URombo, Me Bernadette

Attempting (yet again) to post on YouTube, I started from scratch and created "My Channel."  Wow, I'm important.  My own channel.  Not sure what it meant but I went for it.  It asked for my avatar.  My what?  Er, do I have my own god who descended to Earth?   Oh, a photograph.  Dang, I used to be good at languages.

To talk me through this, I met with my -- what to call her -- my social media guru?  A web angel.  Perhaps she's my avatar!  See, I'm stunned by the number of websites on which, as an artist running my own business, I'm supposed to have a presence.  There are those I'm already using but can't get off the ground floor: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube.  Others, like Tumblr, Flickr, Spotify, Storify, are gaining momentum; hundreds I'm only now hearing of.  New ones are created daily and somehow everyone's hip to them.  Except me.  And maybe a few folks in my age range.  Babies are now born with this knowledge in their DNA.

I try to keep up, really I do.  I'm not new to computers.  I was there at the start: Cadbury Schweppes, London, 1980, an IBM 8100.  Obsolete by the time it was installed.  Letterhead, glued onto continuous feed paper one sheet at a time, flew off the printer like paper planes.  No polite question when you gave the computer an instruction.  No "Are you sure?"  No "yes/no" button.  When you said, "Delete," it deleted.  No second chance.  Many a freshly-typed 40-page financial report was lost that way.  Much sobbing was heard.

Conan O'Brien joked: Twitter, My Space and Facebook should form one site called, "My Twitface."  Quite right.  ONE web communication zone; a sort of Universal Remote combining all my social media, a Universal Remote Combo, a UROMBO!  Whenever I write, act, sing, dance, smile, burp, fart, or tell a story, I push URombo's button to broadcast on all my media simultaneously.  URombo will have top-notch, state-of-the-art questioning ability, asking, "Are you sure?" if I try to share on YouTube a video of a drunk Englishwoman slipping up in the lobby of a 5-star hotel clutching a litre of Bombay Sapphire.  URombo will question before I know there's a question to be asked.  URombo understands me!

Wait a minute...Mum loathed the universal remote; we laughed at her individual controls for the TV, VCR, and the Goblin Teasmaid.  My mother-in-law only recognizes the on/off switch.  "Something's happened to my TV!  I tried to record The Golden Girls when it just died!"  I quietly curse before talking her through it one more time.  Ah, Berni Nason, you know what this is?  Computer Karma.  Pay-back time!  Universe, if you're listening, I vow never to treat old people like idiots again.  I'd better have a cup of tea to calm myself down.  What the...hey, Geek, move away from my kettle!