Attack of the Blog!

Beginning sometime in your twenties you start to have moments where you go, “man, I’m OLD.” You start to notice that people you used to think were so grown up — eighth graders, the JV soccer team, college freshmen — all look like babies to you. You go to the mall and notice that what you wore as an adolescent is now “retro.”

This sort of thing has existed in human culture for a while, but it’s getting worse. Generation X, the current crowd to undergo this phenomenon, is probably going to suffer the worst of it, while Generation Y will be the first group to find it irrelevant. This is because Generation X is the only group whose lives will evenly span the pre-digital and post-digital age. GenX births are generally fall between 1965 to 1980, although people argue over exact dates. People born in these years were brought into a world that was much the same as that of their parents; there were fewer than ten television stations, nobody owned a home computer, and there was one telephone line, television, car, refrigerator, and career per family. But from the second they were born, the world around them began a profound leap in acceleration that, even given the pace of the past, is nearly impossible to believe.

Technology began at a crawl, took millions of years to come to a steady jog, but then suddenly strapped on a rocket pack and broke Mach 5. I’ll show you what I mean. Sometime before these dates, historians and anthropologists are fairly certain humanity had achieved:

1-2 million BC:	stone tools, knives, controlled fire, cooking
500-100k BC:	shelter, clothing, spears, burial
60k to 10k BC:	boats, bow and arrow, mining, counting, sewing, rope, baskets
8,000 BC	alcohol, adobe, grain storage, metalworking, city walls
6,000 BC	animal domestication, dentistry, maps, woven cloth
3,000 BC	beer, wine, irrigation, ploughs, cities, bread, wheel and axle, ice skates, paving, canals
2,000 BC	plywood, writing, sailing, bronze, silk, cement, noodles, combs, buttons, soap, pyramids, chariots, toilets, money, alphabets, candles, skiing
1,000 BC	bells, swords, perfumes, coinage, water clock
The year 0	catapult, surgical tools, scissors, eye surgery, magnifying lens, anchor, sugar, kite, cosmetic surgery, aqueduct, encyclopedia, horseshoe, compound pulley
500 AD	central heating, paper, lanterns, toothpaste, spinning wheel
1000 AD	toilet paper, Greek fire, quill pen, distilled alcohol, valves, eyeglasses, metronome, syringe, gunpowder, paper money, sextant, coffee, woodblock printing, sherbet

I’m not going beyond 1000 AD because you can see where it’s headed. The pace of technology sped up so much that today we can’t even envision what’s out there, let alone actually witness it. Innovations used to come at such a slow pace that any time one occurred, a new deity would usually be created just for the occasion. It’s hard to even imagine people from any longer than a few hundred years ago feeling “old” because of technological revolution in their lifetime.

Try to imagine it: a million years ago, some middle aged human dad went, “Man, I feel so OLD. When I was a kid we were just banging rocks together. But now we’re doing it inside a straw hut. My kids don’t even remember what it was like to bang rocks together outdoors. That’s it. Kids, come on. We’re going camping so you can learn how we banged rocks the old-fashioned way.” And before the kids could grunt “Ooga booga, Dad! I was going to go bang rocks under Grelnak’s palm fronds!!” there they were — getting a sunburn while using crude stone tools, just like in the old days.

Yeah right. Today, the dude who invented the Segway just announced that he’s invented a robot arm that makes Darth Vader-like prosthetics a reality. Did you hear about it? Are you surprised? Are you even impressed?

GenXers are now beginning to pass through the middle peak of life, and when they look at the kids currently entering college the overwhelming transformation of human life is crystal clear. Beginning this year, the kids going to college today have never lived in a world without the Internet. They have little to no recollection of life before the World Wide Web. They don’t know what it’s like to live without cable TV, home video game consoles, e-mail, surround sound, big screens, online shopping, and they barely remember the Web before social networking sites. They do not perceive much, if any, difference between virtual and actual identity. They have never called into a radio station to request a song, and they have never learned the craftsmanship that goes into making a mix of songs on a cassette tape. They have never used a floppy disk that was floppy, and they don’t know that you used to have to swap floppies in and out of your external drive every time you changed locations in a video game. They don’t even know what a Commodore 64 is, and the terms Oregon Trail, BASIC, boot disk, and prank calling means nothing to them.

From childhood to middle age, GenXers have lived an epoch of technological revolution. It’s the theory of relativity in action. The pace began to pick up when Apollo 11 reached the moon’s surface. When the Columbia lifted off. When the Challenger exploded. They reached maturity when the world logged on and plugged in, and they will live out the next forty to sixty years watching the transformation of the world be completed. Just as they begin to die out, they will see the world’s population peak at nine billion.

Those born after Generation X are so accustomed to the lightning quick pace that they no longer notice it, just passengers inside any moving vehicle no longer perceive motion once cruising speed is achieved. Like Einstein’s twins, those who travel at light speed come back younger than those from a slower frame of reference. Generation Y and those after weren’t around when the machine sped up, and Baby Boomers never got 100% on board for the ride. So all of that condescending commentary on the angst of GenXers back when we were in high school was off the mark. We weren’t bored or snotty; we had motion sickness. We are ancient and modern, with our lives riding the cusp between banging rocks together and mind-boggling science fiction become reality. We can see the bewilderment of the older generation and the complacence of the younger.

So when we say we feel old, there is nothing to laugh at. The sort of perspective we’ve been forced to have is difficult to deal with, and the god’s eye view we have of the magnitude of the changes in our world can easily leave you with vertigo. We will never live wholly in one world or the other, and like all gifts, it is also our curse.

I was just chatting online with one of my human minions, and we were commiserating on the fact that it’s difficult to find the motivation to exercise. I attempted to say “motivation sucks” and was met with the following:

IM Administrator: Warning:The message you have attempted to send includes content which is inappropriate and will not be transmitted.

WTF? I asked the minion what that was all about, and she informed me that her place of employment had a tight filter on naughty words. Because after all, if you prevent people from typing bad words, they’ll lose interest in using them, right?

RIGHT.

I was instantly treated to a tutorial in how my minion and her fellow worker drones evade the foolish automated filter. Once they became aware of it, they instantly set about seeing what was and was not allowed. This filter caused them to start using words they hadn’t uttered since grade school. But nothing inspires rebellion more than restriction, so what can you expect?

Apparently you can say “blows” but not “sucks,” showing an astonishing bigotry against people who enjoy lollipops. You can’t mention someone’s rooster, but if you have an interest in cockpits, feel free to discuss. When a permutation of the word didn’t work in context, the drones simply made a few 1337 substitutions and continued their conversation like normal people. It didn’t take long to adapt; licking, boning, and barfing are fine, but remember that it’s not polite to sh!t, scr3w or fvck. The Big Brother approach to profanity would be creepy if it weren’t so worthless and easy to evade.

This kind of censorship isn’t as evil as The Golden Shield, but it’s just as stupid and wrong. Oh noes! People are using potty mouth words! Time for a history lesson, humans: Profanity is contrived, and usually based on racism.

Example: SHIT

Holy shit! I said shit! But why is it a dirty word? Let’s find out, shall we? Shit as we know it came to English through Proto-Germanic skite, making it one of the oldest words in the world. This word was handed down in Old English as scitte, evolved later in Scots and Irish English as shite, and in Chaucer’s London Dialect (which formed the basis of modern English) as shit. Which is a shame, because shite is a lot more fun to say. What did this word mean? To purge excrement from the body. That’s it. But funny how that last bit causes no controversy. Why? Because “purge” and “excrement” are French words. So what makes French so special? Why is it that we can say “intercourse” and “garbage,” but not “fuck” or “crap”? Especially when the words mean exactly the same thing?

Blame racism. When the Normans conquered England, they brought a new language of power with them. Suddenly Anglo-Saxon, the native language of England for nearly a thousand years, was out of favor because it was the language of the politically and economically disadvantaged. Those snotty Normans looked down on English, and use of it indicated lower status. Just as only speaking Spanish will not help you make progress in the modern U.S., Anglo-Saxon dialects were transformed from a rich and beautiful language to the ramblings of the poor. Just like a high school clique, the Normans declared all that was non-French to be “uncourtly.” But, just like a high school clique, they preserved Anglo-Saxon words for repugnant things, and the stigma lingers to this day. Words like “chivalry,” “courtesy,” and “wine” are French. “Fart,” “wart” and “beer” are Anglo-Saxon.

During the English Renaissance, when all things Greek, French, and Latin were all the rage at court, Anglo-Saxon words fell permanently out of disfavor. The racism was so overt and lasting that until recently, FCC censorship laws actually used the term “Anglo-Saxon” to describe the sort of filthy naughty no-no things you couldn’t say on TV. Think of all the words that used to get your mouth washed out with soap. They’re all Germanic.

The racist campaign of the Normans to impose their own Newspeak was so effective that it persists a thousand years later with total perfection. Some stuffshirt saying “Pardonez-moi, where is the restroom? I need to defecate.” means the same damn thing as “Hey, where’s the crapper? I need to take a shit.” Norman Newspeak is so pervasive that even after learning this, English speakers are still reluctant to reclaim the older words in their own language.

Censorship, like all means of thought control, serves but one purpose: to keep those who are in power in power. All this lofty rhetoric about preserving the masses from immorality is a ruse. It’s stupidly easy to debunk the false structures put up to keep us under Big Brother’s watchful eyes. To that I say Screw Censorship.

The Guinness Book of World Records, now known as Guinness World Records, arose from two great Irish traditions: drinking and fighting. In 1951 Sir Hugh Beaver, director of the Guinness Brewery in Dublin, was out shooting in North Slob in Wexford. The men in the party started one-upping each other, because let’s face it — that’s what guys do. Each man was he convinced that he knew which was the fastest game bird in Europe. Some said the grouse, others the golden plover. After lots of arguing, the men got very thirsty and retired to the house, where they drank beer and checked all the common references. But no book could settle the argument.

Human beings have a natural urge to triumphantly slap a pub table, point, and shout loudly, “HA! I TOLD YOU SO!” The Irish are no different. Scientific studies have proven that an Irishman will in fact explode from the pressure of not knowing if they have gotten the questions of a pub quiz correct. Sensitive to this predicament, Sir Hugh realized that there were over 81,000 pubs in Britain and Ireland, where countless arguments were left unsettled, and there was no book to consult to allow the peaceful resolution that comes when someone can finally rub victory in their drinking buddy’s face.

Leave it to Beaver! Sir Hugh sought out Norris and Ross McWhirter in London and found that the English loved to argue as much as the Irish did. In fact, British pubgoers loved fighting so much that the McWhirter twins had who had built a successful fact-finding business out of settling other people’s arguments. The McWhirters compiled what became the Guinness Book of World Records. 1000 copies were printed up and given away in the first edition of 1954. Guinness has always been socially conscious, offering generous pay, pensions, and holidays to its employees centuries before it was common. This small act of charity to loyal Guinness drinkers seemed like the right thing to do.

The book was a hit! Because as much as pub denizens enjoyed fighting, settling arguments with fistfights can get pretty old pretty quick. The book sold like hotcakes, and throughout England, Cornwall, Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, black eyes and broken teeth were slowly replaced with wounded or bolstered egos. Although it was originally intended just to be a freebie from Guinness as an offering to pubgoers, it was wildly popular and the 1955 edition sold 70,000 copies in the United States alone. The McWhirter brothers shouldn’t have underestimated the needs of Yanks to argue too. After all, 34 million Americans are of Irish descent!

For over fifty years, the Guinness Book has been a perennial bestseller worldwide, leading to a beautiful discovery: not just the Irish, not just the English, but everyone is opinionated and everyone loves to be right. Isn’t that a beautiful thought?

So in the great human tradition of crowing over being right, don’t forget to help Firefox 3 become the right answer next time you get in a pub brawl over what software has the most downloads in the world. Mozilla will be sponsoring a Download Day in early June, and with your help you can perpetuate the great human tradition of winning arguments. For twenty-four hours, Mozillans will see if we can get almost two million downloads of Firefox 3. Then, the next time you’re taking a pub quiz and the question arises: “What is the software program with the most downloads for a twenty-four hour period?” you can slap your hand on the table, point, and shout proudly:

“HA! FIREFOX 3! YOU OWE ME A BEER!”

Blade Runner was one of those flicks I just never saw. Tired of friends recoiling in horror at my confession that I hadn’t absorbed that one (similar to the reactions I got when telling geeks I’d never seen Heavy Metal) I picked up a copy of the seventeenth revision Ridley Scott did and re-re-re-re-released last winter. I have no idea what was different about this version from version 1.0, but my understanding is that this is the version Scott always wanted but budget and technology couldn’t give him originally. So, in theory, this edition stands the greatest chance of impressing me. The verdict:

Meh.

Plot was good, script was crappy. Decent noirish cinematography, though it kind of clashes with the sci-fi genre. Solid acting by Harrison Ford (duh). Rutger Hauer was tall and muscular and blonde. The replicant girlfriend chick was totally boring and had bad hair. And that’s all I got.

My major complaint is not the shallow characterization, or the pushy treatment of powerlessness in the face of mortality, or the fact that the pacing was so slow I had time to get up and bake brownies in between each line of dialogue. It’s flagrantly stupid depiction of future technology. This flick shows Los Angeles only eleven years from now with flying cars, genetic engineering, cyborgs, massive skyscraping pyramids, voice-responsive computers, space colonization and . . . no cell phones. It’s the superfuture and there’s no wireless communications? Even the cops have to yell at each other over loudspeakers from their hovering piggiemobiles. Lame.

This movie came out in 1982. There’s just no excuse for that, especially when you consider the following:

1965	1966	1973

Not to mention James Bond had a car phone and pager in 1963’s From Russia With Love. So it’s a little hard for me to buy it when Han Solo doesn’t even have a radio to call for backup after getting ninja kicked in the head by a Mary Lou Retton routine. Which brings me to my major beef: the robots.

I’ve never witnessed a group of robots so worthy of termination as the raggle-taggle band of desperate replicants. These morons are officially banned from my robot army. REJECTED 4-F. They must have used spare parts from the Apple III and then installed Windows ME in their tiny little cyborg brains. Oh hi! I’m a supersmart cyborg, but I return to the apartment of the guy I just murdered right after the deed so the cops can find me! Howdy! I can crush a human skull with one hand, but I’m going to use over elaborate but very sexy tumbling moves to kill my enemy, giving him a perfect shot at my exposed torso! Twits. If you’re a replicant who’s off the farm, there is a simple four step plan to happiness:

1) Find a bunch of money. (The plan has a lot of options at this step.)
2) Leave Earth, since you’ll be shot on sight there
3) Find a nice beach someplace
4) Stay there drinking margaritas until you die, which is soon, so get cracking

I never thought I’d ever see a robot flick and root for the humans. But this was kind of like watching UCLA play Stanford for me — the mathematical quandary is attempting to discern which one I’d like to see fail more. Like Terry Jones’ Brazil, this stinker is just a less sophisticated rip-off of much better earlier work by real artists. Like a high schooler writing an essay about Orwell, it’s clunky. Ridley Scott has a very good point to make in this flick — he just sucks at expressing himself well. The one part I can’t argue with is that even a robot would want to hook up with Harrison Ford.

I’m guessing Blade Runner remains popular because the effects at the time of release had to have been astounding, and Ford’s performance keeps this stinker afloat. Still, I’ve seen much better meditations on the meaning of the soul and coming to terms with mortality that didn’t involve dialogue so slow it could have been performed by a cast that had suffered from strokes. What a waste of a fantastic title. Here I was expecting a movie about samurai bootleggers, and instead I see something that should have been called “Boring Ways to Kill Robots from the Future.”

Meh.

I’ve been wanting a new phone for a while. I did extensive research to select the ideal phone for me. That means I called a 14 year old I know and told her I wanted an mp3 phone. Her recommendation: the LG Chocolate. Mmm. Chocolate. That meant I was switching to Verizon, which, luckily enough, offered a plan I felt I could live with and seems to get better reception in the hilly areas I frequent, according to friends. Cell phone roulette has become something we all accept; you jump on a good deal, ride out the contract, and look for something better. And boy had I found it!

However, this meant that I had to cancel the phone contract I had with AT&T. UGH. I had to make a preliminary call in the early stages of my new phone research to find out when the end of my billing cycle was and what was involved in ending my contract. What I got was a litany of roadblocks preventing me from getting to the answer I wanted. I knew I wanted to leave AT&T. They didn’t offer any phones that met my needs, and the plans they offer weren’t so spectacular as to make me want to compromise. They asked why I was dissatisfied with my service. I was told that my unhappiness over high overage fees was my own fault because I talked too much, and would I like to renew a two year contract and pay more? No. No. No. What is the last day of my billing cycle so I know when to get my new phone to allow at least ten days of overlap? The fourth of the month. Thank you. GOODBYE.

It’s a technique called the “soft no.” Sales reps are required to do it, because it often works. By undermining the justifications for your decision, sales people can distract, embarrass, or fluster a shopper to get them to waste money on something they don’t really need or want. In general, don’t talk to sales reps unless you are very stubborn or have made an iron-clad decision. I had to call back just now to cancel my old account, but this time I was prepared with the necessary plot to take a short cut through the nine circles of customer service hell.

How did I do it? I flat out lied. Flagrant lies are noted below with an asterisk:

AT&T Drone:	I’m so sorry to hear that. It looks like you’ve been a loyal customer since 2006. Can you tell me why you’re dissatisfied with your current service?

(See, this is how it all started last time. I said “no, I want a phone you don’t offer” last time and ended up spending over ten minutes trying to get the customer service drone to stop asking me questions I didn’t want to answer. But me so clever:)

Me:	Oh, I’m not leaving AT&T*. My husband* is adding me to a family line* that will be more convenient for us. I want a new number because we moved*, so I’m just closing this old one down, that’s all*. Tee hee!
Drone:	Oh, I see. Well, if you would like to transfer this phone line to a relative under the age of 18 we can waive the activation fee.
Me:	I don’t have any underage relatives*.
Drone:	All right then . . . thirty seconds of typing sounds . . . well, then if that’s all the last day that this line will be active is June 4. We appreciate blah blah blah blah blah and you have a wonderful day.
Me:	You too. Thanks! Bye!

BAM. That’s how you foil even the dastardliest efforts of a customer service drone who’s been programmed to detonate your ability to make free choices. Shoot, I probably made that drone’s day because she didn’t have to go through the long song and dance and listen to me become increasingly angry. The really crappy part is that companies like AT&T carefully track this kind of data to find out why people are leaving so that they can attempt to make their cell phone plans just palatable enough for people to swallow them. And now they’ve gotten some useless data because I just didn’t feel like putting up with their crap.

Hey AT&T: Please add your irritating attempts to curb customer departure to the list of reasons I left you. Don’t take it personally. I’ll probably have the same thing happen one day when I leave Verizon for something better. In the meantime, give me some Chocolate!