Quotations and Literature Forum

Oh capitalism, the art of making the most money in the shortest time, for the least effort possible.

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Sanctuary: a small safe place in a troubling world

Ah, but how many millions are employed to attain its ends??

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The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.
e e cummings (1894 - 1962)

I remember when companies had to pay folk to do their advertising, wearing logos on shirts and the like. How clever the marketing fellow who made it a fashion and had folk paying to wear the stuff, and how simple the fools who do it?

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السلام عليكم

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I am in agreement with all. I wonder whether society will ever take a step backward for a second and breathe, or whether this kind of culture will perpetuate itself into one big tumor.

I've often wondered how you could do that or if it is utterly impossible as you can't unravel all the technological interdependency. This came to me today and took me aback:


THE PEOPLE WHO ARE STARTING UNIVERSITY THIS YEAR WERE BORN IN 1991.

THEY ARE TOO YOUNG TO REMEMBER THE SPACE SHUTTLE BLOWING UP.
THEIR LIFETIME HAS ALWAYS INCLUDED AIDS.
THE CD WAS INTRODUCED EIGHT YEARS BEFORE THEY WERE BORN.
THEY HAVE ALWAYS HAD AN ANSWERING MACHINE.
THEY HAVE ALWAYS HAD EMAIL.
THEY HAVE ALWAYS HAD CELL PHONES.
THEY HAVE ALWAYS HAD THE INTERNET.
THEY HAVE ALWAYS HAD VCRS, AND VIDEO CAMERAS.
THEY HAVE ALWAYS HAD CABLE.
POPCORN HAS ALWAYS BEEN MICRO-WAVED.
THEY NEVER TOOK A SWIM AND THOUGHT ABOUT JAWS.
MCDONALD'S NEVER CAME IN STYROFOAM CONTAINERS.
THEY DON'T HAVE A CLUE HOW TO USE A TYPEWRITER.

I find this scarey, if the internet seriously goes haywire, what happens? The Y2K scare sent the world into a complete tizzy fit, what would this do and what failsafes are their?

Maybe there will spring up small communities, on the lines of the Amish, who will try to stay in a timewarp. But is even that still possible?

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The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.
e e cummings (1894 - 1962)

Space Shuttle, How about Apollos 1 and 13?

Aids, we've had it so long now the jokes have died.

CDs, now Blue ray.

Answering machines, how about the days where a phone in the house was only for the financially comfortable and the common folk would walk to the phone box with 2 pennies.

E-mail, I used to work delivering telegrams on a big red treadley.

Mobile phones, I remember when the old police cars had the old bakelite phone handsets for their radios.

Internet, when I w' a bairn computers were only in science fiction movies.

VCR, I remember the 1st time they came out. HoHoHo betamax. I remember being utterly gobsmacked the 1st time I saw a home movie camera, in 16mm.

I remember the 1st pay TV, it was a home office licence one had to have to use a TV at home. Mind you I remember the 1st time I saw colour TV.

I never heard of popcorn until my mid teens.

Jaws, oh sh1t, no Daddy not the BEACH!

MacDonalds, I remember when It didn't exist, not WA anyway.

Typewriter, how about the mimeograph, how to get stoned at school.

I wonder what would happen without, but I'd love to find out. When I'm not on a working day I avoid my mobile.

I'm rather fond of the internet, but I can still operate a library.

Working shifts makes TV an optional extra.

To paraphrase an old instructor, pen + paper + brain = computer.

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السلام عليكم

We grew up without car, phone, washing machine, refrigerator. I was the dishwasher. We actually got a tiny black and white TV to watch the Queen's coronation and all the neighbours came in to share it.

To phone you always kept 4 pennies (not pence) on the shelf by the door to run down the street to the phonebox which was never vandalised and actually each one had a local phone book in it!

All this change in one lifetime and there is at least one generation still around older than me


Enjoy this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pyjRj3U ... re=related

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The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.
e e cummings (1894 - 1962)

For me the biggest difference is initiative. The icrap generation seem to become lost if not presented with an answer. Before the option of buying, with free delivery folk invented, the Coolgardie safe being a classic. Folk helped, rather than sold, although there is still an element of that. For all my cynisism, I do still find folk who are more attuned to the older ways. Young Thomas here strikes me as such, nice sort of bloke. We get a lot of Irish backpackers as casual workers, and to a man/woman they have been the best sort of folk for our job.


FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, very passable, that, very passable bit of risotto.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
Nothing like a good glass of Château de Chasselas, eh, Josiah?
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
You're right there, Obadiah.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Who'd have thought thirty year ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Château de Chasselas, eh?
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
In them days we was glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
A cup o' cold tea.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Without milk or sugar.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Or tea.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
In a cracked cup, an' all.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Oh, we never had a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Because we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money doesn't buy you happiness, son".
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, 'e was right.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye, 'e was.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
I was happier then and I had nothin'. We used to live in this tiny old house with great big holes in the roof.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, 'alf the floor was missing, and we were all 'uddled together in one corner for fear of falling.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Eh, you were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in t' corridor!
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Oh, we used to dream of livin' in a corridor! Would ha' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House? Huh.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Well, when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
We were evicted from our 'ole in the ground; we 'ad to go and live in a lake.
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
You were lucky to have a lake! There were a hundred and fifty of us living in t' shoebox in t' middle o' road.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
Cardboard box?
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Aye.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t' mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi' his belt.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of 'ot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to 'ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o'clock at night and lick road clean wit' tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit' bread knife.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.
FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you.
ALL:
They won't!

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السلام عليكم