Plagerism at it's Best

Got a fantastic email earlier this week... I figured since I am brain dead (from no sleep, constant overload at work, and just general stress of 2 sick kids, deadlines, finances, and all the other shitty things that have berated me over the past week) I thought I would cheat, and post it today instead. I have added some of my own notes on a few of the subjects (my comments in blue), as well as added a couple of my OWN thoughts to the end, but I promise a completely original piece of work is on its way... later this week... ENJOY! :)

THE SPOILED UNDER-30 CROWD!!! (Now, I know I AM under Thirty, but juuuuust barely. Plus, I FEEL a hell of a lot older, so I am considering myself part of the "Over Thirty" Crowd...)

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking Twenty-five miles to school every morning. Uphill...barefoot...BOTH ways...Yadda, yadda, yadda

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, There was no way in hell I was going to lay A bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it And how easy they've got it!

But now that... I'm over the ripe old age of Thirty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today.You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia!And I hate to say it but you kids today you don't know how good you've got it!

I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalogue!! (I remember in Middle School one of my girlfriend's got the Internet. Good Ol' "DIAL UP" of course. We would sit anxiously for 30-45 minutes, sometimes longer, just to get on a chat page and talk to total strangers. And I also remember that when I was a kid, my parents actually had a FULL SET of Encyclopedia Brittanica's... Does ANYONE have those anymore?)

There was no email!! We had to actually write somebody a letter, with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there! (Who had a pen pal growing up? /raises hand... Anyone who didn't - probably under 30)

There were no MP3' s or Napsters! (Just got my first EVER mp3 player about a week ago... /sigh, I'm such a loser...) You wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the damn record store and shoplift it yourself! (did this a bunch...) Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ'd usually talk over the beginning and fucked it all up! (I taped SO MUCH shit off of the radio... my sister and I both had tons of "homemade complilation" tapes...and they all sucked and had every DJ from KKRD on them. Some of them even had US on them, because eventually you would tired of waiting for the song you want, and would break down and CALL the station to request it.)

We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that's it! (beeep, beeep, beeep... = most annoying sound on Earth.)

And we didn't have fancy Caller ID either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your Bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister! (I remember when we GOT caller ID. That was the coooooolest thing EVER. You could SEE WHO WAS CALLING!!! OMG!!! And if you were too "loser" to get caller ID, you got the next best thing...*69!! How freakin' cool was that, guys? Someone calls you, and you can CALL THEM RIGHT BACK! Bye bye crank callers... /sad face)

We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari! (And the original Nintendo.) We had games like 'Space Invaders' and 'asteroids'. Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your Imagination!! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen - Forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE! (I remember thinking Pong and Joust were freakin' awesome...THEN came the original Zelda and blew them ALL out of the fuckin' water!!!)

You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your ass and walk over to the TV to change the Channel. (Now, we DID have a remote, but it was one of those huge silver ones. And eventually it would get covered in sticky black stuff [aka dirty from your hands] and you spent half the time trying to pick it off so you could see the freakin' numbers.)

And there was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little rat-bastards. (OMG Saturday morning cartoons were THE BEST! They were worth the wait. lol)

And we didn't have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up we had to use the stove ... Imagine that! (We did have microwave, but they were new enough that a lot of my friends didn't have them. And I remember my mom making homemade macaroni and cheese in it MANY times...AND I remember blowing up SEVERAL packages of hotdogs on the quest to perfect the "defrost" option...)

That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled. You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980!

Regards,

The Over 30 Crowd

ANGIES ADDITIONS:

I remember the year we got our very first VCR. Oh, yeah, that's right. It was the size of a current day computer and it was ONLY in my parent's room. (I'm sure they were watching "educational" shows only...)

I remember when Tiger Beat was THE magazine to get! And it always had those fold out "penthouse style" posters of one of the Corey's in it. (If you didn't know that was a reference to the infamous duo Corey Haim and Corey Feldman, please raise your hand so my friend can come over and hit you with a tack hammer, because you are a RETARD).

Also, we didn't have cell phones. Neither did our parents... and we CERTAINLY didn't have them in high school. You know what cool gadget I got when I was in high school? A PAGER. OH YES. And I was damn proud to be sporting it too!!! There were pay phones at every gas station and on street corners all over town - and people actually used them. A lot. And, and I must mention a call from a pay phone was NOT 50 cents, or even 35 cents... they were a quarter. And some of the really good old ones were still hanging around with that 10 cent price tag...

Oh, and in fact we didn't even have CORDLESS phones until I was in high school. You had the phone with the loooong ass cord that you drug all over the freakin' house trying to get a SMIDGEN of privacy. And if your jerkass siblings want to use the phone? They just grab the other end and PULL.

Oh, and text messaging? In school, we called that "passing notes", maybe you've heard of it? Yea, that is where you have to write down your secret message and fold up as small as possible. Then you think of some genius way to deliver it... whether you throw it to your friend across the room when the teacher isn't looking, or employ all of your other classmates in the "passing" (this was how we practiced teamwork and being able to trust and depend on others), or you decide to take a little walk over to the trashcan and discreetly drop the note on your friend's desk as you pass by... the "passing" was the fun part about it all!!!! The possibility of getting caught! And you never really wrote anything tooo bad, because if you did get caught, the teacher would read it aloud to the whole class and everyone would laugh and point at you...

Ok, that's all I can think of at the moment!! Please feel free to add your own, or comment on mine!

See ya all later!