Life before the internet really sucked ass when you think about it

I thought about something profound today: Children born within the last 15 years or so have no concept of life without the internet or mobile phones. I am among the last generation of people who remember a time before these miracles.

I did school projects entirely based on books and printed articles, schlepping to the library in the cold and rain instead of holing up in my cozy house.

If I wanted to know something about a local business, I looked them up in a heavy phone book and called them to ask directly.

Single songs could only be purchased if they were popular at the moment, and required a trip to the music store (Record Bar!), where $3 (in early '90s dollars) had to be plunked down for a cassette with a track on the other side that may or may not suck. CD singles were a shocking $6. If I may digress a bit, remember how CD changers were the ultimate automobile add-on in the late '90s? Wow, 6 CDs! That's like 70 songs in your car! Fuck that shit, man, I got nearly 1800 songs and hundreds of TV shows on my ipod.

My dad was the last guy who would ever have skin mags, so decent beatoff material had to be gleaned from R-rated movies from the independent video store, or mature audience comics. How many times did I spank it to Danger Girl?

Ordering things by mail required either a phone call to a live operator, or sending a check through the mail and waiting 2 or 3 weeks to get your order. Finding some hard-to-find item required numerous phone calls to area shops and dealing with clueless clerks.

Burning questions couldn't be answered instantly, like what actor played the guy in that movie, or who sang that one hit wonder.

Getting a photo or document to someone required time and postage.

If I missed a TV show, I'd have to wait until summer reruns and hope it wasn't being rebroadcast on a week that I was at the beach (where we had no TV).

If I wanted a weather forecast, I had to wait through 15 minutes of local news first.

If I wanted to know what friends were up to, I had to call them on the landline phone and hope they were home to answer.

If I had been dropped off somewhere and needed a ride, I had to use a dirty pay phone, sometimes outdoors. At least those were in greater abundance back then.

If I were meeting someone somewhere, and he was running late, I was left in the dark about it. Or he'd have to call where I was and ask for me, making me move my ass to the phone.

Shopping for stuff used to require a trip to a store, where I had to park, deal with pushy clerks and annoying shoppers, all with the possibility that I wouldn't find exactly what I wanted. Now I can peruse dozens of merchants' wares and compare prices without leaving my house. It's gotten to where I can get some things I want cheaper online, including shipping, than in a store. Anything that keeps me from having to navigate the endless aisles of Wal-Mart and stand in line behind some morbidly obese trailer rat and her four mulattoes is OK by me. Though I would miss the entertainment of watching her slap them around. I've even taken advantage of online grocery shopping, where I just pull up to a pickup lane and they bring out the groceries to my lazy ass. Such does require a trip outside the house, though, and they sometimes make substitutions that I don't want.

As the winter gloom, with its short, cold days and long, dark nights, approaches, I feel increasingly appreciative of all the internet does that allows me not to have to stray from my warm house out into the unforgiving elements.