In honor of turning 30, here are some signs that you (and this does mean you!) are growing old, in no particular order. I’m in some stage or another of all of these, and I’ll probably add to it as I discover more signs that I’m turning into a cantankerous, crotchety, ornery old person:
1. You start to hate teenagers. When you see them coming down the street, you cross to the other side. You don’t understand their taste in clothes, dress, or music. And they’re so damn loud in the movie theaters. You want to shake your fist at them.
2. You start to say things like, “I remember when we had to set the timer on the VCR to record TV shows. We didn’t have things like TiVo, and we got along just fine.”
3. The musicians that you used to rock out to are now staples of the easy listening station. Or they’re referred to as "classic rock." (See my "Everything old is new again" entry.)
4. You would rather burn yourself with a cigarette than tolerate the whiny bitches on the Real World. You’d rather relive your childhood watching “I Love the 80s” on VH1.
5. Staying up late means midnight. When you stay out “partying” till 3 am, you pay for it the next day.
6. You need more clothing items with the words “control” or “slimming” or “flattening” in their names.
7. You are irritated by the interns at your work (who were born in the mid 80s) and their sense of entitlement. (Hey, we all sorted mail and made copies during our internships—those punks should get over it.)
8. The plastic 70s dishware, Fisher Price toys, and mass-produced, stackable Eames chairs that you used when you were little are now sold in antique stores for way too much.
9. Instead of t-shirts and posters with ironic sayings you find yourself strangely drawn to pictures of kittens and puppies proclaiming, “Hang in there!”
10. Your parents start to go from nitpicking about your future spouse to pushing for any member of the opposite sex with no visible signs of mutation.
Friday, May 27, 2005
Monday, May 09, 2005
Mr. T's ode to moms
Mr. T pities the fool who don't treat his mother right!
Forwarded to me by a friend. This is hilarious. Back in the day, this was considered an appropriate educational video. I especially love the snaps in the beginning; I'll have to use those some time...
Happy Belated Mother's Day!
Forwarded to me by a friend. This is hilarious. Back in the day, this was considered an appropriate educational video. I especially love the snaps in the beginning; I'll have to use those some time...
Happy Belated Mother's Day!
Sunday, May 01, 2005
Choose your own morality tale
Stumbled across a link to this on someone else’s blog. It’s a list of mock Choose Your Own Adventure books; kinda crass but funny as hell. Wonder how long it’ll take for a cease-and-desist order to take effect.
I was obsessed with CYOAs as a child. I still collect them; I’ll pick one up if I see one in a used bookstore. I especially love the old-school ones that Edward Packard wrote and Paul Granger illustrated. I think my favorite was No. 5, The Mystery of Chimney Rock. I read it so much it got all torn and wrinkled and I think I had to throw it away. I would dog-ear the pages with choices so that when I died (which you do in a lot of them, and quickly) I could backtrack and try the other option.
On the one hand, I loved those books because if you died you didn’t get all sad that it was the be-all and end-all of your personal story. There was never a feeling of finality or fatalism. I think I loved it most because I so wished life could have been that way. Sure, you may have accidentally opened the wrong door and died a slow and horrible death, but you can also just go back, start over, and find some treasure and live happily ever after.
On the other hand though, the books were pretty morbid. So much freakin’ death. And it’s actually “you” dying, not some fictitious character. The worst was when you would peek ahead to the page you chose and saw the words “The End.” The cheaters would go back and insist that that was not the choice they would have made anyway, so it didn’t count. But I would get so pissed at myself for making the stupid decision that got me killed in the first place, even though I was dead and couldn’t possibly continue self-flagellating. I think these books were written as morality tales for kids: If you make the wrong choices and die, you only have yourself to blame. Thanks, Bantam Books, for instilling self-loathing in me at such an early age.
But I still love those old books for keeping it real. After all, in life, you really only are successful with maybe five out of every 25 choices you make. And everyone dies eventually, even if you are a high-ranking space captain or some awesome superspy. What happy childhood memories. Sniffle sniffle.
I was obsessed with CYOAs as a child. I still collect them; I’ll pick one up if I see one in a used bookstore. I especially love the old-school ones that Edward Packard wrote and Paul Granger illustrated. I think my favorite was No. 5, The Mystery of Chimney Rock. I read it so much it got all torn and wrinkled and I think I had to throw it away. I would dog-ear the pages with choices so that when I died (which you do in a lot of them, and quickly) I could backtrack and try the other option.
On the one hand, I loved those books because if you died you didn’t get all sad that it was the be-all and end-all of your personal story. There was never a feeling of finality or fatalism. I think I loved it most because I so wished life could have been that way. Sure, you may have accidentally opened the wrong door and died a slow and horrible death, but you can also just go back, start over, and find some treasure and live happily ever after.
On the other hand though, the books were pretty morbid. So much freakin’ death. And it’s actually “you” dying, not some fictitious character. The worst was when you would peek ahead to the page you chose and saw the words “The End.” The cheaters would go back and insist that that was not the choice they would have made anyway, so it didn’t count. But I would get so pissed at myself for making the stupid decision that got me killed in the first place, even though I was dead and couldn’t possibly continue self-flagellating. I think these books were written as morality tales for kids: If you make the wrong choices and die, you only have yourself to blame. Thanks, Bantam Books, for instilling self-loathing in me at such an early age.
But I still love those old books for keeping it real. After all, in life, you really only are successful with maybe five out of every 25 choices you make. And everyone dies eventually, even if you are a high-ranking space captain or some awesome superspy. What happy childhood memories. Sniffle sniffle.
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