things you will fully get on your old-dude "it was better back when we was kids" horse about

when me & my best bud used to sit around watching MTV, all we did was bitch about how horrible it was, but fuck you, young aerosmith & his best bud, that shit was entertaining

it was definitely better when we was kids horse imo

I stand by the sentence I wrote before the coffee was done brewing

Saturday morning cartoons -- solid 2-hr block of Bugs + Roadrunner. Thanks, CBS.

when me & my best bud used to sit around watching MTV, all we did was bitch about how horrible it was, but fuck you, young aerosmith & his best bud, that shit was entertaining

I feel the same way.

^well, when it actually played videos it was worth watching. Now it features 'Girls Gone Wild At The Mall' type fake-sociology shows 24/7, ehhh, not so much.

- adventure movies for kids (spielberg, lucas etc)

- chocolate bars

(it is possible i have just outgrown these things)

The internet was better before every corporation thought they were owed money because they had a website. Fuck you and get off my internet. If you want money, go somewhere else. This shit is free and I ain't payin!

thrift store shopping (for women's clothes, at least)

enjoy your out of shape faded sweaters from target and dirty pajamas
i'll be over here in my tailored wool jackets and '50s party dresses (not together, obvs)

xxp dude you just need some better chocolate...
http://www.greenandblacks.com/

Saturday morning cartoons

Saturday watching The A Team/Airwolf/Street Hawk/Knight Rider/Blue Thunder/Dukes of Hazzard and all those other shows that 20 year old hipsters go on and on about now even though they were all cancelled before those kids were even born.

hip-hop aka "rap music"

marijuana

rock criticism

any physical activity lasting more than 10 minutes

the art of the tackle

discovering obscure music
U.S. public education system

existence

concert ticket prices

Radio. The space program. Downtown Toronto.

Homosexuality.

concert ticket prices

^^^^^^ Also, skipping school to wait in line at Ticketron to get tickets for that band you HAD to see was cool as hell.

def radio

xxp dude you just need some better chocolate...
http://www.greenandblacks.com/

Green and Blacks was better back in the day when it wasn't run by Cadburys imo.

- everything

everything

I'll be joining you there eventually--not quite yet. I know for a fact the internet is a lot better in 2010 than it was in 1966.

Kung fu movies

internet in 2010 is also way better than it was in 1995-2005

twitter was the jump the shark moment tho

Dance music.

Animated feature films. I hate that everything is now made with computer animation; I guess it works for some stories, like Wall-E, but it feels like the indiduality and expressivity of the line is lost. Computer graphics make things more "objective" instead of a subjective way of expressing things.

nothing will ever beat hand-drawn animation for me.

1985 is the cut off for me. that's when everything started to get really bad. EVERYTHING. nothing got better. ever.

"marijuana"

no way, man, can't go back to seeds and stems and you can't make me.

wait, pot. pot is the only thing that got better.

Rents.

i don't think it counts since i can't remember a time when it was actually better, but CAR DESIGN

spin magazine

tv theme songs

Green and Blacks was better back in the day when it wasn't run by Cadburys imo.

― i find music confusing and annoying (Ned Trifle II), Saturday, 7 August 2010 20:07 (1 hour ago)

Terry's was better back in the day when it wasn't run by Kraft imo.

(and soon or maybe even right now)

Cadburys was better back in the day when it wasn't run by Kraft imo.

(seriously I am super-pissed with what Kraft have one to the Terry's Chocolate Orange)

the NBA

yeah, i'm already like this with sports, mainly because it's true, but also because I don't really care about sports anymore. "sorry, kid, it's a scientific fact: baseball reached its peak with Kirk Gibson's gamewinning homerun in game two of the 1988 playoffs. everything after that sucks."

Pre-spell check, when you actually looked a word up in the dictionary: also getting new dictionary for school & looking up the swear words immediately

TV shows had theme song that you sang along to: and they had closing credits

Friday night tv movies: Sunday matinee tv movie

Oh the radio. Calling up the AM radio Party Line on Friday night to request your favorite song: friends in the other room standing by recording you on cassette :)

Riding bike seemed like a fun, freeing adventure as a kid! And now it's just transportation. This is a one-person-level change, though.

plus, i just feel like there was less chance of being obliterated by a tank-like car when i rode my bike as a kid. or maybe this is just selective memory. there are more cars though. another reason to hate now.

Kids played outside more, I think.

xxpost, absolutely. We spent all day on our bikes!

i just think about how when i was, like, kindergarten age i would leave the house by myself in the morning on and play in my neighborhood all day and then come home for dinner. and my parents had no idea where i was for hours on end. and how there is no way in hell i would even let rufus or cyrus walk, like, three blocks by themselves.

i own two bikes and i kind of dislike riding them these days, and it has everything to do with living in los angeles and finding bike riding around here not relaxing or conducive to a pleasant journey, and it should be both.

i <3 <3 <3 riding my bike

i mean, when i was little i would play in the woods by myself for hours all around ponds and creeks and rocks and stuff. granted, my neighborhood was quiet and on a dead end road and everyone knew each other, but still... i don't think think this is done much anymore. for good reason, i suppose. the internet turned everyone into sex killers so you got to be careful.

i just think about how when i was, like, kindergarten age i would leave the house by myself in the morning on and play in my neighborhood all day and then come home for dinner. and my parents had no idea where i was for hours on end. and how there is no way in hell i would even let rufus or cyrus walk, like, three blocks by themselves.
yeah, as a new parent, i've been thinking about this a lot. i remember doing this a lot as a kid, maybe seven-10 years old. (though my parents have told me they don't think I was quite so much at loose ends as I remember) my friend and i would just spend the day skateboarding around the neighborhood, hanging out at the beach, or whatever. and jesus christ, the idea of my kid doing this when she's that age sounds totally insane. is the world actually more dangerous for kids now ...? or is it just a sea change in the way we think of our kids?

Some of both.

yeah, probs. i mean, we live across the street from a park, and i think -- at what age would I say to my daughter and her friend: "it's ok, go across the street and play by yourself."? maybe 17 or something.

mah hair... :'(

I think part of it is that there was still a neighborhood-watch type network of stay-at-home moms (and even stay-at-home grandmas ie women who didn't have young kids anymore but weren't in the work force and were around to keep an eye out and hand out homemade cookies for refueling on long bicycle expeditions)

is the world actually more dangerous for kids now ...

Possibly but not because of sex killers (although, erm, of course it depends on where you live). More cars for instance. We live in a cul-de-sac next to a field on the edge of a city and my kids (12 and 9) both wander about far and wide (to varying degrees). The 12 year old goes into the city (it's a small city admittedly) with his friends without any problems. The 9 year old goes into what we laughingly call the 'village' (i.e. the local shops). I worry about the main road much more than about them being abducted.

I'm a militant when it comes to thinking that the past was worse than the present though so I may just be taking unnecessary risks with my kids to make a point.

man I'll tell you what was vastly superior when I was a kid: the heavyweight division

mail delivery
but then one thing that's better than before is that you can break your mom's to get mail, you have to send mail rule by ordering junk off the internet

Weather. (Insofar as it actually made sense.) Wind-ups. (Tiant, Seaver, etc.) Pinball machines. (Versus all the stuff that came along and replaced them.)

clemenza otm wrt weather

In my day Johnny Hates Jazz made better records.

Weezer

Weezer

Yeah, when I was a kid, Weezer didn't exist! Good one!

Bookshops. Usenet. Mailing lists. Newspapers. Supersonic passenger travel. Mostly bookshops.

Also arcade machines

stet have you been to the pinball hall of fame in las vegas

it is the greatest place in the whole damn world

the wifey swears that music was better and that's an argument i avoid because it's one of those sweeping statements everyone makes and can't ever back up...though it'd be hard to quantify anyway

that place is so great, so many gorgeous old machines xp

republicans

to my mind music is never either better or worse - it is a continuum of awesomeness & the idea that one age of music is better than the next, as appealing as the idea can sometimes seem when you get into categorizing things, is just a non-starter imo. like, within genres, I totally think they run hot and cold through time. but music? music is always great, there is always great music being made.

I've avoided music (and films) too. Even though my very favourite stuff for both tend to go back to when I was 10-15, I'm also very aware that hideous junk was as much a fact of life then as now. And it's not like I don't hear new music and see new films that I love every year.

xpost exactly. and people who make those statements are often seeing it through a filter, usually one specific subgenre, which even then is hard to quantify because what makes music 'collectively' worse? More bad releases? Less classic releases?

I've deliberately steered clear of the debate as we've been known to get heated on the topic :)

That place looks amazing xp

Sorry to veer off course for a second, but I just noticed San Te's handle. When I placed "Got Some Teeth" on a year-end ballot in 2003, I led off my comment with "Obie once, Obie Trice, Obie three times a Shady." Back to abject nostalgia.

When i was a kid I love to go to Ci Ci's and eat dozens of slices of that greasy, greasy, cheap pizza they serve. Now you couldn't drag me into that place, and the thought of eating the food is frankly sickening.

xpost sigh...I like yours better.

Charity shops is an unambiguous one to me - they used to sell weird clothing for CD-Single prices, now they sell it for close to RRP.

The rules of AD&D.

Videogame design practices (though not actually the games themselves - I'm older and enjoy them less but they're probably just as good)

the wifey swears that music was better and that's an argument i avoid because it's one of those sweeping statements everyone makes and can't ever back up...though it'd be hard to quantify anyway

I have a very simple way to prove my "dance music was better when I was young" argument. I just have to point out that when I was a kid, this tune was a big hit that used to play on MTV all the time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erdd0c657nA

I mean, would anyone really prefer trying find their way through the web of postmodern signifiers and loaned poses of yesteryear that dance music has become, when you could just be like POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING?

lollin tbh

Charity shops is an unambiguous one to me - they used to sell weird clothing for CD-Single prices, now they sell it for close to RRP.

Plus it is all cheaply made crap from Target or Wal Mart now anyway, it feels pretty pointless.

that place is so great, so many gorgeous old machines xp

have you been since they became a non-profit and moved to the bigger room across from the liberace museum? it is unbelievable

I mean, would anyone really prefer trying find their way through the web of postmodern signifiers and loaned poses of yesteryear that dance music has become, when you could just be like POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING POING?

lol A+

Ha. That should be a board description or replace one of the squares in the C-F Bingo layout.

Live music in the home counties.

Oh and smoking too.

I guess there are many parallels.

Hey, does anyone remember when More Nuts bars were called Snickers?

we still got snickers here.

they're like 5% the size of what they used to be.

wait, pot. pot is the only thing that got better.

stronger but not necessarily better IMHO

yeah, those of us raised on skunk weed have had our standards permanently lowered.

rock and roll was so much cooler in the 90s

i really beg ta differ. the late 90s were bleh.

i mean the indie rock was much better

The nineties were a nightmare from which we all struggled to escape.

you must have been born pre 80s

have you been since they became a non-profit and moved to the bigger room across from the liberace museum? it is unbelievable

actually no I went before the move. looking at pics it looks wayyy nicer now...it's cool that it's now close to unlv and liberace but it's a shame they couldn't figure out something w/ a strip casino maybe or get it downtown. one of the greatest things in vegas but still gonna be too far for tourists w/o a car.

being drunk.

there were less bees in my shower

Paying for gasoline.

Lock thread, nobody's gonna top that answer

otm never had to pay for gas as a kid

i remember being angry when it first hit 1.50 a gallon and stayed there. what i'd give for that now.

and dime stores were so much cooler back in the day

You know what, this is the opposite of the thread title, but I think kids' cartoons about The Bible are far higher quality today than when I was a kid. But they were also better before my time (at least "Davey & Goliath" *looked* neat). I was around, I feel, for the nadir era of a genre that is already a nadir.

those Davey & Goliath cartoons were scary

david the gnome is my bible

being around for the nadir era of a nadir genre is like a peak experience! I'm jealous

I remember seeing my friend's little brother watching some episode of "Veggie Tales." It was some episode about Nebuchadnezzar, who had been remade as a tyrant running a chocolate bunny factory. Shadrach, Meeshach, and Abednago (all tomatoes & cucumbers of course) refused to eat the chocolate bunnies, resulting in a form of the conflict we all remember from The Bible. It was so wacky, and so deliciously blasphemous! Then the tomato and the cucumber sang a song calculated to be inoffensively wacky. I wish I was allowed to watch something that weird as a kid! My parents probably would have said "it wasn't inspired by the holy spirit," though.

veggie tales has been around for a decent amount of time, I remember my homeschooled xtian friends watching it when I was at a sleepover at their house. wikipedia says it started 1993?

(they were prolly ahead of their time, I'm sure it's 10x as popular now)

Yeah, I don't remember being aware of it until 1998 or so...but like I said, it isn't divinely inspired (= Mormon) enough for my parents.

The word "awesome." I remember first hearing it in Star Wars, when Luke first sees the Death Star: "It's awesome!" Meaning, it's such seriously heavy shit that you don't just throw that word around.

An older musician/professor of mine once referred to a piece of music as "awesome." When he realized he was talking to a roomful of twentysomethings (in the early 90s) he caught himself and said, "Now, I mean 'awesome' in the way before people started to use that word to describe pizza."

awesome inflation is awesome

same goes for the word 'amazing'. some people i knew would describe 5 albums in 4 months as amazing, which tends to devalue the impact of the word a bit

Try working on a fashion magazine: everyone in the office under the age of 25 pronounces just about anything to be AMAZE or MAYJ. Totally HILAR.

;_;

Well, a couple of years ago, when everything was merely MAJOR or AMAZING, I did suggest the office equivalent of the Swear Jar to combat this creeping problem, but they're happy with their new vocabulary overlords.

BBWWWK: Saturday morning cartoons before the shows were created to sell products and not vice-versa; middle-class kids hanging out in the summer in a disorganized way - the term 'playdate' suggests ridiculous amounts of social engineering. The neighbourhood where I grew up was kind of perfect for kid games (in the winter, the park a block away had two skating rinks and a warming house with a local Swedish grandpa as attendant). Old people being properly old - I can't imagine my grandparents wearing tracksuits or sweatshirts in the way of the modern sixtysomething.

i heart "davey and goliath," not just b/c it's a staple from my own childhood but because it peddles a much more tolerant and (ahem) "liberal" version of Christianity than what we've seen since 1980 or thereabouts. it's very much a product of its time (60s space-age optimism and all that), almost a precursor of mad men in how you can watch attitudes evolve over the course of the series. i'd much rather have my kids think of religion as "davey and goliath" portrays it than the hateful blowhards that have usurped it these days, though.

Try working on a fashion magazine: everyone in the office under the age of 25 pronounces just about anything to be AMAZE or MAYJ. Totally HILAR.

I have a great bunch of co-workers, but in my middle school, it's not the adolescent girls who say "like" every third word; it's the female teachers between 25-35. (Sorry to focus on gender; I do find "like" to be a female thing, but maybe that's not typically true.)

Video Arcades. Pro Wrestling.

ditto to playing outside as mentioned upthread. sometimes i think that kids nowadays are being raised like veal calves.

veggie tales nebuchadnezzar "worship the bunny" song is a jam

back in the day (ok, the early/mid 90s) -- me and my college friends in our occasional drunken/stoned stupors would make up fantasy TV shows that we thought would never have a chance of being made. things like tonya harding and amy fisher in a televised wrestling match, or joey buttafuoco vs. OJ. this was long before the plague of TV reality shows that actually RAN with such ideas ... and in reality seemed like the afterthoughts of drunken/stoned 30-something TV execs.

i mean, when i was little i would play in the woods by myself for hours all around ponds and creeks and rocks and stuff. granted, my neighborhood was quiet and on a dead end road and everyone knew each other, but still... i don't think think this is done much anymore. for good reason, i suppose. the internet turned everyone into sex killers so you got to be careful.

yeah this. I spent HOURS in the woods imagineering and I dint think kids do this much now (Rufus?)

also u guys seen that map of successive generations of a family and their "play range"? like where did grampus go and goof off and where does the latest kid play video games

I don't think playing in the woods sounds like fun but rather a necessity because maybe there wasn't much else to do. Me and my friends went through people's trash or called up random people in the white pages for fun.

Reality shows seem like such a rip-off, do the actors get writers' credit in addition to compensation for their on camera participation? They seem like exploitation engineered by producers who don't get it.

Yes, the fucking woods!! When I was a kid we lived in relatively new neighborhoods with plenty of woods, like a mile or two, that we could play in. Due to development these no longer exist, now it's all houses right on top of each other.

There was plenty else to do when i was a kid, including videogames, skateboarding, bike riding, Star Wars figures, etc. Light Bright. Hella cool stuff. Soooo fucking glad I was a kid in the days before cel phones, to be honest.

it was better back when we were horses

when i was 11, i missed the school bus one morning. someone driving past our driveway stopped and let me get into the car so that i could catch it and not miss school (and get in trouble with my parents). i did get on the bus about a mile away from home, but when i got to school i was called down to the principal's office. it was my mother, who was freaking out b/c i took a car ride from a total stranger (and yes, i got into a LOT of trouble when i got home later that day). the point is: i really DID NOT KNOW how dangerous what i did was, things like pedophiles and child murderers and what not meant nothing to my 11 year old mind. (that it worked out OK for me was a stroke of good luck).

so i guess that it's a GOOD thing that kids these days are a bit more knowledgeable about predators and perverts. though i credit That Very Special Episode of different strokes more so for people my age than the Internet.

getting through airport security
halloween trick-or-treating
eating raw cookie dough
maybe radio programming

there were less bees in my shower

alrite time to admit i'm terrified of bees. like i've only been stung once (on the head, last year), but the things still get me. So, I left this bee in the shower overnight. So I walk in this morning and there that little sumbitch is, playing dead, on the base of the tub (it doubles as a bathtub).

But when I creep on this lil fuck he starts moving and crawling again. Oh no, he's not vibrant and full of life but he's like the action hero ready to fire off one final shot. So I fling a washcloth at him. Great move, now I can't see him.

I'm working blind now, but I turn on the bathtub, then I grab the shower nozzle and start firing. I hit the cloth and it comes off the tub, and the bee comes sliding out and I almost bee a little but then I hit it with three bullseyes and you can see the life leave its eyes.

Out of fear I continue to douse it until it has to be identified by stinger, and it heads towards the drain. Oh, it's too big to fit see. I hate picking these things up cuz like the stinger's still in there. But no, body breaks apart in the water and goes down the drain.

I live another day. Sorry for the derail. This all just happened.

and the bee comes sliding out and I almost bee a little

I love you.

oh shit haha I didn't even notice that.

pee would be the proper verb

Eisbaer, I can assure you that all the TV execs that made reality TV decisions were probably on... oh, guess.

We had a small woods and a thicket, plus marshland, near a lake, creek and golf course. We also had the run of all the yards where other kids lived, a railroad track with blackberry bushes, and a big water tower with enough hiding paces/land for 20 kids to play kick the can. There were also a pair of evil white geese in the yard of the gingerbread house next to the water tower, and leeches and crayfish in the creek, which we canoed and swam in. All of this was scant blocks from a highway and a main commercial artery a mile outside the Minneapolis city limits. My uncle the cop lived three houses away, and since he worked Vice we had a running Perp of the Week thing going - never blissfully naive about 'stranger danger' but allowed out until stupid o'clock as long as we were in groups; my mom once said she used to chafe at the curfew that used to be in effect when she was in high school and living on the very same street. Perhaps the adults around us felt OK about letting us run wild because they'd grown up in the same place, with the known local perverts and weirdos the same people they remembered, only older and avoidable.

Porn in the internet era seems way more harsher, meaner, uglier, violent and degrading than it did in the seventies, eighties and maybe even the first part of the nineties. This is weird to me because porn from those decades seemed really poorly made to me at the time, but it seems a lot less so through the haze of nostalgia.

wait, pot. pot is the only thing that got better.

stronger but not necessarily better IMHO

Trying to figure out the ways that stronger pot could not be anything but better, or conversely, what is there about weaker pot that could be better? Speaking as someone who was touched weed in over 10 years, the stuff I smoked in the nineties was miles better than the most of the stuff that I smoked in the seventies and eighties.

getting through airport security

omg yes. Flying in general.

I only flew once pre 9/11, I can't even remember what itw as like

I started flying for work back when smoking was still allowed on planes, that wasn't so good (as a non-smoker). But the airport experience was definitely better.

halloween trick-or-treating

the fact that there's now a designated, what, 3 hour window of "approved" trick-or-treating time is some bullshit

we had a trick-or-treating curfew (9 am or so, if i remember correctly). the town where my cousin lived (which is where we did the bulk of our trick-or-treating) would sound an air-raid siren about 15 minutes or so before the curfew. and this was in the late 70s/early 80s.

9 PM, i meant.

XXXXXXpost

I'm viewing this thru a nostalgic haze but the primo columbian & jamaican of the 70s provided a mellower, more subtle buzz than hydro-knockout weed.

inexact analogy: no more beer or wine available, just high-proof liquor

as for pre-9/11 flying: i think that i only flew 3-4 times max. don't remember it being particularly obnoxious. we could smoke on international flights (would've been insane if i couldn't) -- the most obnoxious thing i remember about the experience was this German tourist behind me who was too big for his seat so i couldn't recline back as far as i would've liked.

there was an encephalitis mosquito scare in like 1990 or something in various pockets of the nation, so they sent letters to parents advising that kids trick or treat on 10/27, which was a Saturday, during the afternoon.

My brother and I, still of trick or treating age, said "fuck that" in polite terms. My mom wasn't real impressed by the mosquito scare, thought the thing was stupid, and told us we could trick or treat on the real Halloween. that gave me oodles of respect for her. And some of our friends did too.

But it kinda sucked as SOME houses only gave out candy on the 27th and had nothing for us. FUCK THAT.

why didn't you go both on the 27th and the 31st

The trick-or-treating thing is kind of the same thing as being allowed to roam free in the woods or neighborhood. My parents didn't go trick-or-treating with us, we were on our own and trusted not to eat anything we got until we got back home. I feel the current attitude is not only so much super-paranoia about everyone else in the world being out to hurt your kids as it is paranoia that your kids won't recognize and respond appropriately to danger.

...nostalgic haze of pot smoke...

iatee--

A. trick or treating during the DAY was no fun
B. I played little league baseball then and had a game

my parents were hip enough to know (a) not to let us out in dark costumes; and (b) not to let my younger sisters go off on their own outside of my presence (or the presence of my cousins). the biggest fear, though, was someone tampering with the candy (poison or razor blades).

i dressed up as The Crow one year and all the adults thought I was a mime. I wanted to piss on their doorstep for that.

Suburbs used to be hella cooler IMO. Speaking from the experience of growing up in suburban Georgia in the 80s, the neighborhoods were very green, lots of overgrown trees, a few dirt roads, houses had large yards and plenty of privacy that lended to playing in. Nowadays anytime I go into a neighborhood the houses are ON TOP of each other, like seriously 10 feet away. Goddamn 'development'. Throw in disappearing general stores that are now replaced with Publix mini malls.

You guys should do a search for "free range kids" if you are worried every kid is tethered to mommy these days.

i don't really know what's going on with child-rearing in the suburbs these days, since i live in an urban environment. and while parents may be overprotective in some ways, in other ways they aren't. e.g., i'm a bit shocked about parents leaving their parents to nannies and what-not -- which i used to think of an upper-class thing or something that my mother had when she was growing up (in post-WWII UK and the British Caribbean, when her family had some money).

i mean, my GRANDMOTHERS were my nannies.

Where I live kids don't trick or treat very much, there seems to be an age limit of, like, seven years old for it and the parents are always present. A lot of kids aren't allowed to walk around outside in some of the newer suburbs unless they are in a yard. I suppose if I let my kid dress like a bulletin board or a prostitute or drug dealer I wouldn't let them just walk or play anywhere.

The worst is the office trick or treating. So boring. Proper teci or treating must be done outside.

Uh trick

Also when the kids come trick or treating they all wear those plastic ready made costumes instead of deciding on their own what they want to be. When I was a kid this was really un-cool.

Blue Angels zooming overhead here today reminded me: sonic booms

so, just throwing my two cents in— i think that the tethering of children has gotten worse, but at the same time, the movement against such tethering has been growing bigger and bigger. which is nice.

i used to play in the woods, ride my bike for hours and hours without telling my parents where i was going, walk around the city with friends all the time, take trips to NYC to meet friends all the time, etc. my parents were pretty relaxed in a lot of ways....

so, just throwing my two cents in— i think that the tethering of children has gotten worse, but at the same time, the movement against such tethering has been growing bigger and bigger. which is nice.

i used to play in the woods, ride my bike for hours and hours without telling my parents where i was going, walk around the city with friends all the time, take trips to NYC to meet friends all the time, etc. my parents were pretty relaxed in a lot of ways....

it seems to me that my generation had the worst parents— so many kids i know talk to their rents on a daily basis, and i'm just like, 'gtfo, that is stupid crazy.'

ugh, sorry for double post. comp issues.

Blue Angels zooming overhead here today reminded me: sonic booms

wow - this takes me back, primal memories of being about 5-8 y.o. and often hearing sonic booms when I played in our tiny backyard. we lived not that far from a big cold war air force base (wright-patterson in dayton o) so perhaps these really were a frequent occurrence and not an inflated memory.

They seemed so to me - at least a few every week, esp during the summer. We lived in a small town an hour or so from Grissom AFB.

it seems to me that my generation had the worst parents— so many kids i know talk to their rents on a daily basis, and i'm just like, 'gtfo, that is stupid crazy.'

― pounding beats of worship (the table is the table), Sunday, August 8, 2010 6:04 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

i don't really follow the logic here?

-how dodgy Camden Town used to be
-The price of comic books

Table, how old are you? I'm 41 and I'm constantly noticing just how much more mature and focused the teenagers of today are.

Trying to figure out the ways that stronger pot could not be anything but better, or conversely, what is there about weaker pot that could be better? Speaking as someone who was touched weed in over 10 years, the stuff I smoked in the nineties was miles better than the most of the stuff that I smoked in the seventies and eighties.

yeah the thing is now that to get mildly stoned, like enough to have a pleasant conversation about music or politics or whatever, you'd need to take 1/8 of a toke, whereas before, with weaker weed, you could smoke a joint or two and hang out. obv full-time stoners have no problem being high as fuck and taking care of whatever business but if you only do it every so often, your chances of being able to hang out & have a conversation after you hit the j are like nil

however that said, the strength of the stuff around now is like HOLY FUCK THIS MUSIC SOUNDS AMAZING

-being able to watch football on normal terrestrial channels

thats true aerosmith but also it should be said that more concentrated THC = less harmful shit clogging up your lungs

oh yeah no doubt, plus now there's vaporizers et al, I'm just making the case for a continuum of experience as vs. Get As High As You Can

yeah the thing is now that to get mildly stoned, like enough to have a pleasant conversation about music or politics or whatever, you'd need to take 1/8 of a toke, whereas before, with weaker weed, you could smoke a joint or two and hang out. obv full-time stoners have no problem being high as fuck and taking care of whatever business but if you only do it every so often, your chances of being able to hang out & have a conversation after you hit the j are like nil

― gross rainbow of haerosmith (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Sunday, August 8, 2010 7:08 PM (59 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah, this. i generally prefer kinda weak sauce sprinkle-in-a-cigarette stuff, because everything else makes me sorta freak the f out

"HOLY FUCK THIS MUSIC SOUNDS AMAZING"

this is basically my one defense of the high tech stuff. it can be pretty incredible. even slightly psychedelic. but i really don't have the time to be like that all the time! i would never leave the house. i have too much to do. but, um, i do appreciate it in a fabulous furry freak brothers sense.

hahaha totally
stuff is so strong to me in the past couple of years (was never a heavy smoker anyway) that if i have more than 3 tokes, i totally forget that i'm even stoned and go out into the world and do things and then a couple hours later am like, wow how amazing was all that, when all that is actually just like eating a sandwich.

ahaha <3

horror movies. altho I will say there've been some good ones of late, but they're getting too damn stylized and slick and they've been heading that way since the late 90s

all it does for me these days is make me all tense :(

Horror movies or pot?

every aspect of modern life

It seems like when I was teenager in the late seventies / early eighties, the police were kinder and gentler. I grew up in a small town, but committed my fair share of bored, adolescent mischief at the time without the feeling that I was getting hassled too much by the police. I never got paranoid by a cop car following me back then, the way that I do now. In fact, I never recall having a cop car following me until I was in my thirties when I was doing my best to be a much more law-abiding citizen.