Get Me a Whopper

It's a weird world. You come into it unspoiled and aware, open to every possibility without question, doubt, or fear. You're given love and care, provided with boundaries to keep you safe from harm -- while at the same time you are offered the opportunity to discover and explore the world all around you.

Unfortunately, the unspoken cost of wisdom and knowledge is the loss of small portions of that same sense of unfettered innocence. In a strange way it's almost like the more things you learn and the more explanations you get, the less you're able to be fascinated and amazed by. Not that your quality of life is horrifically lessened, but that there's a certain tiny philosophical dent that gets put in the side of the brand new car that is your sense of wonder when you understand the reasons why the sky is blue.

Most times you let it go. Most times you put that on a separate shelf, so that it doesn't interfere with the good feeling you get when you wake up on a weekend morning and look out your window to see a bright and sunny day staring back at you.

But that moment. Those tiny instances in time where those facts come into conflict, and you can't help but get a little mad that things aren't the way you wish they were..
That's when he comes out.
I'm never more of an annoying white guy than when I'm complaining that things in my life have changed from what they used to be. Not that guys from other cultures don't get mad about these sorts of things too, but that somehow honky complaining about quality of life now versus when they were younger brings out the worst in those of us who can't escape what we are, regardless of how much we dislike the image it presents.

In other words, when white dudes get all riled up about "these kids today with their music and their Internet-enabled phones" or whatever it's like we act differently. Our asses clench up and we tend to wave our hands around a lot while we talk. Then we stand there with clenched fists while random veins in our foreheads pop out and pronounce themselves. I think we walk funny too (I mean, we always kinda do -- but it's sooo much worse when we're incensed).

Seriously, I would give anything to alter the way I cuss when I'm stuck in traffic. Call me an Uncle Tom, or Michael Jackson or whatever you want -- but if there was some sort of pill or injection I could take that could reverse whatever genetic engineering makes me say "Shit, Shit, Shit!" the way I do when I can't wordlessly impose my will upon an interstate filled with people who won't speed up and let me merge, I'd be the first in frikking line.

And make no mistake, we all do it to some extent. Seriously, -- if you order something at a restaurant and your server messes it up to the point where you've just gotta tell someone about it, you could be goddamn Eminem up in that hizzy and the words "I need to speak with a manager" would still sound awful.
All that being said, I'm pissed.
It's the same mental attitude that has launched a thousand ruined cultural relationships -- and I'm not trying to crack back on anyone here (even inadvertantly), but you know just as much as I do that there is nothing more infuriating than when things you are used to start working a different way, or disappear altogether.

I know it's called progress, and there's a negative stigma attached when you're the only one standing in the back tugging on the rope trying to pull things back into the past -- but man, this sucks.

After an accident that wasn't my fault and a whole bunch of mess that I had to pay for myself I finally get my Mustang back -- only to discover the "Service Engine Soon" light blinking back at me. So I come home to get the info for the body shop, only to find that somethings wrong with this computer that I've only had for a few months -- and when I control-alt-delete to get that fixed up I get a blue screen of death. I get through recovering all that the best I can, and now my iPod won't sync.
All Dude ever wanted was his rug back.
And all of this would be ok, because you know -- shit breaks. It's just part of living in the go-go-gadget world, and as frustrating as it can be there's really no use whining about it, especially when you paid the extra cake to ensure that you could repair/replace said gadget should this sort of thing happen.

But then I go to blog about it, you know -- vent off the anger, try to laugh at it a little, only to discover that last.fm has discontinued the practice of offering embed codes for songs on their website. You know, the little flash-widget thingee that I put at the end of all my blog posts where you can hear 30 seconds of the music I'm listening to?
Gonzo.
Man, I loved that thing. I don't know if anyone who ever visited this site actually ever clicked on any of the song clips I put on here ..ever, but because music is such a big deal in my life, I always liked having those tunes there. And not just as a way to add a multi-media appeal for readers, but also as sort of a scrapbook of who I was at the time I was listening to the tune. I know it sounds kinda corny, but if you click on the archives and notice the kinds of artists and songs I put in the bottom corners of the entries -- it sometimes helps zoom in on certain memories, certain people who came into my life at that time who affected my musical tastes, introduced me to new artists, or put me in certain moods reflected by listening choices I made at that particular moment in time.

But more than that -- I just liked having those little clips there. It was cool to me, like fins on the back of a '57 Chevy, or drive-up diners where the waitresses rode roller skates, or the roaring 20's, or when they invented the light bulb, and when Jebidiah traded in his horse for one of those new-fangled Model-T contraptions, or when Ooog discovered fire, or when we all found that monolith and decided to throw the bones we were eating up into the air..
See what I mean?
In the end it matters nothing. It's just something I used to like that went away, probably in the name of moving up to something cooler that I'd probably like even better if I'd just give it a chance. Beyond that, getting mad about it and complaining this way makes me look kinda doofy and uptight -- which despite my good intentions, shames us all.
Not to mention the fact that this doodad I found to replace it is fugly as all hell in comparison.
I mean seriously, the next thing you'll be telling me is that they're gonna cancel one of my favorite shows and replace it with some sort of half-assed remake of something I liked as a kid.
How much would that suck?
[Listening to:    ]

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