When I was growing up there were some things we didn’t have, and I sure didn’t miss them. I know that I find the modern world is much more annoying because of the following “advances”…
#1 (with a bullet) Car alarms - Do these even work??? I know I don’t even look out my window when one goes off.
#2Cell Phones - Sure they’re useful… and for some people indespensable, but everything about them, from their cutsy little ringing sounds to the manner in which people talk on them in public places is frikkin’ aggravating.
#3The beeping sound trucks make when they back up - I’d take my chances at getting run over by mistake just to stop that incessant beeping that seems to be the background sound to most cities these days.
Anybody else have some thing(s) that, in retrospect, make them long for the “good old days”?
Welll…I have noticed that things that are suposed to make my life easier actually end up making me busier like…my cell phone is actually a leash because people can find me any where now. And email…Christ! this was suposed to cut down on paper mail traffic but it has increased tasks about 10 fold.
Movies and television suck badly nowadays. Also, too much “crap” made out of cheapy plastic, even by cheap plastic standards. Disposable is one thing, but some items should never see the light of day to begin with.
A rooster that hasn’t been locked up for the night. Then at 3am it positions itself under your bedroom window and crows like it’s being strangled, about 50 times every 30 minutes!!!
Yeh that sucks… everymorning!!!
mipiace and gatopescado: Cell phones and T.V.s both have off buttons last time I looked. And take it from someone who remembers the 50s: A LOT of T.V. in the “good old days” sucked, too. There was just less of it.
Movies: There have been bad movies for as long as there have been movies. The reason it seems worse now is that you are aware of all the movies that are out now. When someone thinks about some previous decade, they remember the best ones and forget about the junk.
There are still lots of great books.
I guess the only thing I miss about the past is 25 cents a gallon for gas. And my mother. I wish she were still alive.
I remember when a local playground had these HUGE swings that would get you over 15 feet in the air It also had one of those reallly big rocket ship things that you could climb up, it was as tall as a three story building. Also, remember those neat “spiner things”, it was a large disk that you could stand on while someone else spun it around untill you and your freinds got sick? Damn, those were cool.
But will you find any of them now?
NO! All of those have been torn down and replaced with some politicly correct “thing” made of plastic, rubber and metal, sitting in a big sandbox. The damned thing was designed so that even children in wheelchairs could get on it, but no one (not even the kid in the wheel chair) would have any fun with “it”.
Sheesh, I can’t remember the last time I saw a decent swing set. They have even been removed from all of the elementary schools!
You forgot Step 2.5: “Try and rub hands around to make some of the water go away, only to watch merry little waves of water moving over your hands but not actually going anywhere.”
The general lack of IT jobs sucks. It means that companies can treat their IT staff like crap because they know they’ve nowhere else to go. But like everything else this too shall pass.
Daytime TV. Now that I’m grown up and working a nine-to-five Monday-Friday type job I’m never home to watch it, but if I were I’d be disappointed. When I was growing up I’d watch all the game shows every morning during the summer break. Most of the game shows were then supplanted by talk shows, which we still have, along with all the courtroom shows, none of which I like (The People’s Court with Judge Wapner was good, though, but today’s crop of knockoffs just aren’t the same).
I’ll second radio as another thing that “sure ain’t what it used to be.” Nearly all the stations in my area are owned by Clear Channel or some other corporate conglomerate.
Things that you used to be able to fix. Small appliances, radios, TV’s, etc. If you couldn’t fix them yourself, there was a little shop in the neighborhood that could. Now, half the stuff has no serviceable parts, and the other half is cheaper if you buy a new one than try to repair it (if you can even find anyone who can repair it.)