Simple Pleasures, #5
For this post, I want to tell you how much and dearly I love the internet. Really. If you were born in the 90s, you don’t even know what it was like for us geezers. For those of us old farts born all the way back in the 70s, I’ll tell you right now that life without cell phones and internet, although not exactly nasty or brutish, was not easy. We had it rough. Maybe not uphill in the snow both ways rough, but still. You’d be like, “man, I am in high school, it’s raining cats and dogs, the bus is late, and I really just wish I could call my mom to come get me. I know she’s at the hair salon, so I’m going to have to make sure I have a quarter, go find a payphone (oh, look, there’s one right across the street, because they’re everywhere because it’s the 90s!), look up the number in the telephone book that’s provided in the telephone booth, call the number, and tell my mom my pitiful story hoping she’ll come get me”. Jeez, how about I just look at my phone, find the number on the internet and select “call”. Not that I’m in high school waiting for any busses in the rain. But you know what I’m saying. I mean, back when it was the 80s and we had Encyclopedia Brittanica at the house, this was like the world’s most inefficient wikipedia. You’d get lost looking at platypuses when all you wanted to know was how to make a light bulb glow with a battery and some wire…
Truly, I would marry the internet if I thought that Colby wouldn’t take too much offense. You can find, learn, buy anything on the internet, and I mean anything. And it’s in your pocket now, too! Bored in line at the grocery store I find myself reading articles about how scientists forced some low-level life form to survive on arsenic. Fascinating! Lonesome for my overseas homies, all I have to do is log on to Skype and I can see their faces, hear their voices. Does this remind anyone else of Back to the Future 2?!! Ah, internet. You are a world of pleasure. And we all employ you every day, all the time. Right this instant even! Do you feel taken for granted? Vindicated that Google and other (IMHO schmuck corporations) are trying to get folks to pay for your usage? I love you. I’m so glad you’re with me all the time. I don’t take you for granted. I shall hold you on a pedestal, the holy grail of instantaneous information and entertainment!
