For those of us closing in on the big three oh
Got this in an email from a buddy of mine today. It's the truest shit ever written. I'm not there yet, but it's coming... *sigh*
It hits home pretty good for me, being 28. I was just talking about some of this stuff with a friend the other day... man, how things change.
I'll let the censor take care of the profanity. It helps to get the message across, anyway.
-------
When I was a kid adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious
diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with
walking twenty-five miles to school every morning uphill both ways through
year 'round blizzards carrying their younger siblings on their backs to
their one-room schoolhouse where they maintained a straight-A average
despite their full-time after-school job at the local textile mill where
they worked for 35 cents an hour just to help keep their family from
starving to death!
And I remember promising myself that when I grew up there was no way in hell
I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it
and how easy they've got it!
But....
Now that I've reached the ripe old age of thirty, I can't help but look
around and notice the youth of today. You've got it so ****in' easy!
I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a goddamned Utopia! And I hate
to say it but you kids today you don't know how good you've got it. I mean,
when I was a kid we didn't have the Internet - we wanted to know something,
we had to go to the goddamned library and look it up ourselves!
And there was no email! We had to actually write somebody a letter - with a
pen! And then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in
the ****in' mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!
And there were no MP3s or Napster! You wanted to steal music, you had to go
to the goddamned record store and shoplift it yourself. Or we had to wait
around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ would usually talk over
the beginning and **** it all up!
You want to hear about hardship? You couldn't just download porn! You had to
bribe some homeless dude to buy you a copy of "Hustler" at the 7-11. Those
were your options.
We didn't have fancy shit like Call Waiting. If you were on the phone and
somebody else called they got a busy signal!
And we didn't have fancy Caller ID Boxes either. When the phone rang, you h
ad no idea who it was it could be your boss, your mom, a collections agent,
your drug dealer, you didn't know!!! You just had to pick it up and take
your chances, man!
And we didn't have any fancy Sony PlayStation videogames with
high-resolution 3-D graphics. We had the Atari 2600. With games like "Space
Invaders" and "Asteroids" and the graphics sucked ass. Your guy was a little
square! You had to use your imagination. And there were no multiple levels
or screens; it was just one screen forever. And you could never win, the
game just kept getting harder and faster until you died. Just like LIFE!
When you went to the movie theater, there no such thing as stadium seating.
All the seats were the same height. A tall guy sat in front of you, you
were ****ed!
And sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 20
channels and there was no onscreen menu! You had to use a little book
called a TV Guide to find out what was on!
And there was no Cartoon Network! You could only get cartoons on Saturday
morning... ...do you hear what the **** I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL
WEEK, you spoiled little bastards!
That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy.
You're spoiled, I swear to God! You guys wouldn't last five minutes back in
1984!
It hits home pretty good for me, being 28. I was just talking about some of this stuff with a friend the other day... man, how things change.
I'll let the censor take care of the profanity. It helps to get the message across, anyway.
-------
When I was a kid adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious
diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with
walking twenty-five miles to school every morning uphill both ways through
year 'round blizzards carrying their younger siblings on their backs to
their one-room schoolhouse where they maintained a straight-A average
despite their full-time after-school job at the local textile mill where
they worked for 35 cents an hour just to help keep their family from
starving to death!
And I remember promising myself that when I grew up there was no way in hell
I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it
and how easy they've got it!
But....
Now that I've reached the ripe old age of thirty, I can't help but look
around and notice the youth of today. You've got it so ****in' easy!
I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a goddamned Utopia! And I hate
to say it but you kids today you don't know how good you've got it. I mean,
when I was a kid we didn't have the Internet - we wanted to know something,
we had to go to the goddamned library and look it up ourselves!
And there was no email! We had to actually write somebody a letter - with a
pen! And then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in
the ****in' mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!
And there were no MP3s or Napster! You wanted to steal music, you had to go
to the goddamned record store and shoplift it yourself. Or we had to wait
around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ would usually talk over
the beginning and **** it all up!
You want to hear about hardship? You couldn't just download porn! You had to
bribe some homeless dude to buy you a copy of "Hustler" at the 7-11. Those
were your options.
We didn't have fancy shit like Call Waiting. If you were on the phone and
somebody else called they got a busy signal!
And we didn't have fancy Caller ID Boxes either. When the phone rang, you h
ad no idea who it was it could be your boss, your mom, a collections agent,
your drug dealer, you didn't know!!! You just had to pick it up and take
your chances, man!
And we didn't have any fancy Sony PlayStation videogames with
high-resolution 3-D graphics. We had the Atari 2600. With games like "Space
Invaders" and "Asteroids" and the graphics sucked ass. Your guy was a little
square! You had to use your imagination. And there were no multiple levels
or screens; it was just one screen forever. And you could never win, the
game just kept getting harder and faster until you died. Just like LIFE!
When you went to the movie theater, there no such thing as stadium seating.
All the seats were the same height. A tall guy sat in front of you, you
were ****ed!
And sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 20
channels and there was no onscreen menu! You had to use a little book
called a TV Guide to find out what was on!
And there was no Cartoon Network! You could only get cartoons on Saturday
morning... ...do you hear what the **** I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL
WEEK, you spoiled little bastards!
That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy.
You're spoiled, I swear to God! You guys wouldn't last five minutes back in
1984!
Comments
All the seats were the same height. A tall guy sat in front of you, you
were ****ed! <hr></blockquote>
sweet!! i remember those days like yesterday....try being 41...i remember black and white tv and when pong was the bomb baby...of course i also remember 29.9 cents a gallon gasoline and when a nickle bag would make 10 or so joints...g
Do you hear what the **** I'm saying? A typewriter!!
[ 01-23-2003: Message edited by: thegelding ]</p>
<strong>I remember taping stuff off the radio.</strong><hr></blockquote>
hell, I remember taping stuff off the radio... around 1995 or 1996
I didn't have cable...in the early 80's we had ONTV which was a movie channel you would subscribe to for like $30 a month. One channel $30....
ATM's we didn't have no stinking ATM's you went to the bank, waited in line and had to talk to a teller.
How about this...we didn't have...cordless phones. I mean those didn't exist until I was in my teens. I'm sure they did but not at a price that anyone could afford. When you could afford them they sucked. They had a big telescoping antennae you had to use with them.
Cell phone? What the heck was that? Those were certainly not everywhere when I was a kid. I remember when I finished college (1993) that it was a status thing to have a cell phone antennae on your car.
Suffering.. you don't know suffering boy... I had to dial into either BBS'es or pay services that charged PER MINUTE. First on my 300 baud modem and later I had a total kick ass 2400 baud modem. It cost me almost $200.
We got our microwave when I was about 12 and it probably had about 100 watts of cooking power and was a HUGE. It was a Radar Range back then.
I remember the 2600 being our hugely expensive family Christmas present. It replaced an actual pong type game we had.
I remember life before the VCR.(let alone the DVD)
I remember when you could hear popular music on AM radio. (Everclear has a nice song about that)
I remember being da' man because I had a dual cassette deck Boom Box when I as 12.
I remember when cars had.. points... carburators and some of them even had manuel chokes.
I remember when you would fix your television by taking out all the tubes, taking them down the local store or radio shack, and then buying which ever one had gone bad.
I remember when kids had to go crawl up on the roof to point the antennae toward better reception.
I remember when every house had one tv and likely one phone with a cord.
I remember before AT&T was broken up and lots of older people still had rotary phones.
ABC, NBC, CBS.. one PBS and about 2 local channels... that was ALL you had.
I remember when our school had like 3 computers in the whole SCHOOL. Apple II's (IIe, what the hell was that? These were just II's and then II+'s.. the pluses had a cool option called...lower case)
I remember getting a disk drive for my Commodore 64 for eighth grade graduation. It cost over $300 and I was so glad to get it because I was tired of waiting 2-5 minutes for programs to load off my datasette.
I lived before... music videos....
Nick
When cable TV was only in the big cities.
When the $1000 Betamax was the only way to tape movies.
When CB radios were the chat room of the day.
When the only cars that had AC, power windows and locks, or even automatic transmissions were luxury cars.
Worst of all, I remember watching "The Brady Bunch" as a first-run show.
I am an old fart. :eek:
When my dad got his, is was AMAZING. Only as big as one VCR.
And yeah, I remember having to fill out a slip and going to the teller, to take $20 out of my account. I forgot all about that.
[ 01-23-2003: Message edited by: murbot ]</p>
The first cordless phone's sucked.
Cell phones? I remember a friend of mine had one of the first (it was in the first "Lethal Weapon" movie, I think). It was a briefcase with a shoulder strap.
We got one of the first trash compactors around. It mashed household garbage into a neat brick the size of a largish wastebasket that weight more that a small car.
I remember when we had to start pumping our own gas- My mom's friends were all in a tizzy about it.
I remember when people still said "in a tizzy".
<strong>I remember when there were only three networks.
When cable TV was only in the big cities.
When the $1000 Betamax was the only way to tape movies.
When CB radios were the chat room of the day.
When the only cars that had AC, power windows and locks, or even automatic transmissions were luxury cars.
Worst of all, I remember watching "The Brady Bunch" as a first-run show.
I am an old fart. :eek: </strong><hr></blockquote>
Man, you are old....lol.
I know I might get a smack for that.
Yeah, I haven't hit the big 30 yet, but I'm feelin for Murbot.
I remember our first VCR, I actually still own it and it still works.
One of the crap things about living in the new generation. EVERYTHING is built to fail, except Macs I suppose.
Remember our first microwave. That was an exciting day, let me tell ya. Luckily skateboards were around, although not very popular until I was like 12. No rollerblades.
Had an Atari 800 with like 32 games. Defender was wicked, although Donkey Kong Junior was cool when it came out. I still have that system and yes, it still works.
CD??? What the f**k is that? I grew up with tape. Used to love the big honkin ghetto blasters. Go walkin around the street with that on your shoulder and you were cool.
I'm a composer, and you guys thought your crap gadgets were bad. How about the Atari ST with Notator for writing on....that was in high school. The Roland D-50, Yamaha DX7, Alesis MMT-8, 8 track sequencer, any guitarists in here will probably remember the first 4-track tape based systems. Absolute garbage compared to todays Hard Disk Recorders, MiniDisks, and Digital Tape systems with 8-24+ tracks, digital mixing, tons of effects and mastering on board....Hey, let's burn to CD!!!
Anyone remember synths with sound cards you plugged into them? 127 instant sounds. Yippee!!
Now they have expansion ROM you just plug into the bottom. 8 slots with a total of 128MB (thousands of sounds). Samplers? Anyone remember the Ensoniq Mirage? 512KB?? internal Sample RAM? Might have been lower. I bought the EPS when I was 17, it was a dinosaur by then. Does anyone even buy hardware samplers anymore?
Last time I checked, some of E-MU's maxed out at 256 MB internal RAM. Now you can Sample on your computer. Sky's the limit. Record a 2GB Piano Sample in 32 bit floating point, at 192Khz.
Enough about this....Thanks for the post Murbot, brought back a lot of good & bad memories.
Problem is that the cartridges are screwed.
I remember spending hours at a time playing with that thing (Space Invaders and Pac Man rule!).
Now I find that more than an hour on PS2 and I'm bored sh!tless <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
Damn, I feel old!
Anyone know if the classic Atari games are available on CD for Mac?
<a href="http://www.intellivisionlives.com/"; target="_blank">http://www.intellivisionlives.com/</a>;
<strong>I used to think my dad's reel-to-reel player was kick ass.
Future <a href="http://forums.appleinsider.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=7&t=002592"; target="_blank">project</a> of mine. Transfer dad's home produced movie to DVD. I have to digitize the film then sync it with the audio from the reel to reel. Should keep be busy.
That was the dark ages man!