CSotD: Old technology and old men
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On the Fastrack offers a pretty compelling simile this morning.
I'm not sure how the year 1994 was selected, though I suppose it could be in line with Bud's purported age; the strip itself launched in 1984, which was about when I got my first computer, a Texas Instruments Pro for which I am not in the least nostalgic.
I did drag around a slightly more recent external floppy-disk reader and a small collection of things I'd written on the old TI for a couple of years, but, on the eve of one move or another, realized that it was all probably degraded and demagnetized to the point where it was pointless.
All of which only strengthens the metaphor, because that computer and its floppies would match well with a couple of old GFs for whom a quick visit to their Facebook page would bring a response of "What was I thinking?"
But let's be fair about this: There were several other computers and several other XGFs that bring more of a warm sense of affection, though even those are followed, upon closer examination, by "oh, right, that's why we're not together anymore."
With a smile and a bit of a sigh.
So yesterday, part of getting together with the family for Easter was being interviewed for a school project by an eighth grade granddaughter about the technology I grew up with, and it would have been pretty dry if it hadn't taken place in the kitchen with an audience.
This meant guffaws when one of the first questions on the prescribed list was "Did you have a telephone in your house?" to which I exploded that of course we had a goddam telephone, how the hell old do you think I am ferchrissake?
Sonny Boy, however, noted that we're not far from a time when having had a landline will, indeed, brand you as truly ancient.
For that matter, I remember friends who didn't have telephones, though that was more a combination of family economics and, in particular, distance from the pole, the latter a factor that perhaps only applied in truly rural areas that late in time.
Her next question, "How many and what type of phone?" required a mental inventory: A wallphone, two desk models and a Princess.
And then I had to explain to the grandchildren what a Princess phone was.
Which wasn't nearly as difficult as when she asked "How did you do math?"
My answer was "In my head," though one of the grands asked about slide rules so that I had to explain that I never learned to use one because I avoided taking that level of math.
The difficult part came when I remembered that my father had brought home a ridiculous sort of mechanical calculator that used a metal stylus to move numbers up and down and while I could remember it and picture it, I couldn't describe how it operated.
Except that it was far more interesting than it was actually useful.
Having a hard time explaining that which was far more interesting than actually useful does not in anyway disrupt Bud's metaphor.
And speaking of technology
A salute to Ben not so much for the gag itself as for the fact that it is one of the few times a cartoon features a tin-can phone with a slack line that is not supposedly in use.
Not that it's a guarantee that Daniel Shelton would not draw two kids talking on a tin-can phone with a slack line, but I'll take what I can get.
And the "thousand feet of fishline" is a funnier punchline if he has actually used the ancient device because there is a physics problem involved in getting far enough apart that you couldn't just talk to each other anyway, while keeping the line taut enough to carry your voices.
Which is that, by the time you get that far apart, the line would either be too slack or would snap.
My granddaughter did not ask about this technology, but there is much the old man remembers that the young folk never ask about.
Not all technical, either, by the way.
I also salute cartoonists for knowing that live lobsters are not bright red, and I don't often hand out those awards.
But, when I do, it's Gritty McDuff's.
Stay salty, my friends.
Get out of the new road if you can't lend a hand
Matt Wuerker touches on a favorite rant, and it's not about the Castros, though, certainly, Cuba would be a better place if Fidel and Raul had had the dignity and self-confidence to step aside when their time on stage was over.
But, as I have said many times before, I think it would be really cool if the Stones got together and went on tour, but only if there had been a period of about 40 years between their last tour and this one.
This is just sad.
I have some memory of an interview with Mick Jagger, which I have not been able to track down, in which he said he didn't want to be an old man up there singing "Satisfaction."
Then again, no opinion is locked in forever, and I did find this quote:
Humanity will, of course, change; human society will, of course, continue to develop — in spite of men and the errors of men. But that is not a revolutionary attitude.
Oh, wait: That was Castro, not Jagger.
I probably got the T-shirt wrong, too. Well, it had some long-forgotten revolutionary figure on it, anyway.
As Wuerker suggests, however, there comes a time in life when you really can no longer be the model for revolution and fighting in the street and all that.
And when it comes down to things that old men remember and young people should pay more attention to, nothing the Stones could play can evoke what's what so well as the words of yet another long-gone, forever-young rebel:
Got to tell the truth in the booth, good people.
That hasn't changed.
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