Hi-

I'm arriving four years late via the Belmont Club. I think it will be worthwhile to spend some time here.

Happy
Anniversary

RB

I'm not so sure I agree with the premise of your post, Gerard.

After all, the older I get, the better I was.

It's everything else that atrophies. Hmph!

I'd grumble 'bout getting off my lawn, but I see that I'm on yours. Shufflin' along now, I'm off!

Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX

I disagree on the Double Stuff Oreos. Love those damn things.

Now, on the pervasive, invasive music EVERYWHERE issue, I agree.

I want to go to a hardware store without having to listen to music piped in that sounds like a jingle from a tampon commercial.

Can we add that men's voices are not what they used to be? Must every male speak like they've been emasculated with pinking shears? And shrieking, whiny-boy singers need to be sent back home to mama's basement. Unless you're Freddy Mercury or the BeeGees, you really should leave the whingy stuff to the pre-teens.

I have to listen to Trace Adkins or Randy Travis just to remember what testosterone sounds like. Mmmm. . .

I'm with you, Joan. Men's voices used to be a pleasant thing for me to listen to. Now we have Billy Mays. And that perpetual whiny 5th girl timbre is just too much for me to handle.
Add to that list the phone solicitor's voice. If you can understand the dialect at all, the voice on the phone is more than likely to be prerecorded and computerized.

Rock music blared from the stadium PA system between innings at baseball games. It's like saying, "sure, Eden is nice, but what we really need is a ghetto blaster to make paradise complete."

Oh, yeah. This was good! I'm completely on board with the piped in music thing, particularly when it's used in the local Kroger's store to induce anxiety and therefore more purchasing.

I was hiking my third mile in there trying to find the damn olive oil (which you'd think would be a least within 2 football fields' length of the vinegar) with no success - all to the strains of a very bad rendition of Unchained Melody.

I swore that I'd never enter that mind-control institution again.

Then there's Healthy Choices Chicken Marsala Cafe Steamer Basket. I am SO STEAMED. I discovered this item a few months ago. Dang! It was awesome. I'd finally found a healthy, quick, frozen meal that was delicious. I heated another one a few nights ago and it tasted like cardboard with bad seasonings and I'm thinking I'd lost my mind. Well. Deep in the bowels of my freezer - I discovered the earlier, original version. They've changed the recipe! The photo shows the change, but it's still labeled Roasted Chicken Marsala.

I'm phoning the company today. Bastards.

"""MUSIC IN RESTAURANTS, BARS AND EVERYPLACE ELSE:"""

Yessss! Shotgun, please!

Posted by Gagdad Bob at June 3, 2009 6:12 AM

OH yeah. Can't go to baseball games anymore because of that, even (especially?) minor league.

I lived in Oakland in the 70's, and they used to have a live Dixieland band at the Coliseum. You'd enter the gates to the sounds of Muskrat Ramble played by 5 guys standing like an island in the stream of fans, and hear them from a distance as they circled the stadium between innings.

Real hot music in the fresh air, interrupted periodically by BillyBall. America, down to the ground. I was briefly on the list to start a game with the Star-Spangled Banner, but by the time my name came up, the whole situation had declined to We Will, We Will Rock you for 3 hours, and I took a pass.

Alas.

"""""AUTOMOBILE CONTROLS:"""""

Automobiles, PERIOD. I remember my sense of accomplishment when, as a non-greasemonkey, I could replace my own radiator, or spark plugs, and could adjust that perfectly fine device known as a carburator. Now, some car geek will likley tell me about all the engineering improvements in modern cars, but I would have to shoot back with "fine, but the next step is to make them so you can replace the fancy doodads yourself, AND the frikkin' radiator."

This is fun! I need a good grump-fest.

OK - how about appliances? I'm thinking ovens and microwaves in particular, but it also applies to printers, copiers, etc... All the 'leetle' flat touch-type buttons. If you don't have to "touch" your selection more than once in four tries, you're an ace. Remember when appliances had "dials"? As in "wheels"? As in, what genius decided they had to be reinvented?

I'm with the other ladies on the male voices too. Ah - for the sound of a nice baritone.

I'm back. This is good therapy.

Let's discuss the wiper blade dial on my steering column's turn signal/cruise control arm. I love my Honda Odyssey. I detest that dial. I'm pretty good running the DVR, the VCR, computers, snow blowers, fancy locks, cell phones, the microwave, the cleaning program on my fancy touch-pad oven( you're so right here WC!) but that damnable windshield wiper dial on the turn-signal arm of my Honda is so counter-intuitive that in 3 years I've not mastered it. I'm so flustered trying to select fast speed from slow, from variable (fast, medium or slow) that I'm focused more on that blink'n plastic rotating barrel than I am the road. Arggghhhhh!

Thank you for listening.

Much of the digital control craze that has supplanted analog dials and switches is the fault of the Japanese. These inscrutable orientals have a very differently-constructed brain apparently. Also, I think they're trying to get back at us for WWII, or something.

Boutique ammunition.

If you own a rifle in .30-06, a pistol in .357/38 Special, a twelve gauge pump shotgun, and a .22 caliber rifle... you are equipped to harvest 99% any game species in any climate. You have the power to contest and overcome any human or natural agency acting against you with deadly force.

You can defend your self from any threat not riding behind armor or dropping ordnance from above.

If you are serious about being armed all the time, get a pistol in .45 or 9mm. I love revolvers, but trouble can come in bunches and a shotgun just sticks out at Trader Joe's...

It seems every time I pick up another sporting/outdoors/gun mag there they are, rolling out the next caliber designed expressly to deal with the left handed pygmy Cape Buffalo menace.

.204 Ruger. .327 Magnum. Fifteen or twenty different flavors of Short, Super Short, Ridiculously Short Magnums in bores running from .17 to 5". Pistol calibers that would be tank main guns forty years ago - .50 AE, .454 Casull,.357 Sig, 10mm, .40 S&W...

It used to be that the honorable brotherhood of Wildcat reloaders was just that - a clique of dedicated hobbyists leavened with some dead serious pros who were looking for the edge of the envelope for some particular reason.

You won't be passing on that 4000 fps rifle to your kids, buster. The bore will be shot out before you get tired of spending forty dollars a box of ammo. I would the put number of people I've met that could shoot a rack rifle to its mechanical limits in the low dozens. And I meet a lot of shooters.

I love the freedom to choose... but the current state of the firearms marketing environment is frankly an insult to the intelligence of the customer base.

I feel much better now.

"And having Coldplay's latest hit follow you into the john is the final insult."

Having "Yellow" playing in the background while you're "shakin' hands wif' the wife's best friend" is quite appropriate.

"...I could replace my own radiator, or spark plugs, and could adjust that perfectly fine device known as a carburator..."
Don Rodrigo at June 3, 2009

Well, as a Honda enthusiast, I can still do most of those, and swap in a new engine with appropriate wiring, ECU and other doohickies. Yup, go look at the goofy kids with their B16 powered hatchback that sounds like a weed whacker that can do low 11s, those are the future grease monkeys that will keep the tradition of tinkering alive.

I'm gonna wait until I hit my mid 30s to start ranting.

I'd pay an extra 100 bucks for a microwave with two dials - one for power level and one for time - and a big ole honkin' START button. That happens to describe the design of my parents' first microwave back in the 70s. It would also vibrate the hell out of the china you left sitting on top and end the cycle with a quaint little 'ting'. Bmmmmmmmmmmmmmf - ting! God, that was a great design.

Duncan, you poor kid. You don't have any ranting to do because you haven't had the experience of good design supplanted by crap. And it's possible you never will.

Hey - I'm suddenly feeling a lot better about being over 40 something.

"God, that was a great design."

Sounds like the Amana Radar Range that was a fixture in the Midland YMCA.

I always kinda thought that opening that hatch would one day reveal the surface of the moon...

I also remember my friend's mom freaking out about the "radiation waves" undoubtedly cooking all the folks in the dining room.

Good times.

Oh Western Chauvinist! You're making me homesick. I remember the clattering china and that pleasant little 'ting'.

The way every man in the room would remove their hat when the National Anthem was played. I've come close to getting in a few scrapes for "helping" men remember to do this...but they always back down when they realize that the 50 something old man that just knocked their hat off(oops, I meant to say helped them remove their hat)isn't going to. Also sports, TV, public education.

Harumppph!!

How about gangsters? Man, have they changed. They used to wear double-breasted suits with a fedora and have nicknames like, "Bugsy" and "The Bull". Now they dress like they're wearing their dad's work clothes and have names like Tupac and Biggy Smalls. And they're gangstas. I say, bring back Edward G. Robinson. That's what a gangster should look like.

And that's another thing. What about cartoons? Sponge-Bob? Cat-Dog? That doesn't even make sense. Bugs Bunny, now that was a cartoon. "Kill da wabbit, kill da wabbit!" That's how I learned about opera. And The Pink Panther Show. I can't remember a thing from that cartoon, but we watched it! And we were happy, 'cuz that's all we had.

Ha! Mr. Tmj, you nailed it! It was the Amana Radar Range... "...surface of the moon" exactly. Isn't it funny they called it "Radar Range" as if because radar and microwave are both part of the electromagnetic spectrum, the terms are interchangeable? "And now, I'll heat my coffee via radar."

Honestly, I think we only used it to heat leftovers and water for Mom's instant Taster's Choice coffee for the first ten years we had it. That's probably because the microwavable food technology drastically lagged the advent of the appliance.

And there's another example of something ruined by "progress". Popcorn. I made the mistake of making popcorn for my kids on the stove-top once and now they can't stand the convenient microwave stuff. Which brings me back to microwave controls. Can't just set the stupid thing to 5 minutes on 100% power. Now, for your convenience, the POPCORN button. Snack size or regular? Don't forget to elevate the package. Bah humbug!

Yeah, Cathy. I think you and KD bought that thing for Mom and Dad - didn't you? Remember how we'd start it and then try to step back inconspicuously as if to say, "I'm not afraid of a radiation leak - not me!" We were so modern. And brave! Good times indeed.

Here's another one for you, Gagdad Bob: TV baseball announcers who talk about themselves instead of calling the action on the field, cameramen who insist on giving you shots of the crowd until the pitcher is well into his windup, and producers who wait until the count is 3-2 before flashing the batter's stats.

I grew up with Ernie Harwell and George Kell calling the Detroit Tiger games, and they were great, even if the Tigers weren't much of the time. With them, the game was always on the field, never in the booth. Just the opposite of that moron Harry Caray, may his soul burn forever in hell (just kidding...sort of) for letting baseball announcers think they were the stars instead of the players. (Gets ready to duck...)

The small-narrow-light craze has given us telephones that, when you answer them, skitter across the desk to dangle below the receiver above the new mess of pencils and papers they just created on the floor.
The safety craze has given one-handed power tools that require two hands, or two thumbs, to operate.

You forgot the way baseball players of today, dress. What happened to the nifty sox they used to wear? Now the pants all look like long underwear at the end of Winter.

"Duncan, you poor kid. You don't have any ranting to do because you haven't had the experience of good design supplanted by crap. And it's possible you never will."

GM's doin' a fair job of that right now.

Well this is an excellent list. I have just one to add for you music buffs:

Give me back the old full dynamic range recordings. The level of 'loudness' saturation in music recordings where all the 'space' and dynamic range that's shoved aside to allow for maximum continuous volume and bass is unlistenable after a couple of songs. It might be fine for low fi situations like driving with the top down or playing background music on a boom box at the beach, but it totally sucks over high quality set-up when you really want to listen to the music.

Also, I hate the new processed vocals where all the intonations are manipulated to be pitch perfect and the vocals have strange sound affects.

Today's music in general accross all genres suck with a few exceptions usually by older artists.

Give me back a reasonably priced simple tube/analog amplifier to go with my record player and old Bose 901s.

How about a sitcom that's actually funny; how about some good quality wholesome family TV like The Waltons.

Yes I'm closer to 50 than 40.

I'm not sure if this article was meant to include only physical "things" or more abstract concepts. Leaning towards the latter is the observation that work ethics seem to have been replaced by a pervasive "how little can I do and still keep my job" mentality. I honestly believe that the unions have passed their period of usefulness and become, when considered en toto, a bastion of the corrupt. Just because a corporation is able to make a profit does not automatically mean that the workers are entitled to more money and benefits. Sorry if I am ranting about personal pet peeves again.

How about televisions in every public venue. Is it possible to go someplace and not find one blaring away? Just once I'd like to sit in the waiting room as some ailment in my car is being dealt with and just read Field and Stream in peace.

"...Bugs Bunny, now that was a cartoon..."

Yeah, it was. But one that was never meant for kids. Sure, kids liked him, but I doubt many "got" little inside jokes like "Sir Osis of Liver" and "Giovanni Jones" (speaking of the opera episode) until they were close to their teens, if then.

The only "modern" cartoon I thought was at all funny was Ren & Stimpy, and then only in small doses. The rest--Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy--are just animated sitcoms. Give me Bugs and Wile E. Coyote anytime.