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This Guy Makes Some Really Good Points…..[Saturday Afternoon Open Thread]

By: Susannah (Diary)  |  March 28th, 2009 at 01:33 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Watch this absolutely hysterical video below. Yes, this guy (Louis CK) is a comedian appearing in a guest spot on The Conan O’Brien Show. However, he makes some excellent points about what a spoiled generation that we have become with a raging sense of entitlement.

I even see myself in his comments. I sometimes fight the urge to smack my computer when it doesn’t behave exactly how I want it to, forgetting about the fact that I didn’t even own a computer until around ten years ago. Oh, and the rotary phones that he was talking about–my family had one of those when I was growing up. And yet, here I am constantly complaining about my cell phone reception, when I didn’t even own a cell phone until around four years ago when I went to medical school and had to have one (now, it’s all I use).

Oh, and finally, a hat tip to my most excellent Dad who emailed me this hilarious video. Enjoy and have a nice weekend.

 
This diary is cross-posted on The Minority Report.

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  • redneck_hippie
    • djemi

      I would add a big thank you to Susannahs Dad

      • Susannah

        I’m glad that you all like it.

        Oh, and djemi, I’ll be sure to email this diary to my Dad so that he can see your appreciation for his efforts. I’m sure that it will make him feel good. :-)

        • penguin2

          I’ve always had a sentimental feeling for those phones, My grandparents owned the same phone for at least 30yrs. Today, everyone wants the latest and greatest every six months-part of our consumer driven, throw away society. Grandparents and our parents, did not throw anything away!

          Delightful video and so true. No one appreciates the wonderfulness of all of our technological advances. It’s like the more we have, the more we want; kind of like spoiled children.

          By the way, my children are telling me I have a “dinosaur of a cell phone” it’s five years old. I tell them, “I don’t need another phone, this one does everything I need- to make a phone call!” Nothing more, nothing less. Thanks Susannah!

          • Susannah

            Oh, and by the way, I’m with you on the rotary phones being charming. A few weeks ago, my husband and I were shopping in an antique store. We saw a phone from the turn of the century called “mother-in-law” phone. It was an old fashioned rotary phone that had an extra earpiece so that the mother-in-law (presumably) could listen in on your conversation–and get this, it still worked! I wanted to buy it, but of course, my husband thought that I was nuts.

          • http://andrightlyso.com/ civil_truth

            They tended to have a signficant error rate, especially if you didn’t quite complete the rotation or if your rotation was somewhat uneven such that the central office picked up the wrong number. Plus the contacts did wear down after some period of time and become less reliable.

            And of course, any touch-tone technology doesn’t work with rotary phones.

            On the other hand, today’s generation of touch tone phones are have a cr*ppyconstruction and are designed to break down or for the key pads to wear out much too quickly.

            (Unlike the original AT&T touch-tone phones which were made to last when you had to lease them from AT&T, and thus whose key pads still work 25 years later – I know, we have one of them still in use.)

            But really, if unemployment skyrockets under the Obamanation, what we really should do is to bring back live telephone operators and patch cords, where you pick up the receiver and tell the operator what phone number you’d like to call.

            Killing two birds with one stone, so to speak…

          • redneck_hippie

            phone (just like the president’s hotline phone!) that was handed down to us when we needed extension phones in our new house. You see, kiddies, this was before there were such things as cordless or hands free phones.

            All I had to replace was the curly handset cord when the plastic connector broke.

            I did purchase a big, 40′s era manual typewriter for $2 at a garage sale. It still types, too.

            These items are not irreplaceable. They are practically indestructible and I figure I can always hurl one of them at any home invaders who should be so stupid.

          • Susannah

            I would love a cherry red rotary phone. :-)

          • redneck_hippie

            Bidding is still open:

            http://cgi.ebay.com/CHERRY-RED-500-HOTLINE-ROTARY-DIAL-DESK-TELEPHONE_W0QQitemZ130295311868QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item130295311868&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1205%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318%7C301%3A1%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A50

          • Susannah

            Why are you selling it? That is you selling it–right?

            Thanks for letting me know, though. :-)

          • redneck_hippie

            I only buy from Ebay.

            You should hear the way that baby rings, though!

          • tnjim

            It’s a wall-mounted model that still works even on a touch-tone line. Not too glamorous to lok at, it’s beige!

            BTW, Susannah, hilarious video!

          • Susannah

            I’m glad that I could make you laugh. :-)

  • Vladimir

    My grandma’s phone number was “13 on 7″. She had a party line in rural Iowa. You could call only with operator assistance, and incoming calls were recognized by coded rings: for example, two shorts & a long.

    Of course, you could listen in on any calls on the same circuit,

    All long distance (for everyone) was very expensive – it was mostly operator assisted as direct long distance dialing was not universal.

    • Susannah

      You learn something new everyday. That makes me appreciate my cell phone even more. :-)

      • Vladimir

        …certainly hasn’t experienced the “before-and-after” of the breakup of Ma Bell.

        The situation I described was ca. 1963. As someone commented before, you didn’t own your clunky rotary phone, you rented it (at $5-6 per month per set, IIRC) from AT&T, even if you had it for 20 years. And the only technological innovations that I recall from 1960 til about 1980 were touch tone phones, Princess phones (!), colors in addition to black, and universal direct-dial long distance.

    • Achance

      on the party line but we did have a 4-digit number: 3366 as I recall. Then sometime mid-sixties it became BElmont 7 – 8727, then 237-8727 (losing those names was an American tragedy), then 912-237-8727, then 1-912-237-8727 and it stayed that way until we disconnected it after my Mother went to the nursing home. Never had but the one phone in the living room because first, they wouldn’t pay for an “expensive luxury” like an extension phone and when additional phones became cheaply and readily available, they just weren’t interested. When I remodelled the little commercial building we had for my Dad’s store, I put one of them then-new-fangled portable phones in it and he hated it and had it replaced with an old-fashioned desk phone so he always knew where it was.

  • Susannah

    Fellow Redstaters, our own Blackhead (Francis Cianfrocca) has an interesting column, in Commentary Magazine, listed under “Best of the Blogs” on Real Clear Politics. The link is below. I just thought that some of you might want to know.

    http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/cianfrocca/60432

  • jbang001

    ITS NOT THAT FUNNY!

    • Susannah

      And, you got an account at Redsate just to post that comment? Dude, that’s a little weird. Do you even have a life? Just wondering.

    • George Claghorn

      Dude.

  • Alitheia