A Time Before v.1

It's absolutely wild to me how fast time seems to move as I get older. I know, I know, this isn't anything new. In fact, everyone above a certain age won't ever shut up about it (and now I suppose it's my turn to not shut up about it either). But it feels like it bears repeating. Or maybe I just feel owed my chance to complain? Either way...

So: If you didn't know this about me, in my free time I also do a lot of community theater and other such related jobs. And with the (rapidly approaching) Christmas season, that can only mean one thing: Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol - Of which, I am the Assistant Director. Now, this isn't so much an article or rant about that (if I choose to do that, I may put it on my other site) as much as it is just a commentary based on a conversation that I had with some of the child actors the other night. See: They were talking (with great amazement) about "flip phones"

So of course, I chimed in to say that I had a few of those. See, while I might be too young to have ever experienced the tech aesthetic that I'm trying to evoke with this site (thus why I've created this sort of art-project type of site), I'm certainly old enough to have remembered a time before cell phones. And so I told them as much: "I had a flip phone. And I remember a time before YouTube/Facebook/Google" - The horror on their faces! How did I do anything? How did I listen to music? So, of course, I started talking about CDs

Surely these children would know what a CD was, right? I mean, optical disc format is still fairly alive, if inconvenient, in 2024. "You know, CDs? Like DVDs? Or Blu-Ray? Round reflective plastic circles that you put in a machine?" I found a picture. "You know, these things??"

"Ohhh... I know those! You can melt them with a lighter and blow bubbles out of them!" ... Fuckin' TikTok ...

I have half a mind to show up to tonight's rehearsal with some other things that'll blow their minds. Maybe a cassette, or a MiniDisc? See what they think of these relics of a bygone era. Tell them how I can fit an entire 90 minutes of "pretty okay-ish" quality music on one. Well... I think I'll take the "tape noise" over the loss of dynamic range and Spotify compression artifacts anyway.

Not that you don't lose dynamic range when recording to magnetic tape, but I'm not getting into that right now. Let me feel smug in my old age! God, if I'm this obnoxious at 35, imagine what I'll be like in my 50s (assuming the ElonTech NeuraLink allows me to even consider having such a dissenting opinion against the right and honorable Spotify corporation, of course)