In a world where we’ve become so totally dependent upon electronic wizardry to do even the most basic of tasks, the failure of such technology makes us old timers long for the old days. The latest tech forces us to choose between quality and convenience. Do we wish to get off our ever fatter asses and actually ‘do’ something? No, we want something done ‘for us’ by the magic little Chinese dude inside our latest job robber from the east. Ask not what your Compaq can do for you, but what you can…a fuggedaboutit.

In our quest to become ‘Hutts”(as in Jabba the-) we are settling for much less quality than we ever had before. Take music. MP3 is about the worst music storage device ever conceived. It literally makes a command decision on just what it wants you to hear, and what it deems ‘unnecessary information’ gets unceremoniously expunged. This is also what Winslow did to my article on Why Can’t that Bitch Next Door Just…Never mind. Perhaps all is for the best.

So you end up with something infinitesimally small and vast in its storage capacity, yet sounding no better than an old 8-track (on a good day). Most don’t see the problem because they have never heard Ride of the Valkyries on a Telarc CD while sitting in front of a pair of odd shaped boxes known to the archeological community as Bose 901s. Look it up. The purveyors of music today are banking on the shear fucking stupidity of the purchasers. Letting other people/things make your decisions for you never ends well. Hear that big Gov? To paraphrase an anti-technology Dodge Charger commercial from a few years back, “We’ve all seen the way THAT movie ends, with machines picking through body parts looking for energy.”

Darwin is alive and well today. Just watch people try to drive/walk/run/cook/clean/work etc. whilst texting/sexting/talking/shopping/working on their own personal little torture devices/prison cells known ironically as smartphones. They are getting smarter as we are getting dumber. Hear ye, hear ye…there is no scenario where ‘texting’ is better than talking. If you call me and I can’t speak right away, they have this thing called leave a fucking message. It works really well. If I am at a meeting and I text you, it means I am at a meeting. I don’t need to be at and I’m ignoring and dissing the speaker. If you text me at a meeting, well, fuck you. I’ll call you back later, dude, it ain’t all about you. If you text someone who is driving, you might kill them, so STOP NOW! If you text back while driving, you might very well deserve to die. (There’s that Darwin thing again). But the dude next to you might not want to go for that same ride. No information I have ever received was worth a human life, mine OR yours (with perhaps one exception: this season’s finale of Jersey Shore).

So, you now pay hundreds per month for crystal-clear reception to NOT TALK to your friends? You push little buttons with your thumbs and relay a message? And they’re not even real buttons. They are just pictures of buttons. It’s just like the old telegraph, just way more expensive. AND, no one can spell anymore, dorks. What next, Verizon smoke signals?

And watching movies on a fucking phone? Talk about going back in time. My TV in the 50s was bigger. “I got a 66 inch flat screen at home, so let’s go watch my phone?” Jeez. “Hey Bob, I watched the whole game on my phone. Yeah, it was great, except now my friggin’ eyes are permanently crossed.”

Wireless: making your whole life dependent on an internet connection through radio waves. Sounds like ancient technology to me, but it does work until your system bytes the dust. You can’t print, you can’t shop, you can’t work. You pick up a pencil, but you just can’t seem to remember how to use it.

“Wait, I’ll look it up online!” Oh no you won’t. You pick up a newspaper, but it’s in a different language called English—not the lol bff ttfn shit you’re used to. You could go to the “store” to shop, but there are none left. They all closed while you were sexting that chick from accounting. You would eat but you can’t order delivery, and by now your ass is too big to fit out the fucking door. You could clear your weekend schedule and try to figure out how to use the big yellow book that’s been sitting by your phone all these years, but naaah. You couldn’t fit in the driver’s seat of your fucking Prius anyway. You’re fucked, and China is laughing their skinny asses off at our fat asses, you asses!

Technology is responsible for the biggest horror to befall mankind in centuries. It’s called Auto-Tune. It’s when you can’t sing for shit, but you are pretty and have large breasts. So you find someone who wants them boobs enough to pay for a singing career for someone who can’t sing for shit. The machine does it for you. It takes a note that you can manage to sing, and the computer does the rest, manufacturing a song with your voice. Bullshit at it’s finest. Bullshit you pay big-time for when you purchase these idiot’s songs. Back to the purveyors banking on the purchaser’s stupidity, and believe me, there are plenty of stupid people with money and smarter people who want it. Gene Simmons stated the next Kiss tour will be an “Auto-Tune Free Zone.” He then proceeded to disparage all young female “singers” whose names just happen to end in a vowel (a tongue lashing?).

Did you know that the most common word in divorces in America today is Facebook? For real. People are spending more time online than with their spouses and children. Can you say “Demise of the family unit as we know it?” I new ya could. You may think it’s no big deal, but just ask someone who hasn’t had a family. Not so good. Take an interest, or bug out. Make a decision people. Real people are interesting. People watching is great only if you have a loved one with you to denigrate/ make fun of/ laugh at the strangers you see. If you go to Wal-Mart and just sit there alone, laughing at people, one of two things will happen. You will get a visit from store security or from men in white lab coats. Neither of those choices is a good one. Being alone with technology does no one any good.

Except me,

I get material to write about at work when the fucking modem dies, and the IT guy is here trying to fix it at $Arm/Leg per hour, and I can’t do shit. Guess just what he’s doing while working on our computers? Yes, and his smartphone ringtone is the theme from The Jetsons.

But I Digress…

Crank