|
Digital Slob
Curt Brandao
|
Video iPods make typing uncool again
Between Steve Jobs and Adam Curry, it now looks like online search engines have little room for any terms other than "iPod," "podcasting" and "video podcasting." Last week I entered a search for "Mod Squad" and Google asked me, "Did you mean:
Pod Squad?"
Apple's new video iPods will ignite a revolution. Sure, video players are nothing new, but Apple always adds the polish. After all, rocks were also around a long time before someone made a million bucks selling them as pets in 1975.
So now, the next time something inappropriate falls out at a Super Bowl halftime show, we'll no longer have to commute to someone's office cubicle for the next-day online replay. Armed with mobile video, the like-minded will rush deliver it to us like Domino's Pizza in 30 minutes or less.
Shock video is about to mutate into an airborne virus.
But at least a few of us old-timers are still pecking away on blogs, the oh-so-four-minutes-ago manual typewriter of the Information Age. Stranger still, my Digital Slob Retroblog, which chronicles all the stuff that happened to me before there was a blogosphere to contain it, seems to have been ahead of its time at being behind the times. Without art direction, a clothing allowance or an RSS feed, even futurists blogs look rather past tense.
Nevertheless, for those willing to downshift the red hot Digital Age back to cold type, here's a couple of new entries from my old memories:
Nov. 6, 1972 (4 years old): I got a new plaid shirt for kindergarten. I'd never seen so many colors and stripes, and I assumed no one else had, either. From story time to nap time to play time, I worked the room, making sure everyone knew that even if they were my approximate height, they were still beneath me. "Know what this is? It's plaid," I kept saying with a nonexistent pause, all the while pointing at my chest.
Once certain everyone was well aware of how better I was than them, I took a well-deserved break, picking my nose and wiping the boogers on my shoulder. Suddenly, Mrs. Jolly rushed over, pointed her finger at the insidious social violation near my neck and screeched her infamous catch-phrase, "That's rude!"
Confused, I stared back and replied at the same decibel level, "No it's not! It's plaid!"
As she dragged me to the principal's office, all I could do was cry for my mom. I needed a representative that knew how to use a dictionary -- there were some things I had to look up.
Dec. 8, 1972 (4 years old): Out of nowhere, Mom rocked my world today when she told me she could see colors when she grew up.
"But all the movies and TV shows from back then are in black and white," I insisted.
"Yes, but we could see color in real life with our eyes, just like you," she said.
How could TV lie to me like this, when it so accurately reflects the world around me otherwise?
Tom chases Jerry -- cats hate mice. Got it.
Ping Pong balls fall on Captain Kangaroo -- grownups are dumber than mooses and bunny rabbits. Got it.
Dean Martin makes Johnny Carson laugh -- things are a lot funnier with bourbon. Got it.
Why, then, would television dupe me with a duotone Shirley Temple?
History is full of lies. Got it.