Screw Tradition; Give me Convenience

Via Fark, I saw what should have been an interesting article today. It was a list of 25 things that have disappeared over the last 25 years. Turned out to be pretty lame.

I'll talk about a few items.

Indoor smoking. I don't miss this too much, although it's pretty obvious to me that it should be allowed in bars and restaurants. It's bizarre to serve steaks to people and then tell them they can't smoke cigars afterward. Cigarettes are addictive, carcinogenic, cheap, bad-tasting crap, however, and I support all efforts to persecute people who persist in smoking the damn things.

If secondhand smoke is really dangerous, I'm a dead man. My mother and all four of her sisters smoked when I was a kid. My aunt and her husband continued even after their son turned out to have severe asthma. Nothing says love like lighting up your fiftieth butt of the day in a house with a kid who could conceivably die from an asthma attack.

My mother used to keep the air blue and put cigarettes out in the breakfast dishes. What a repulsive habit. My sister, who also smokes, stinks so badly it's hard to be around her. There are other reasons why no one wants to be around her, however, so I guess it's not important.

Vinyl LPs. Ho hum. No one misses them except for audio nuts who claim they hear superior sound but are probably imagining it. LPs are bulky, inconvenient, and fragile. They wear out. They require a ton of maintenance. And they only hold around 40 minutes of music. Good riddance, I say. I only buy LPs when digital recordings don't exist.

Oldsmobiles. I never liked them. GM needs to quit screwing around and start putting out two brands: GMC trucks and Cadillac cars. Their divisions haven't had any real independence since before Vietnam. Maybe they should call everything Chevrolet and be done with it.

Service stations. USA Today says they don't exist. The hell they don't. There aren't as many as there used to be, but they're still with us. The person who wrote the list must live in New York and have no idea what the real world is like.

The Soviet threat. Who says it's gone? Putin is doing his best to bring it back. Someone ought to put a bullet in that little turd.

Typewriters. The worst. Especially if, like me, you're absent-minded. I used more correction tape than ink ribbon. To hell with typewriters. I'm glad they're gone.

Betamax. Why moan about the loss of something that was barely here to begin with? It wasn't with us long. If Betamax had come out when George Bush was elected, it would already be on the way out.

Phone booths. It's kind of hard to believe they ever existed. Think how many nickels it takes to pay for the booth, the phone, installation, maintenance, and service. I say "nickels" because that's what it used to cost to make a call. Surely, even in those days, a booth had to cost five hundred bucks. That's 10,000 nickels.

Dial phones. Do they still work? I remember making calls by tapping on the receiver, for the hell of it. The phone company counted the taps and turned them into numbers, thinking you were using a rotary phone. Can you still do that?

The nice thing about the old receivers is that you could also use them for cracking walnuts and driving nails.

MTV videos. I absolutely loved MTV when it came out. I could sit for hours and watch videos. What the hell was wrong with me? Oh God. Now I have "Da Da Da" running around in my head.

Crank windows, in cars. Hello? Still here. Leave Manhattan once in a while and look around.

Checker cabs. How did they get rid of them? Supposedly they were made from 14-gauge steel and powered by Dodge's indestructible slant 6 engine. Very hard to kill. Maybe they put them on an atoll and set off a hydrogen bomb.

In high school, I had a teacher who drove a Marathon and played the bass in the philharmonic. Now THERE is a man who knew how not to get laid.

I don't miss much of this stuff. I do miss soft drinks in deposit bottles. I could swear they tasted better. And thin warm plastic doesn't feel as good against the lip as smooth, cold, thick glass.

A better list would name things we have now that we wish we had had back then.

1. Computers. Back then, only revolting boys with pimples on their pimples had them. Now those boys are still revolting, but they're rich. And the rest of us don't have to go to 7-11 to buy porn any more. Also, if your brain is small, faulty, or lazy, a computer can probably do whatever it is that your brain can't do for you. Schedule your life. Organize recipes. Do your taxes. It's even better than being smart and responsible.

2. Cell phones. Still not perfect, but a gigantic luxury when you're away from the house.

3. Cordless phones. Remember how the cords used to get twisted? Remember having to stand within four feet of your kitchen wall phone while you talked? Life was hell. Admit it.

4. Microwave ovens. The food isn't as good, but it's fast and easy. So it's worth it.

5. Silverstone. Remember the old Teflon, which didn't work? Silverstone came along, and suddenly you didn't need skill to fry an egg. I love it.

6. Velcro. One day they'll build entire houses in which Velcro is the only fastener used.

7. Gore-Tex. Dry boots did not exist until this stuff was invented. Unless you count uncomfortable rubber ones that made your feet stink.

8. Digital audio. My obsolete MP3 player holds 400 albums. I have dozens of albums on two DVDs in my patio CD player. Screw vinyl. I'm serious.

9. Band-Aids that work. The old ones fell off in an hour.

10. Prilosec, Tagamet, and all the other acid pills. Before this stuff existed, they just cut pieces out of your stomach until you died.

11. Digital dental X-rays. No more bleeding from biting down on huge negatives.

12. Cordless tools that don't suck. What would you have paid for a 3.5 amp-hour, 18-volt cordless drill in 1970? Your firstborn plus a leg, minimum.

13. Flat TVs. The CRT is dead. Flat jobs weigh less, look better, last longer, and take up less room. And you can use them as computer monitors.

14. The pocket calculator. I still remember my friend's father paying $400 for a Sharp calculator that did four operations. I used to beg to play with it.

15. Lasers. They do everything. Play music. Help us hang pictures. Vaporize cancers. Remove hair. Penis enlargement. Well, maybe not penis enlargement. Not yet.

16. Cable. Real cable, not the pathetic 3-channel cable my grandparents used to have in Kentucky. Now TV still sucks, but it sucks with superior variety.

17. DVDs. No rewinding. Fantastic audio and video. Small. Cheap. Just try not to think about Blu-Ray while you're finally completing your old-style DVD collection.

18. Cyanoacrylate adhesives. Before this stuff, pretty much all glue was a joke. Except for epoxy, which was scary.

19. Remote controls. If anything happened to my TV remote, I would watch the same channel for the rest of my life instead of getting up to change channels manually. And here's something I really love. They make remotes for car radios. So you don't have to lift your arm.

20. Microbrews and homebrewing. American beer used to be the worst in the world. Now it's the best. As it should be. Suck it, foreigners.

Now THAT is a good list. Forget that other crap.