Tag Archives: smartphones

10/09/2016 · 8:58 pm

Obsessions of the Old Gravedigger

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Filed under Bad Influences, Comix Classic & Current, Magazine Rack, Nostalgic Obsessions

Tagged as 2010s, 2016, album art, Bands I Useta Like, comix, EC Comics, print, Rick Griffin, smartphones, technology, underground

09/15/2016 · 5:50 pm

Digital Diaspora

diaspora: a scattered population with a common origin in a smaller geographic locale. Diaspora can also refer to the movement of the population from its original homeland.

There’s a chance, being that you are using the Internet, that you are experiencing an intangible emptiness, a desire to fulfill a need you didn’t know you had.

You are far from alone. This is normal.

Spoiler: they hatefuck.

Many of us used the Internet around the year 2000 because it supplied things we couldn’t find elsewhere. Easy and plentiful pornography, hurtful humor, forums and blogs brimming with lolcows; all the schadenfreude one could stand.

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Filed under Don't Know Don't Care, Idiot's Delight, Site Stuff, Uncategorized

Tagged as 2010s, ALF, Brett Easton Ellis, Captain OG Readmore, corporate crap, despair, Die Hard, ennui, Ghostbusters, Internet, movies, old internet, sellouts, smartphones, smoking, television, Transformers, whores

06/09/2016 · 2:15 pm

After The Beep

Answering machines were a form of technology in use before telecommunication was monopolized. At first, they were huge, then they used micro-cassettes, then regular cassettes, then a computer chip, then they went in the garbage. Telephones were not generally mobile prior to the year 2000. The average home had a room where the phone and answering machine resided.

The answering machine was the predecessor to the ringtone, in terms of personal expression through phones. There was even a default recording of a robot intoning “please leave a message after the beep”, which is how you knew your dad or grandpa wasn’t at home. Older relatives were confounded by the damn things, and would require the aid of sons or nephews, just as with smartphones today. A family would retain an answering machine until the tape wore out, meaning that for much of the 1980s, there was a phantasmagoria of wood-paneled plastic boxes, varying in quality. “Wireless” meant “unreliable”, which meant that the telephone station generally resembled an improvised bomb, to 21st century eyeballs. Continue reading →

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Filed under Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Nostalgic Obsessions

Tagged as 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 1992, answering machines, Atari 2600, Bruce McCulloch, corporate crap, Dead Kennedys, Flip Wilson, Jello Biafra, John Waters, Kevin McDonald, Kids In The Hall, Mink Stole, New Jersey, smartphones, telephones, The Simpsons, The Young Ones, Tommy Lee

09/18/2015 · 2:44 am

Artifacts of Early Gaming

Earlier today, I suffered a terrible tumble from my high horse. During yet another lament about the endless saturation of smartphones, my rose-colored recollection of my own childhood was shattered when I realized that in grade school 35 years ago, my generation was gazing at little electronic rectangles too.

They weren’t easy to get, either; I only ever saw them in the windows of weird electronics stores in NYC, the kind of places you’d expect to have a mogwai for sale. Most of the games didn’t take regular batteries, but instead used the teeny watch kind that you had to ask your grandma for (grandmas always had them). Typically, the sound consisted of high-pitched beeps, and could not be turned off, so play was often halted by grown-ups with more hearing than patience.

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