AIR CONDITIONERS. I would be dead if we didn’t have one. Fans, lemonade, shade trees, I’m too old for all that shit.
Hugs… nice comforting, warm, cozy, ya know everything will be ok hugs.
I really try to be good but it just isn’t in my nature!
Y’know, I spent yesterday afternoon watching the restoration of the Hitchcock film REAR WINDOW. Filmed in 1953. One thing I came away with was “God DAMN…things were better then!”
Jimmy Stewart didn’t have a TV yapping at him or a computer screen providing ambient light in that little Greenwich Village apartment. If you wanted to get the sports scores or the latest from D.C., you went down to the sidewalk and a paperboy sold you the DAILY NEWS for three cents.
No lousy drive-through fast food…if you wanted “fast food,” you’d have to wait while the counterman fried your burger. (That’s okay, you just bought the NEWS.)
Everyone drank more liquor than they do today, even Thelma Ritter, who was a nurse. And smoked cigarettes. Can you imagine any guy refusing to kiss Grace Kelly because she had tobacco breath?
Well, okay…if he had had Call Waiting, Stewart wouldn’t have spilled the beans to Raymond Burr that he was alone in the apartment. And air conditioning would have been nice…there WAS a heat wave, after all.
And the real killer, for NYC real estate buffs…in 1953, West 9th Street was considered a “low rent neighborhood.”
Uke
PCW: Hugs are vital! Here, have one:
::HUG!::
Lessee,
WD-40
Mechanics Wire
Duct Tape
RTV
Vise-Grips
Zip Ties
Ratcheting Tie-Downs
Yup, with the above, I can fix most anything!
VB
Remember, you can tune a piano, but you can’t tuna fish!
I don’t think I could live without Comedy Central. (the Game Show Network is a close second)
Telephones and trains/automobiles
I recently re-read the “Little House” books. Laura got married and moved away from her hometown, knowing that she probably wouldn’t ever see her family again.
It still puts a lump in my throat thinking of saying goodbye to my parents for the last time… 
Indoor plumbing/toilets. I really appreciate this as ours is totally backed up tonight and we’re gonna have to use an “alternative” until we can get a plumber, hopefully tomorrow. Luckily, we’ve got acres of woods…unluckily, tonight’s the coldest night this winter. Time to put on that union suit with the little flap…
Airplanes are handy. Helps me go to the old country for brief visits, such as last time, a funeral.
But we did OK. Radios and telephones were a useful step in communications. It was downhill from there, until the Internet.
Ok, I’m gonna say it, where would our society be without:
Chia pets
Ronco Stud Busters
Any album from Ktel
WTH is a stud buster? After the obvious jokes the only thing I’m coming up with are wall studs and shirt studs.
maybe something like a pepper spray for really obnoxious guys in bars?
I have to go along with whoever posted air conditioning…I can’t believe only one person mentioned it.
Here in Texas, in the summertime, you come out to your car at lunchtime and it’s like someone’s been aiming a blowtorch at it all morning.
Live a Lush Life
Da Chef
not that i’m disagreeing about the a.c., but is it that much hotter in dallas than in houston? i didn’t think the summer was so bad; but, of coure, i was comparing it to 117 deg.
Fire. Nobody mentioned fire. Back in my day…
so, wally, gramps is your sock puppet?
Ziploc bags and velcro.
“You can be smart or pleasant. For years I was smart.
I recommend pleasant.”
Elwood P. Dowd
Sex
I sold my soul to Satan for a dollar. I got it in the mail.
A lot of the stuff on the list I can imagine quite easily how we can do without because I still do without 
So I’m going to reiterate some of the basics here:
Telephones
Automobiles
Computers
Photocopiers (Ok, maybe this isn’t basic, but we turn out a lot of copies of legal documents here at work and I can’t imagine loading 3 sheets of paper and 2 sheets of carbon paper in a typewriter and retyping the same document 5 times to make 15 copies. I’d shoot myself in the head–or at least resign after an hour–if that were part of my job.)
Electricity
Indoor plumbing
Ball-point pens
Refrigeration
Microwave ovens (I remember when my mom would leave meat sitting out all day to thaw… probably lucky none of us died of food poisoning. I remember the time my cat got into the steaks that were thawing, too, there was hell to pay that night.)
Radio
Television (yes, really. I can’t imagine waiting weeks or months to hear what’s going on in the outside world.)
That’s all for now
“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it,” Jack Handy
I’m with you PCW - hugs and love making, I could never get through life without them
I remember manually typing information into forms with several carbon copies. What an effin’ nightmare. So here’s to the personal computer, the printer, and the copier!