebooker out there who may correct me) the maximum amount of friends you can have on Facebook is five thousand. Five thousand fellow humans whom we call our friends.

5,000? Really?