I’m not sure what’s astonishing about it - I’m only equating them as things people often listen to without fully paying attention.
I guess that sums up the distinction between folks for whom a constantly on TV is normal and the folks for whom it is not. Sorry about the implied judgement - the sound of a TV show tends to catch my ears in a hugely distracting way. For me music is (literally) more harmonious with my brain activity.
Ah yes, the acrid stench of ammonia as we fed our drawing sandwich through the machine.
What a joy it was to refill the reservoir–ours was removeable so one could do the nasty deed out in the parking lot.
I used to do that, but it’s been close to two decades now since I had cable TV. Instead, I’m more like your ex - find something streaming and just leave it running. Sometimes its a movie, lately its been alot “actual plays” of table-top D&D games. Disney+ having the entire run of The Simpsons is also good for this.
I also tend to do it a lot less these days now that I’m married, and not living alone. Spending all day alone in an absolutely quiet apartment was pretty isolating, and having a bit of background noise made it a lot less depressing.
I wouldn’t call them ubiquitous, but an external stereo decoder for a TV sure confused the heck out of my nephew a few days ago. When I told him how we attached an exterior coil to a TV so we could get stereo for Miami Vice, he gave me the same look I got when I told him that I used to walk 5 miles in the snow to school and that it was uphill both ways. The only reason I even showed mine to him was that he is a 25 YO engineer and I thought it might be interesting. With that done…into the trash.
That seems like a perfectly reasonable question. Lots of houses have land lines. I use my desk phone with speaker all the time in preference to my cell phone. I also consider the landline an emergency backup in case I break or misplace the cell phone or in case the cellular system fails or gets overloaded.
A true landline or are you using some kind of voice over IP service?
My parents have a corded phone base but it’s plugged into a router not an RJ11 wall connector. The assisted living facility they live in does not even have RJ11 wall connectors. Everyone including the staff are using voice over IP even if they don’t realize it. Some of them are using a cordless phone that is connecting to a base which is in turn connected to via WiFi to the building’s network. They just feel better using a familiar form factor phone.
Where I live you cannot get a real landline. The “phone company” (Verizon) will happily sell you a phone + internet + cable package, but it is all going through the same router. Unlike the real landline if the power goes out, their phone does not work.
Actually, neither. It’s not a “real” landline but it’s not VoIP. It’s a telephone modem that uses a fixed part of the frequency spectrum on coaxial cable, but it doesn’t use the internet and doesn’t go through internet routers. In case of a power outage the modem has its own battery backup. I’d prefer a real landline but Bell never installed the copper infrastructure in this neighbourhood, though they have now run fiber in the area.
Thanks for the memories! I’m not sure of the exact year of that Beetle but it’s either 1967 or very close to it. That was the model and even the exact colour of my very first car, and my first real taste of true mobility and independence!
The first two.
One of the more irritating things about my ex was that when we got home she would take her coat off (if wearing one), turn on the TV, and then immediately walk into another room without even looking to see what show it was tuned to.
JohnGalt said “homogenized,” not “pasteurized.” In any case, it doesn’t matter what type of milk you use. The skin comes from evaporation at the surface as it cools. Covering the surface with plastic wrap (or something similar) keeps a skin from forming.
The caption says 1965–1966; I am not enough of a connoisseur to say whether that be correct.
My ex couldn’t sleep without the bedroom TV blaring at full blast, tuned permanently to a 24-hour news channel. So for a while, in the early stage of our marriage, I was the one who couldn’t sleep. Eventually, though, I got used to it—the same way I got used to the rattling, sparky trolley cars outside my bedroom window when I first moved to Philly, as an undergrad. Basically, my lullabies were either SEPTA brakes screaming into the night, and later, Wolf Blitzer yelling about terror alerts. Charming.
Sleep eventually came, but peace never did. Every night my dreams were hijacked by whatever horror the anchors were peddling. I wasn’t just watching the news—I was starring in it. You think you’ve had bad dreams? Try waking up in a cold sweat after watching yourself die three different ways on CNN. My dreams became a nightly mashup of the news greatest hits. I was personally involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, got drafted into the Afghanistan war, opened anthrax letters with my morning coffee, and even took the Concorde down in flames. Night after night, my subconscious forced me to star in the worst possible news stories of the early 2000s.
And the worst part? I’d jolt awake, drenched in sweat—only to realize the anchors were still talking about it. The nightmare didn’t end when I opened my eyes. It just cut to commercial. Which is how I found myself having affairs with Mrs. Folger and Flo, the insurance lady… and confessing to squeezing the toilet paper roll to Mr. Whipple.
My BIL and SIL keep FOX ‘news’ on. Once, when they were away (church) I turned it to CNN. That didn’t last long.
CNN may not be pure facts, but it ain’t pure fantasy which is what they prefer.
The big difference is that music (and radio in general) is a purely auditory experience, while TV is predominantly a visual medium, even if there is sound. Consider sports: for a radio broadcast, the announcers describe what is happening on the field much more than a TV crew would. The TV people have the expectation that you’ve seen the play, so they don’t need to describe it to you. Sure, you could just listen to the TV, but it’s not the same.
And music was pretty much designed to be listened to while doing other things - like dancing, or rituals, or the like. And with instrumental music, there aren’t even words that you’d have to understand, it’s pure melody.
And also, sound is a 360-degree thing for most people, you can be looking anywhere and still hear almost everything. TV, if you’re not looking right at it, you miss almost everything.
Judging by the wheel covers, that’s likely correct. There were no major cosmetic changes for 1967, but that was the first year that the beloved bug got a 12-volt electrical system, two-speed windshield wipers, and yet another small boost to engine power – nearly 1500 cc! Which was barely adequate on expressways with a 70 mph speed limit! But we all loved the little car anyway. Especially endearing was the silky-smooth 4-speed manual transmission which borrowed the technology from Porsche.
That was a watershed moment. I have two close friends who have been driving, repairing and remodeling VW Beetles (and Busses) their whole adult lives, and they never dared to touch an old model with the 6V system. Way too much of a hassle.
A few years ago, the family went to a fancy hotel for a weekend, with various knick-knacks decorating the rooms. One of the teenagers pointed to a mid-50s manual typewriter and said “What the heck is that?” None of them had any idea what it was. It was functional, so I had to demonstrate how it worked - no ink ribbon, but the striker left enough of an impression that they got the idea. They spent a decent portion of the weekend typing letters to each other.
When I had a sprained left ankle it hurt to work the clutch pedal in my 1968 VW I found that while I needed it to get into first gear from a dead stop by carefully matching engine and transmission RPMs I could get into second, third, and fourth gears without it.
I used to volunteer for the Idea Museum here in Mesa, a fine arts museum for children. One of their temporary exhibits some years ago was The Art of the Story that included a puppet theater, a midget set with a video camera, and other idea-generators. One of the displays was a Remington Quiet-Riter on a pedestal with a sheaf of papers the idea being you could roll a sheet into the typewriter and make yourself a souvenir. The display crew said finding a typewriter was easy but the ribbon was a challenge.
I think the kids kind of recognized what it was but the separate keys at a weird angle threw them off. I’d watch a kid tentatively press a key and see the type-head rise out of the basket for a bit then step in. “No, you’ve got to whack it!” and type out a couple lines for them.
Lemme tell ya, after decades of electric typewriters and computer keyboards, even that much on a manual typewriter is very tiring.
Oh god. I blew out my ankle playing volleyball. I somehow managed to get my Scirocco home.
I crawled to the front door dragging a 12 pack of beer (from the volleyball game) I knew I was gonna need that beer.