Brett Favre's Tipped Ball, Incomplete Pass

Call me old-fashioned, but I miss the days when seduction was a delicate art -- eye contact made briefly, then broken, interest subtly but unmistakably conveyed; tiny but meaningful gestures that say "hey, I think I might like you"; an awkward but maybe-possibly-could-be-promising first date followed by that invigorating will he/she call next-day tension; wondering where this is headed; stomach aching in that sweet, nervous way; the delivery of flowers, maybe some chocolates.

But, no, the world's in too big a hurry these days; no time for romance. Instead, the modern way apparently is to just text that special someone a photo of one's, um, naughty bits with the message ... geez, I can't imagine what you would say. Maybe: "Lookee here, I have genitalia. I'll bet you do, too. Whaddya say we get them together?"

I'm sorry to be so crude, but damn, sometimes it's just embarrassing to be a member of the human species, isn't it? Of course, "sexting" has been the ubiquitous "What's Wrong With Our Kids Now" worry for the last year or so. But adults are getting into the act, too. Brett Favre, who's really, really wishing he'd stayed retired right about now, allegedly texted to a young woman photos of his little Viking -- actually, at the time, he was a Jet, so I guess it was his Joe Willie; prior to that, his little cheesehead. This seems to be an epidemic among professional athletes. Players from the NBA, NFL and MLB all have been publicly humiliated after digitizing their johnsons.

Obviously, professional athletes, most still in arrested adolescence, are hardly representative of society as a whole. Still, others are up to this, too. One poll found that 20 percent of teens and 33 percent of young adults claimed to have sent nude or semi-nude photographs of themselves electronically.

There's no need to get into the sociology of all this, mostly because there's really no mystery to it; for centuries, humankind has been adapting the latest communications technologies for filthy purposes -- Neanderthals adorning their walls with crude but explicit caveman smut (such boorishness is why they came to be called Neanderthals, natch), Gutenberg printing off sets of dirty jokes in between Bible runs, telephones employed for dirty talk and the Internet ... well, you know.

I could go on; in fact, I can think of several dozen more sophomoric football-related sexual euphemisms. And that's just off the top of my head. So to speak. But I'm better than that.

Besides, I have a serious concern here. As an old newspaper guy, I'm still a hopeless believer in the Old Media, but when it comes to the aforementioned art of seduction, the Old Media clearly is archaic. Newspapers waited too long to react to the changes that now engulf them. I hope Hallmark isn't making the same mistake. I hope they have a new line of greeting cards in production -- ones that incorporate digital photos in creative ways. Perhaps a series of pop-up cards. For example, "I was thinking of you ..." on the front. Open the card and behold the pop-up image, with the words "... and then something came up."

Word is that Favre might lose his Wrangler endorsement deal over his little scandal, so maybe he'd be open to signing on with Hallmark to promote this new line. Scene: Our hero sticks card in envelope, licks it shut as he winks toward the camera with his customary Favrian bonhomie, and says "Hallmark's Pop-Ups. When you care enough to send your very best."