The Simple Life
Oct. 10th, 2008 01:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
frustratedpilotThis both is and is not related to Life On Mars.
I was just looking through my e-mail and saw an ad from JC Whitney, a company I first learned about around 1973 and have casually following--and sometines done business with--ever since. Their business is in replacement parts and upgrades for cars and other motor vehicles.
Well, the ad in question included in-car entertainment systems...devices that combined radio, television, and video/audio storage/playback formats. They're getting relatively inexpensive now. But I just don't feel like getting one for Moonshine will ever be the right thing to do.
Moonshine is still nearly entirely how it came from the NUMMI factory circa 2001. The sound system has a CD player but doesn't play MP3 files. I wouldn't mind an MP3 upgrade, but it's not a big deal. Anything beyond that strikes me as being needlessly over-sophisticated and tasteless.
It's not just the sound system, tho'. I see ads for uber-tech ovens and refrigerators and flat screen TV sets and cell phones with a zillion features these days. Hewlett-Packard has a new desktop computer with a touch screen device built-in and the user interface software to take advantage of it. This is all very heavy stuff for a fellow who remembers a time before everybody had a computer, when all phones had rotary dials, when newspapers only had color for Sunday editions, and in-car entertainment was the kids in the back seat singing along to Elton John on the AM radio.
It's telling that people in the early Seventies were nostalgic for the Fifties (the song being sung in the above memory was "Crocodile Rock"). There was a very sudden growth in the standards of living at that time, and a mood of optimism that lasted practically the whole decade. Whereas the Seventies were when the social stress cracks were threatening to bring down the whole nation--just like NOW.
Anyway, the push for a greater standard of living just because, that's just selfishness. There was a time when I did want it all and wanted it right then and there--but it is not now. I don't feel like I deserve much more than what I have. Because of my fear of losing everything. There are many times I hate the simple life--but I wonder if anybody envies me.
FP
I was just looking through my e-mail and saw an ad from JC Whitney, a company I first learned about around 1973 and have casually following--and sometines done business with--ever since. Their business is in replacement parts and upgrades for cars and other motor vehicles.
Well, the ad in question included in-car entertainment systems...devices that combined radio, television, and video/audio storage/playback formats. They're getting relatively inexpensive now. But I just don't feel like getting one for Moonshine will ever be the right thing to do.
Moonshine is still nearly entirely how it came from the NUMMI factory circa 2001. The sound system has a CD player but doesn't play MP3 files. I wouldn't mind an MP3 upgrade, but it's not a big deal. Anything beyond that strikes me as being needlessly over-sophisticated and tasteless.
It's not just the sound system, tho'. I see ads for uber-tech ovens and refrigerators and flat screen TV sets and cell phones with a zillion features these days. Hewlett-Packard has a new desktop computer with a touch screen device built-in and the user interface software to take advantage of it. This is all very heavy stuff for a fellow who remembers a time before everybody had a computer, when all phones had rotary dials, when newspapers only had color for Sunday editions, and in-car entertainment was the kids in the back seat singing along to Elton John on the AM radio.
It's telling that people in the early Seventies were nostalgic for the Fifties (the song being sung in the above memory was "Crocodile Rock"). There was a very sudden growth in the standards of living at that time, and a mood of optimism that lasted practically the whole decade. Whereas the Seventies were when the social stress cracks were threatening to bring down the whole nation--just like NOW.
Anyway, the push for a greater standard of living just because, that's just selfishness. There was a time when I did want it all and wanted it right then and there--but it is not now. I don't feel like I deserve much more than what I have. Because of my fear of losing everything. There are many times I hate the simple life--but I wonder if anybody envies me.
FP
Tags:
- advertising,
- auto repair,
- cars,
- computer,
- e-mail,
- life,
- prizm,
- telephones,
- the 1970s,
- the future,
- tv,
- who am i
