Friday, September 3, 2010

Podcast to Start Soon

I had an awful realization this morning: my life is full of anachronisms. I'm teetering dangerously on the brink of forty, so maybe I'm extra sensitive to these things, but I started to worry that if I didn't do something, I'd end up like someone's grandfather. You know, the kind of old man who calls grilled cheese sandwiches "toasted cheese" until the day he dies and doesn't understand how that tiny little cable can carry so many big pictures.

So I've decided to make a list of all the anachronisms I need to get rid of. If I want to enter this next decade of my life as a sleek, sophisticated modern man, I have some work to do.

First, our landline must go. What kind of dodo still has a landline into their house? Sheesh. We might as well use smoke signals.

Next, our ethernet network. Yes, I installed it myself. And yes, I learned how to crimp cable and run ethernet through the whole house so we could we be wired. But the future is wireless, so goodbye homemade ethernet network (which until this moment, I was rather proud of).

CDs. What kind of dork still keeps CDs? Upload them all. Same goes for photo albums and all important documents. Scan, scan, scan.

Body hair. That's probably self-explanatory.

Cable TV. Hello? Ever heard of Hulu? Duh.

Newspapers and magazines. You know what? We'll just discontinue the mail in general as a precautionary measure.

Pencils. Seriously? Can anybody give me a good reason why these things still exist? Do they still even bubble anything in?

Cotton garments. Just because it seems like a good idea to get ahead of the curve on this one.

Friends. By which I mean actual people friends. If you're in my network, you still count.

I'll admit the food thing confuses me. I'm not sure if I get rid of all prepared foods in favor of locally grown, organic, CSA-delivered raw veggies. Or if I should get rid of all home-prepared food in favor of ready-to-warm bags of chicken chunks, flash-frozen veggies and some kind of salt-delivery system. I don't think the future is clear here.

And last but not least, all paper books. Wait. Sorry. I mean "dead tree books." Wait, wait: DTB. Good-bye DTB. I would say I'll miss you, but I also plan on ditching sentimentality in favor of my own weekly Internet podcast where I compare my political enemies to Adolf Hitler at least once a week while simultaneously declaring that only I know God's intentions.



16 comments:

Sarah Laurenson said...

Pushing forty, eh? Just wait til you're pushing fifty - like me. I've still got a stack of LPs in the closet, but I was smart. There's some new fangled way to play them on the market now. Can't remember what it is though.

And that's the bonus for pushing fifty. Well, for us women anyway. CRS strikes hard.

(My wife is in school at the local community college. Not only do they still need pencils, they have to buy their own scantrons. So remember cheap is institutionalized now, too.)

Mark Terry said...

Oh dear. I'm an anachronism. Big time.

And one of the self-published authors who participated in a book talk with me this week said he wrote the book because God wanted him to. I rather cruelly wondered why, if God wanted him to write it, God didn't get him a deal with a real publisher.

Jude Hardin said...

Keep the landline. It's the only thing that will still work when the zombie apocalypse hits.

Spy Scribbler said...

Hah! You're being funny, aren't you? Being a young whipper-snapper about to turn 37, I did all those things a couple years ago, except the cotton garments and podcast. (I went the CSA route.) Cotton garments are in, but now it's 100% cotton, unbleached, organic. You know, that soft cream-colored stuff?

I don't miss any of it, but I especially don't miss getting mail. And ditching the landline got rid of all that phone call spam. TOTALLY rocks. I do route my calls through a Google Voice number, that way I only get the calls forwarded from my friends. The rest goes to email, and if it's phone spam, they get on a blocked list that plays a sound like the number has been disconnected.

Jon VanZile said...

Sarah,

Wow. You and your wife own a Scantron? It makes me wish I had mimeograph.

Jon VanZile said...

Mark,

Perhaps God published it

Jon VanZile said...

Jude,

When the zombie apocalypse hits, I'm ditching my landline in favor of a shotgun

Jon VanZile said...

Natasha,

You're waaaay ahead of me.

Sarah Laurenson said...

And do you realize how large the footprint is on those babies? Not to mention the noise. Scares the crap out of the dogs every time.
;-)

Keith said...

I hope you get an iphone and a dropbox account for your birthday!

Kath Calarco said...

Pushing sixty, I'm your complete opposite, favoring the tangible as it holds wonderful memories every time I open a book, look at CD artwork and savor the scent of freshly washed cotton sheets.

Jon VanZile said...

Keith,

An iPhone ... That would be something, wouldn't it?

Jon VanZile said...

Kath,

Me too, actually. It's always a struggle to embrace change but hold on to the things that are resonant.

Keith said...

...and a dropbox account, which you should probably get anyway.

ssas said...

I'm glad I dropped in. I'll never be able to keep up, but I like to at least KNOW what I'm missing...

Melanie Hooyenga said...

I love this post. I have a dropbox account and a fancy phone, but I still cling to most "old-school" things.