When I finished to read neo-neocon ” Blog Archive ” Choices, choices, It made me got some idea for my blog about frozen gas line….

Perhaps “plugged in” is not technically the right term (jacks??), but they looked like plugs rather than jacks. I can’t find a photo, but the phone plugs/jacks looked like the old-fashioned plugs you plug into outlets, but slightly more oval, with two prongs that went into a special wall outlet for the phone.

As you can see, I am not up on the terminology, but the point is that yes, the phone people had to set it up initially, but we moved into a house that was all set up for phones in several different rooms and the phones could be moved from room to room by plugging them into the phone sockets. They were not hard-wired into the walls. Perhaps that arrangement was unusual, but that’s the way it was for us.

Also—my father exchanged his car every two years, but my mother did not. She kept hers for quite a while, and they did not fall apart. As far as gas goes, it was relatively cheap even in comparison to income; you didn’t hear people complain about the prices, even though the cars were gas guzzlers. Perhaps part of the reason was that people didn’t ordinarily have long commutes like many do today, but gas prices just were not too much of an issue till much later.

If the number of choices is a problem, then learn how to make quicker choices.

Don’t try and cut back on them, because that WILL bite you on the bum.

Neo, for example, is talking about which car she wants because she wants one with a seat suited to her back problems.

Does anyone here actually believe that one of those auto dealerships in the 50s, 60s, or 70s would have had the slightest ability to help her with her problem except by sheer dumb luck?

Choices are Freedom

Choices are Liberty

Choices are Individuality

Choices are the Universe actually tailored to match YOU, not someone “kinda sorta vaguely a bit like you”.

a:
> Plug it in and you’re good to go. AT&T will provide the service, one size fits all.

“Plug it in”? No, you had the technician wire it in. And if the household wiring didn’t have connection available where you wanted the phone? Pretty much too bad. You put the phone THERE, not where it was convenient. And when you wanted to talk to someone, but they had to do something in the middle of it? Well, you sat there and DID NOTHING because you were tethered to the wall. Got that call from the relative you really, really didn’t want to talk to but also didn’t want to be rude to (which, of course, YOU TOOK BECAUSE YOU HAD NO IDEA WHO WAS CALLING) and cut off, though they will talk forever and you know it? Well, YOU SAT THERE unable to do squat because you were tied to that location.

The big-ass wallphones for the kitchen also came with extra long cords so you could actually walk away from them and do something other than stand there with your thumb measuring your prostate for the duration of the call….

b:
> Want to take a trip? Get on the highway, which might have only two lanes. Interstates are few and far between. But gas costs 25 cents a gallon, and cheaper in New Jersey.

And minimum wage was a 50 cents an hour. Now it’s 7:50 an hour, and gas is $3 a gallon. Go figure.

That trip? Don’t forget you had to take five extra tires along with you if it was over 300 miles, because the chances of those tires making it to 10000 miles wihtout a blowout was next to zero.

When was the last time ANYONE you knew had a blowout?

c:
> My father would call the dealer every two years and order a new Chrysler sight unseen. The only real question was what color. In my father’s case it was always dark; in my mother’s, light (a Plymouth, blue or white).

That’s because after about 40k miles those cars started falling apart. Even the lowest-end junk nowadays comes with a 6-yr 60k miles warranty, and generally will make 100k miles easy. Mid-level cars like a Camry will make 200k miles easy, with less time spent at the repair shop than ever.

Tuneups? I need to get mine tuned up. It was last done 3 years ago with platinum spark plugs that are good for that long (though they cost about $25 each)

=====

This whining for the “old days” is mainly because everyone remembers the good stuff and totally forgets the CRAP.

They forget the Watts riots and the race tensions and the sexism and the straightjacket role limitations that everyone was expected to fit into.

They forget the constant threat of 3 hours warning to the total destruction of civilization and the constant concern that the bluster of the Commies of “we will bury you” wasn’t what it turned out to be, which was all hot air.

You forget Stagflation (though you’re likely to experience it again for yourself… will you be saying “ah, me, back to the good old days!!” then?)

Until just recently, you’d completely forgotten double-digit unemployment.

You forget not being able to get fresh vegetables in January, or fresh Orange Juice in Iowa in December, or being unable to watch any episode of any tv show you ever watched as a kid ON DEMAND, or not being able to watch a movie that’s 6 months old under conditions that are better than ANY theater in the 60s while dressed in your freakin’ PJs.

You forget that “Frozen TV Dinners” used to taste like CRAP, and not probably better than anything you can make yourself unless you’re an experienced cook, and, more critically, only take 10 minutes to make in the microwave.

THIS is the REAL attitude people need to have:

Everything Is Amazing And Nobody’s Happy

And that is the ABSOLUTE, literal, and correct TRUTH.

Y’all better hope these liberal twits don’t get their way, or this WILL BE the “good old days” for REAL.

You start having to pump water out of a well and use a friggin’ outhouse in the middle of a cold snowy January night and use a CANDLE to read by and methinks you might start appreciating just how $&#%*%**^* GOOD all these whiney-ass crapweasels have it nowadays.

>:-/

There are also folks, mainly women aged 45 and older, who want the most basic and simple phones. They could afford the fancy ones, but they don’t want to learn how to use them.

Then there are four-year old girls who are absolutely unafraid of the iPhones and immediately begin tapping the screen to see what the buttons do.

The staff spends a surprising amount of time just activating new phones. It takes at least an hour. A lot of it seems to be spent with the agent staring at the computer, waiting for the screen to update. Meanwhile, the other agents are helping customers who have returned to the store, because they need help in figuring out how to use the features.

I went to the phone company office to set up new service. Everyone was bringing in their older phones. They literally had a pile of them in the back of the room. Of course, those new phones turned out to be very junky compared to the tough-as-nails Western Electric units they replaced. When the phone company started selling their refurbished units, I went out and bought two, plus two extras for spares.

Now, I don’t even have a hardwired phone.

Part of the reason OB and others object to these specific choices is that we’re not the shopping demographic. The people who buy lots of beauty products will have their needs catered to. Those of us who buy boring replacements intermittently and have no interest in whatever is new don’t spend anywhere near as much money as the others.

If you were going to open a store in a mall (to make money, not to please yourself and make a statement), who would your target demographic be?

Or not so oddly. Maybe there were so few school shootings back then because the prospective victims had the means to defend themselves, and hadn’t been mentally disarmed by PC indoctrination that said we should “understand” human predators instead of filling them full of lead. Just a thought.