The Angry Blogger

I do not want to be the angry blogger. I was all set tonight to rant and rave about something I saw, but I just really, really, really do not want to be the angry blogger, so I will simply say this, I would hope that in a town where anything goes and people gather, act like idiots, drink until they don’t know who they are, burn couches in the street without arrests, in a town like that I would just hope that two bicycle cops could find a better way to impress a very young lady than to harass a homeless woman who never bothers anyone and is just out enjoying the evening like everyone else. End of rant.

That being said, you need to know that I discovered last night that I can rent, or buy, movies from Blockbuster on-line!! This is amazing news, and really not a good thing. Ok the word really cannot be used again tonight. I go to the local Blockbuster and I know everyone that works there, I have written about this already, and I walk out with handfuls of movies at a time and then bring them back when I am done and repeat as necessary. Now I know that I can do this from the very chair I am sitting in right now. I just want to predict another forty pound weight gain on its way.

So to take this process for a test drive I bought, not rented, but bought Field of Dreams last night. This is a movie that I once had on VHS, but I watched it so many times that it broke and I have been wanting to replace it, which I accomplished last night on-line. I now know why the generation after me is sooooooo screwed up.

Sorry, I should not use language like that, but I tell you it is amazing to me that there are college age students that do not know what a fraction is, they have not read even the most significant of the classics, some of them, you might want to sit down for this, do not even know how to read a map. I know because these are things I have taught students on a college campus, one to break up the monotony of a fifteen week term, and two so I can sleep at night knowing there are now less students wondering around lost without a map.

It is crazy, I bought a GPS this year for some trips I had coming up, and I am glad I did, and on top of that my phone now has GPS and Google maps and a bunch of other stuff that I will only need if I get hit on the head and dropped in the middle of New York City, although there is still the ability to ask someone. Unfortunately, if you are in college now, you were never taught any of these things, you had a computer and a cell phone and a GPS and who knows what else placed in your crib waiting for you when you came home from the hospital. You have never actually had a conversation with anyone, you have just e-mailed and text, you have never needed to read a map because either you have the two or three gizmos I mentioned in your car, or someone has driven you everywhere all your life, or mommy has written every little detail of your drive down, no wait a minute she probably printed it off for you from her computer using Mapquest.

I actually think all of this stuff is great, it makes everyday life a little easier, at least sometimes, but if you have no back-up for when the electricity goes off, or your battery dies, because you know no other way, I then become worried not just about you, but everyone else on the planet as we become the minority that knew how to survive without all the “comforts” of the computer age. If you have not watched “Live Free of Die Hard” please watch it, all of it but the ending, because it really makes you think about what would happen if someone decided to unplug us for a while.

Thank you again for getting this far with me.