1. We Stopped Bagging our Own Groceries
It may have been different where you came from, but where I grew up, we worked with the cashier. It was our food after all and besides, it saved time for you, the cashier and the poor sap behind you. Now people mindlessly stand there, plastic in hand, wishing she’d move a little faster. Bring your own bags people! That's the least you can do.
Implication? We’ve become spoiled, apathetic babies who will soon expect the cashier to cook our food and spoon-feed it to us.
2. Men Started Shaving their Chests
What’s with the need to be totally hairless? I for one find chest hair on a man to be a sexy thing. Then again women have been aiming for baby-like hairlessness for quite a while so why shouldn't men experience the joy of a good hot waxing?
Implication? We’re desperately trying to escape the fact that we are, in essence, hairy beasts. Or we’re trying to become babies again. Our constant pursuit of youth affects men as well as women. Even babies are feeling ancient.
3. Vehicles Began Making Too Many Sounds
I won’t even get into the needless noise pollution created by useless car alarms or the cacophony chirps constantly going off as people try to figure out how to activate them. I’m trying to figure out when it became mandatory that all trucks go “beep beep beep” when in reverse. Why didn't we get to vote on that? Were the blind people and children getting plowed down left and right before this new form of audio torture?
Implication? Over-regulation rules and no one know how to use a rear-view mirror.
4. Libraries Turned Noisy
Our library in the summer makes a Chuck E. Cheese on a Saturday seem tame. What’s next? Keggers in the church? Orgies in the classroom? Is no space sacred? Libraries used to be a sanctuary – a place for the mind to settle and focus. Now children run in maniacal circles while their parents talk loudly on their cell phone (on the other side of the library. Shhh...they don't want to be disturbed!)
Implication? We’ve have no sanctity of space. The need to spill over has become so widespread...oh and many of our kids have become undisciplined monsters.
5. Antibacterial Products became Commonplace Clean apparently wasn’t clean enough for the anal-retentive homemaker. Germs are everywhere and this is war! If she could scour her hands with bleach, she would. These industrial strength germaphobe products will protect her from all the dirty, invisible things out to get her.
Implication? We're control freaks and spend too much time indoors. And women need to be fucked better overall.
6. Our Workdays Went from 9 - 5 to 8 – 6 It's a little Big Brother that our 9 – 5 slowly morphed into an 8 – 6. As if we wouldn’t notice! But we didn't, really.
Implication? We're still a slave to the man.
7. Those Stupid Blow-up Christmas Things on Lawns
Come on. They’re not cute. They’re not quaint. They’re stupid and tasteless. I don’t even think kids like them.
Implication? We are inundated with such generic nonsense that we’ve lost any sense of aesthetics or taste.
Ho, ho ho, I'm a tasteless eyesore!8. People Stopped using their Turn Signals
What, are they too good for you? Well, then don’t trouble those tired little fingers of yours. I’ll use my telepathic skills instead.
Implication? Turn signals indicate a sense of consideration and concern for the other's safety which we've long since but a brake on.
9. Parents Talked on Cellphones while Pushing a Baby Stroller
The child must feel a subconsciously disconnect when this happens. Even if you don't believe that, one thing is for certain: it's not quality parent/child time.
Implication? Our cell phones have a life of their own at this point. They're stuck between our legs, plastered to our face and checked maniacally. Our need for connectivity has made us extremely disconnected. And sure, kids feel that.
10. People Used Giant Plastic Wheelbarrows for a Day Trip to the Beach
Every summer I watch men and women break their backs lugging these massive plastic wheelbarrows packed to the gills. Can anybody pack light anymore? Do you really need the effin' kitchen sink with you, bloated American family?
Implication? Dependency on stuff to a gross proportion. We all need dumped in a jungle with a compass and a Swiss Army knife.
11. Food Became Too Orange
Have you seen a Cheeto lately? It’s not just orange: it’s shockingly orange. I can pig out on snack foods with the best of them but you have to wonder how you can blithely consume something that may in fact glow in your intestines.
Implication? We’re all going to hell in a neon orange hand basket.
Your intestinal tract after too many Cheetos
2 comments:
Hey Beth; here's some POV from an Austin/SF Bay Area commuter:
1. In Austin, I bag my own groceries. But when I was a kid, we had baggers at our store that my parents *used to tip*.
2. Like Eddie Murphy, my chest is hairless. I am the next stage in human evolution. (Except for the fact that I'm shaped like a Bosch Pear.)
3. My theory on this, and many other vehicular "enhancements" (e.g., the self-parking car) is that they are designed for older people by Boomers as they are aging.
7. My experience in the nerd world is that the work day is from 9-6. I note that this differs depending on the location; e.g. in Austin, it's 8-5.
9. Folks in Austin still use their turn signals; folks in the Bay Area never did.
Personally, my pet peeve is advertising *everywhere*. Even on the *floor* of grocery stores.
On the flip side, LA is now less smoggy now, with more people and more cars, than it was in 1975; California Condors are not extinct, they way they were going when I was a kid; Lady Bird Johnson's efforts at cleaning up roadsides has been a huge success--highways used to be literally littered with trash, but not so much now.
Progress isn't all bad. Really!
as long as i will have a penis i will not shave my chest. and i do not plan on ever not having a penis, so call off the furiers.
but never mind that. my first movie sneak-in was peet's dragon/smokey and the bandit. me and tony salerno. mom dropped us off. it was our first movie trip without a shaperone. all i remember was when someone gave gleason the bird. i never laughed so hard. and sally fields was hot. we were ten years old. tony had that farrah fawcett poster on his wall, but i had the dallas cowboy's cheerleaders poster pinned on the cieling above my bed. yeah, and i still enjoy flipping the bird. ask anyone.
tony went to prison in '85. shot some guy in the neck for messing with his lady. a couple years later i got burt's autograph and sent it to tony at pelican bay. no word if he ever recieved it but i'm guessing no one in prison shaves their chest hairs off. that's good enough for me cause i'd hate to have to one day show up in prison and with no hair on my body...
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