time capsule in a closet
Posted in rantings and ravings, Uncategorized on June 2nd, 2012 by skeeterTIME CAPSULES IN THE CLOSET
I was going through a cabinet drawer the other day where I kept VHS movies. Big black plastic spools of brittling old tapes. Course I don’t have a machine to play them on anymore. Kind of like having an 8-track to go with my CD player. Although my CD player still has a hole for cassette tapes and I remembered I have another drawerful of those.
Anyone remember floppy disks? All those computer storage stragtegies now as obsolete as print film? I got a drawer of those too … plus the zip disks, plus the drivers. Be worth a cool million on E-Bay someday or else I’ll be hauling them, along with my Beta Video Player and my 35 mm Nikon, to Antiques Road Show next time they roll in to the Stanwoodopolis Convention Center. If you don’t think the world is racing right along lickety split, dig through a couple of boxes in the back of the basement or the top of the closet. It’s a time capsule of the 2nd half of the 20th Century, the century disappearing in the rearview of your Prius.
Trouble with living at the beginning of the Industrial Age — or now the Digital Age — you got one foot in, one toe out, sort of like Stanwoodopolis and the mainland drifting breakneck away from the island. The bridge gets rebuilt every few months and some of us just figure it’s easier to stay home. Stay long enough and we’ll be swimming to get into town. Fancy transponder, pay-as-you-drive booths, no cash or credit accepted. Sign up on your computer, but you better have DSL and on-line checking.
I tell my buddies here on the South End who figure Time must stand still or else they’ll die in the Mabana Sunset Villa before they’re left hopelessly behind, fossils frozen in drying mud, they better get off their rocker and take a couple of computer courses. Another few years and they won’t know how to turn on a TV much less figure out the latest changes in Windows 27. Then we’ll see how Old Age in the 21st Century looks to them without American Idol or Wheel of Fortune to fill an evening with electronic pablum.
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