For the record, you can also make a good lasagna in a microwave. And I’ve heard that if you have the settings just right, a microwave is also one of the few good ways to cook vegetables. But yeah, I mostly just use mine as a glorified kitchen timer.
And Yumblie, they may have improved them by now, but the last time I tried to use a mechanical pencil, they were far inferior to the old wooden kind. Write three letters, then scratch scratch. Click out more lead, then three more letters, and so on. And if you tried to get ahead of the game by clicking out more lead at once, it’d just break off.
Ditto on the vinyl, real cork and life before cell phones.
I’d also have to add CIDs (cubic inches of displacement), although I fully embrace the ecology of doing more with less. However, no matter how much more efficient todays cars are wrt either hp or mpg, I still miss the feel and sound of a large block muscle car. They’re dinosaurs to be sure, but jeez what magnificent donosaurs they were.
On review, Annie and I are on the same page yet again.
No, I plead guilty. Good idea, though, to see if my sending letters could start a tradition among my friends. It’ll probably just reinforce my reputation as an old fart, though.
My wife’s been out of town for a few weeks, and I find that my sending her a little card occasionally really seems to brighten her day, kind of like receiving a gift. A very cheap way to make me look good, with little effort.
Letters and corks are perfect examples I would agree with. You can’t really argue with the efficacy of that which supercedes but still it’s great getting a handwritten letter to have and to hold. I love in antique shops the way they sometimes have old used postcards for sale. I always buy a handful.
I’m a guitar player, and I really appreciate the existence of cheap, accurate electronic tuners. When I play a gig, solo or with a rock band, I’m grateful for the technology that allows me to tune several guitars quickly in a noisy setting.
But every Sunday morning, when I play guitar at church, I make sure I’m the first one there. I sit at the baby grand piano with my acoustic guitar and tune using the piano and my ears. There’s a bit of pleasure in the ritual, and I enjoy hitting a note on the piano, tuning the equivalent string quickly down then slowly back up until it is perfect. I’d never give up my tuner, but I still enjoy using my ears.
Yeah, I love getting letters too. But I’ve realized that unless you send them out first, you won’t get any. I have a few friends I exchange letters with. Shame I have horrible handwriting. I’d type it out, but that defeats the purpose.
The loss of manual transmissions in cars. Now you’re often given “manu-matics”, which let you pick the gear shifts, but it’s just not the same as the smooth synchronization of you, your car, the clutch, steering wheel, throttle, gearshift, and the road.
Crank windows in cars. Electric is nice, but why can’t we still have a crank in case the ignition is off, the battery is dead, or the window motor dies?
Another reason why they call it “Great” Britain.
Manual transmission is the default here, and I don’t see that changing any time soon. Automatics are considered to be OK for invalids and the elderly, but that’s about it.
Much as I love doing most everything in the computer, being able to save & edit & erase & fix documents without having to do them over & over & over, there was something about seeing what you were doing as you were typing, actually seeing the letters go onto the paper and hearing the noise of the typewriter as the keys struck and the carriage moved. You could also move the typewriter from here to there without much trouble.
Digital editing, audio recording, coloring, and (soon to be total) filming for motion pictures. There really is something that feels more human, earthly, and special about something that was shot on film, hand-edited and cut, with an audio track that was recorded on tape. Just watch something like The Conversation and then watch something like The Departed - great films, but something has inarguably been lost in the quest for digital perfection.
I disagree. Or at least, I used to agree, but changed my mind once I had to carry a cell phone (again with the cell phones!). For times when I do get calls while driving, I do need to keep one hand free, and you just can’t do that while operating a manual transmission.
Um, over here you can’t use a cellphone while driving, either, not unless it’s totally hands-free. As well as being a bad idea, safety-wise, it’ll get you a £60 fine and three points on your licence if you’re caught.
Sometime in the late 1960s, a cartoon in Road & Track magazine showed a stuffy English gentleman in a car in a showroom. “Why do you call it an automatic transmission, when there’s all this twiddling from Park to Reverse to Drive?”
Most of my neighbors have riding lawn mowers, or they pay somebody else to mow. My little John Deere is self-propelled, but I’ll walk behind it as long as I am able.
In the kitchen, we have two mugs full of ballpoint pens, pencils, and a few Sharpies. The one I grab, though, is a fountain pen. I just like it, and I can’t quite explain why.
We have a row of quick pasta pouches, but I feel like I’ve copped out when I use one, instead of “really” cooking.
Well, the improvement would be the amount of content (live and on-demand) you can get any second of the day.
But I agree somewhat. I hate watching a baseball game on TBS and trying to watch a small white blob in a big green area move around. I swear, some channels look like flip-books of badly compressed JPEGs.
They’re much better than that nowadays, at least in my experience. I vastly prefer them, quite frankly, especially since they never get dull, and consequently the handwriting is always sharp.
Kraft Mac & Cheese is as good as what my Mom made, for her quick recipe. She learned this rather fast, and we ate Kraft pretty much 100% after that, whenever we needed a fast side dish. Sure she had another baked Mac & Cheese recipe that was better, but it took hours. Fine for Sunday dinner, but no good for after work supper.
Pork & Beans or Baked beans are just fine from a can. Colophon is right that “baking” a 'tater is hwaaaay faster and just fine by nuke.
However, I have to agree that most things are best made stovetop from “scratch” or fairly close.
I am also tired of the whole “cellphone so you have to be available 24/7 all the time to everyone” thing. I do have a cell, I use it mostly for emergencies and “Honey, I forgot the shoppibg list, what was on it?” stuff. No yapyapyap.
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