Before companies made cars and trucks that could drive in the snow, people in places like Alaska and Canada used huskies and sleds to get around. When four-wheel drive was invented, it didn’t hurt the sled or husky markets because sleds can still be used to go off sweet jumps and huskies are great pets for people who are really into wolves but not brave enough to trap a real one. Unfortunately, a lot of old stuff is not as cool as a sled and not as alive as a husky. Here are some of my ideas of what we can do with lame old stuff that technology has replaced.
Letter Openers: With email, there aren’t too many letters to open anymore, so letter opener companies should start selling their products as “affordable not-so-sharp prop daggers.” This would be great if you were hitting on a girl who thought you were boring. While talking, you could randomly drop a really crazy-looking dagger (pimped-out letter opener) from your coat pocket onto the floor and then act all mysterious and say, “You weren’t supposed to see that.” Since it’s not sharp you don’t risk hurting your feet and the girl would think, “Maybe this guy who seemed boring is actually a secret assassin!”
Phone Booths: There’s no need to stop at a phone booth anymore thanks to cell phones, but what do we do with all of the phone booths that are just around? We make them into affordable houses for people who sleep standing up! You could also put a bunch of pillows on the inside walls and sell them to people who are afraid of falling down!
Paddles: Motors are way faster than arms, so there’s really know need to use a rowboat now that jet skis exist. That’s why boat-paddle companies should try to break into the fly swatter market. Think about when you try to hit a fly with a normal fly swatter and miss. The fly gets away and lands somewhere else far away from you. So are you going to be a wimp and say, “That’s the end of that,” or are you going to get out your heavy-duty extended-range fly swatter (paddle) and send a message loud and clear to flies everywhere that no one messes with you and gets away with it?
Eye-Patches: With eye surgery getting super advanced, there’s going to be a lot of eye-patches without any busted eyes to cover up. That’s why eye patch companies should team up with the letter opener companies to really hammer home the whole I’m-secretly-an-assassin thing.
The sad thing is, if these things get popular in their new uses, they’ll eventually get replaced by some new digital thing too. In fact, I think most stuff will keep getting replaced by digital stuff until we eventually live in the internet all the time. Once that happens, we won’t need to worry too much about it, because we won’t need to see all of the lame non-digital stuff around us.
Categories: Technology · history
Tagged: awesome, cute dogs, dogs, history, humor, huskies, love, Techno, Technology
Nature stuff and technology stuff are opposites of each other because nature stuff just happens while technology is put together using screws. But this doesn’t mean that there are no similarities between them. For example, an orange is from nature and a cell phone is from technology, but they are both things that my roommate, Greg, puts in his pockets before catching the bus to work (people probably think he has some weird growth on his leg because the orange kind of bulges out). More interesting than oranges and cell phones, though, are cats and computers!
Some of the things that are the same about cats and computers are simple. First off, they both start with c, which is important because, if you’re talking to someone you start to say computer when you mean to say cat, you’ve got a one letter buffer time before they notice you made a mistake in your brain. Another thing is that cats and computers are two things that can sit in people’s laps making a humming noise without that person feeling uncomfortable. Also, if you a glass of water on either your cat or your computer, it’s going to act kind of weird.
Nowadays, though, cats aren’t just like computers – they’re in computers. Whenever a guy with a cat has to make up a new password on the Internet, he uses his cat’s name. This means two things:
1. Because of security stuff, we might need to start giving our cats names that are at least six characters long, with one capital letter, one number and one symbol.
2. If some aliens came and stole all of our cats (maybe to eat them or maybe to love them – it doesn’t matter for this situation) and erased all of our memories of cats, the entire internet would crash because we would have no way to log into anything.
But computers are getting into cats too. A lot cats have microchips in them now, so that, if you find some random cat outside your house, you can bring it to the vet and scan it and see who owns it. This sounds normal and helpful, but it makes me really nervous. First it’s, “we just want to help you keep track of your cat,” but then later it becomes, “we just want to help you keep track of your cat and control your cat and give your cat laser eyes and send your cat to fight in a war.”
But if these microchips are used for cool stuff rather than making cats into weapons, cats might replace computers in the future. What if scientists make a microchip so you can play mp3s and surf the internet on your cat? How would computers compete? A computer isn’t furry and cool to pet and it can’t meow unless you download a sound clip of a cat meowing, and even then, it’s just not the same (unless you’re totally blind and you have no nerves in your hands so furry stuff and not-furry stuff feels the same and also you have really good speakers that make the meow clip sound real – then it’s probably the same).
Categories: Technology · cats
Tagged: awesome, cats, cute kittens, funny cat pics, humor, lol cats, love, Technology
Polar bears have a lot of fur so when it gets really cold, they don’t notice. People don’t have fur so when it gets really cold, we either need to go on vacation or find a polar bear coat. Most people do the vacation because it’s easier. But that doesn’t mean you should call up an airplane company and say, “One vacation please!” You need to decide where you want to go. Here is some stuff to think about that will help you make your decision:
Mines – There are two kinds of mines. One is a hole in the ground where people turn dirt-with-gold-in-it into just-gold. The other kind is a thing that is underground that is used to turn people into smoke and little pieces of people. The second kind is the kind you don’t want at your vacation spot.
Lone Gunmen – Lone gunmen are only trouble if you are not travelling with a bunch of gunmen. Before you go on vacation, maybe join a gunmen club and see if anyone would be interested in travelling with you.
Doctors – Think about this: you’re at a restaurant on vacation in a place that doesn’t have any doctors. Then a pregnant woman at the table next to you starts shouting, “I’m having my baby right now!” Since you’re from a place that has doctors, everyone is going to just assume you know how to do doctor stuff and you’ll have to deliver that baby.
Lava – If there is lava flowing through the streets of your vacation spot, the only people who can give you a ride anywhere are guys with weird lava-proof tires, and they’ll probably be too busy driving down the sides of volcanoes really fast to care about where you want to go.
Killer Bees – You’re sitting on the beach having a nice day when all of the sudden killer bees attack! It could happen anywhere! Make sure your vacation spot has good killer bee warning sirens. If they say they don’t have any, that’s a deal breaker.
Sharks – How many people get bitten by sharks at your vacation spot? Are the people who get bitten by sharks cool or are they lame? Talk to their friends: before they got bitten by a shark, were they always bragging about how they’d never gotten bitten by a shark so it’s like karma? How often do they get to tell their I-got-bitten-by-a-shark story to hot girls at parties? How many of the hot girls make out with them? Does the awesomeness of the making out make up for the pain of getting bitten by the shark?
Quicksand – Want to go to a place with sandy beaches? Well take a minute and think about this: the more sand means the more chance that some of that sand is quick sand. So how do you avoid going to a place with quicksand? Nobody knows because all the scientists who try to study quicksand end up sinking in quicksand.
Stilts – A vacation is about relaxing and being happy. Well nothing makes you not relaxed and not happy quicker than not knowing how to walk on stilts and then going to a place where everyone knows how to walk on stilts and outside of all of the restaurants and clubs are signs that say, “No shirt. No stilts. No service.”
Categories: Life stuff
Tagged: awesome, humor, Killer bees, life, stilts, sweet, Vacation
In the sixties, guys used to wear pants with really big foot openings. These pants were called bell-bottoms. Guys don’t wear bell-bottoms anymore because pant companies learned how to make pants that are normal at the bottom. Well this is how it is with paper – since we figured out how to get all of our words and pictures onto computers and the Internet, we really don’t need paper anymore.
This is a good thing for a bunch of reasons. First of all, it will save trees. In order to make a lot of paper, trees need to be cut down. In order to make computers, no trees need to be cut down, unless computers start having wood on them. Just like rappers and business men like cars with wood around the radio and speedometer, people might start wanting computers with wood on the inside so they seem more luxurious.
Also. Without paper, we can write about more stuff than ever before! For example, let’s say I didn’t want to write about technology. Let’s say I wanted to write an about matches. If I was using paper and I lit one because I wanted to write about what matches look like when they’re on fire, I could risk burning up everything I had already written. With the internet, this isn’t a problem because the websites are stored in satellites in space and wires underground, so they’re fireproof.
Now, the problem is we still have a lot of paper left over from when we thought we needed it, and if it’s around, people are going to be tempted to use it. So what do we do to get rid of all of this paper so we can use only the Internet and computers? I have a few ideas:
1. Put it on the moon: When you find a sweet burger place, you go back there over and over again and you bring your friends. If you find a lame burger place, you never go back. Now think about it, we barely ever go back to the moon since we landed there a while ago. This means it must be pretty lame. Why not stash all of our paper there?
2. Bring it to Antarctica and make a huge fire: Ever know someone with a big beard and then they shave it and you’re like, “So that’s what was under all that hair!” This is what it would be like if we used our paper to melt the snow in Antarctica. Who knows what we’d find! Dirt? Something other than dirt? It’s a mystery!
3. Make paper-powered cars: If we had paper-powered cars, libraries would be the new gas stations!
Some people will say we shouldn’t get rid of all of our paper because we need to remember how things used to be. These people forget that most things used to be pretty dumb, which is why they’re different now. For example, should we stop using cell phones and start sending messages using weird pigeons like people did a long time ago? No! Cell phones are way quicker and have cooler features than birds. Plus, birds are less stressed because they don’t have to work so much. It works out for everyone! It’s like this with paper, only with less birds involved.
Categories: Technology
Tagged: Antarctica, awesome, future, humor, paper, Technology
Even though you pronounce the “thanks” before the “giving,” Thanksgiving is actually about giving thanks. A lot of people will be thankful for something cool and new that happened. I’m taking a different approach this year. I’m going to be thankful for all of the stuff that could have changed in a lame way, but didn’t!
I’m thankful that ants have stayed the same size. If ants had gotten really big all of the sudden, that wouldn’t have been fun for anyone, not even the ants. There would be a lot of growing pains, like when teenagers get really tall of the sudden, but worse because it would be with ants.
I’m thankful that fireworks are still cool-looking and colorful. Sometimes I get nervous that they’re going to start making all fireworks one boring color, like gray, so that color blind people won’t feel left out on the Fourth of July. Luckily, this hasn’t happened!
I’m thankful that dogs and cats haven’t gotten totally tired of eating dog food and cat food. If they did, we would have to find another use for dog food and cat food, like for building smelly houses.
I’m thankful that it hasn’t become trendy to go up to people and sneeze really hard on them. Then people would only think you were cool if you had a cold, and all the gross, unhealthy people would get really popular.
I’m thankful that alligators are still considered really scary. That way, if there’s an alligator behind you, people will scream and you can turn around, see the alligator and run away before getting bit. If people stopped being afraid of alligators, more people would get bit by alligators, and if you got bit and complained about it, people would be like, “What are you talking about? Alligators don’t do scary things like bite people!” Then you might feel like you brought the alligator bite upon yourself.
I’m thankful that gold bars have not replaced flowers as the romantic thing to give to girls. Not only would you have to be rich to get all the gold bars you would need, you’d have to be a muscle man to carry them all around.
I’m thankful that the robots in factories that weld cars together haven’t gone crazy and thought humans were a threat and then tried to eliminate humanity altogether… yet!
I’m thankful that guys haven’t lost the ability to grow beards. This way, if someone goes to live in the wild for a while, you can tell by how giant and crazy his beard is. If no guys had beards, you’d have to ask awkward questions like, “I hear some guys go live in the wild for a while. Know any guys like that?”
There are millions if not billions of things that have stayed the same to be thankful for this Thanksgiving! Unfortunately, there’s also plenty of lame stuff that has stayed the same too. For example, Thanksgiving is still spelled with a ‘ks’ and not an ‘x,’ which is stupid because an ‘x’ would do the same thing as the ‘ks’ without using any excess letters. I’m going to write a letter about getting this changed, though, so we’ll see.
Categories: Holidays · Life stuff
Tagged: Alligators, awesome, humor, Thanksgiving
In the olden days, when you asked someone what time it was, he would say “Right ho, old chap,” and take out his pocket watch (this is the olden days in England). Now people still reach into their pockets, but it’s to pull out their cell phones. But are cell phones really better for telling time than watches? Let’s find out!
You’re probably thinking, “well I can call people on my cell phone and I can’t call people on my watch, so I like my cell phone better.” You’re right about that, but for this article I’d like to look only at their time-telling part so that they can be totally even before we see which one is way better.
One thing that is sweet about watches is that they have wristbands. This way you don’t need to reach into your pocket to get them anymore. With cell phones you always need to reach into your pocket, unless the guy at the cell phone store is really sneaky and he tricks you into buying one of those belt clip things. This may seem like a good accessory, but unfortunately the only people who look cool with their cell phone clipped to their pants are guys who build houses.
On the other hand, one thing that is sweet about cell phones is that you don’t need to set the time on them. The time sets itself using satellites. This is not the case with watches. You have to set the time, which is not always easy. For example, let’s say you go to the mall and get a watch and forget to check what time it as at the watch store. Then you stop and get some really thick sunglasses that make everything look dark. When you walk outside, you’re like, “It’s already late!” and you set your new watch to nine at night even though it’s only three. Then you end up going to bed at six, like an old person.
That said, with cell phones you’re taking a dangerous risk by just assuming that your phone company’s satellite won’t get shot down by another company’s satellite. If this happens, you won’t know what time it is or be able to make any calls. All you’ll be able to do with your phone is use the tip calculator, but you won’t know if it’s dinnertime so you’ll never go to a restaurant.
So there are ups and downs for both of them. In the end, though, cell phones can call people, which make them cooler than watches. Maybe in the future they’ll start making watches that have phones built in to compete with cell phones. That way you could wear your phone on your wrist.
As for telling time, the only real reliable way to do it is by looking at the sun. This will work forever, unless the sun explodes. But then you’ll probably have other things to deal with that are more important than trying to figure out what time it is.
Categories: Technology
Tagged: awesome, humor, sun, Technology, time
November 9, 2009 · 1 Comment
In old cartoons, when someone had an idea a light bulb would turn on above his head. In real life though, though, there is only one idea that can turn on a light bulb above your head and that idea is: “I want to turn on that light in the ceiling.” This is because light bulbs don’t run on ideas. They run on electricity!
Before electricity, there were only candles. Candles were ok for light but they can’t do a lot of other stuff that electricity can do. For example, you can’t charge your cell phone using a candle, and even if they never discovered electricity and instead made a way to charge cell phones using candles, you would get wax all over your cell phone. Then you would have a fully charged cell phone but you wouldn’t want to use it because it’s all waxy and embarrassing. So it’s obvious why people decided to use electricity instead, although candles are better Mother’s Day presents than electricity.
Now we’ve get electricity from the plugholes in our houses and apartments but it wasn’t always like this. Before normal electricity that comes out of walls, there was only wild electricity coming out of clouds. Wild electricity still exists and it’s called lightning.
You might be mad and thinking, “all this time I pay for electricity through the walls when there’s all this free electricity outside?” Well before you call the electric company and say, “Cancel my service. I’m going to use lightning from now on,” consider this: it’s pretty hard to get wild lightning. For example, let’s say you see a lightning storm coming and you want a milk shake, so you put milk and ice cream in a blender and then put it outside, there’s no guarantee that the lightning is going to strike your blender in the right way to make a good shake. It might strike it and melt everything, even the blender. Or it might not strike it at all. Or it might strike it just right but then a bear or a deer or something might take it. So wild electricity is always risky.
In the olden times they had a special way to get wild electricity. They would tie keys to kites and then fly them in front of the lightning. This was to send a message like, “hey lightning, look. I trust you enough to give you the keys to my house. Why don’t you trust me and give me some of your electricity?” That’s harder to do these days because people have more keys and it would be hard to keep track of which ones have been electrocuted.
Electricity powers everything, except for stuff powered by gas. Gas and electricity are competitors in the market of stuff that makes other stuff turn on. Gas can make cars go faster than electricity, but electricity doesn’t smell as weird as gas, and if you get a bit of electricity on your jeans people won’t think you’re a mechanic like they would with gas.
When the power goes out, we get to see what it was like for people before electricity. It get’s really dark and quiet at night and you can’t flush the toilet so it get’s kind of gross, just like for people a long time ago.
Categories: Technology · history
Tagged: awesome, electricity, history, humor, Technology
In the past, there were only pianos, so most music was pretty boring and only listened to by people who wear tuxedos even when they’re not going to a wedding. Luckily for cool people, guitars were invented so that music could get awesome. But even with guitars some music today is still pretty lame. This is because people are not using the best technology available to be as awesome as possible.
The first problem is that guitar companies are still making acoustic guitars. The word acoustic means “not with an amplifier.” Because there are no amps, acoustic guitars sound soft and dumb and make people who play them think they can sing in a sad and quiet way. For this reason, acoustic guitars should really only be used if there’s a power outage.
Even worse than the acoustic guitar is the acoustic bass. Acoustic basses are so big that the people who play them need to put them on the floor and stand behind then. When other things are big, it’s usually because you need more room to fit crazy badass stuff in them. This is the case with stuff like tanks, helicopters and sharks. But big giant acoustic basses are hollow in the middle. This throws off the ratio of room for awesome stuff to actual awesome stuff inside, making acoustic basses not awesome at all.
So the first step towards awesomeness is using an electric guitar or bass. But when people have electric guitars, their music can still sound not so cool. This is because you need sweet foot pedals. What do foot pedals do? Well, you know when you’re walking around in the woods and you find one of those weird puff-ball mushroom things that you can step on and they puff out a cloud of powder-stuff? A foot pedal is like that but instead of puffing out a cloud of mushroom powder, foot pedals puff out a cloud of awesome rock!
It’s also important to choose the coolest-looking guitar. Most people think that, since a lot of the time you’re listening to music without seeing the band, any electric guitar will do. But if you’re a guitar guy, it’s important for you that you have totally sweet guitar. It’s like if you’re on the phone and you’re eating really sour candy: even if they can’t see it when your face gets weird and your eyes start to water, people might still be like, “Are you ok? You sound weird and uncomfortable.” Then if you say nothing’s wrong, they get mad at you for lying. This is just like when I get mad because I can tell some guy is not rocking enough because he’s probably playing a guitar that’s boring looking.
I’d like to end by thanking guitar scientists for everything they have done to make music cool, but also to warn them that the battle against lameness is not over yet. Wherever there are acoustic guitars and boring looking guitars and big dumb basses there is the possibility of a guy who thinks it’s cool to write songs about crying and to play those songs while making weird sad faces. So keep pushing forward, guitar scientists, towards a time when guitars look like killer robots and they all have whammy bars.
Categories: Technology · music
Tagged: awesome, guitars, humor, music, rock, Technology
October 26, 2009 · 1 Comment
Why Grass?
Scientists always say that plants are really great. This is kind of like saying things with two wheels are awesome and fun. It applies to some of the stuff with two wheels – like speed bikes, some mopeds, and sweet mountain with shocks– but not all of the stuff – like those weird bikes that old guys ride sitting down or cars sawed in half. It’s the same with plants. Crazy jungle bushes are great, but some plants are just lame. One lame plant that we put up with year after year is grass. But why? Why don’t we use technology to make our lawns cooler? Here are some ideas.
Stainless Steel Lawn: Ever walk into someone’s kitchen and think, “Man something about this place makes me feel like I just walked into the future!” It’s probably because they have a stainless steel fridge. Now imagine your entire front lawn made of stainless steel. It would be like if you built your house on top of a giant, lumpy spaceship! Also, you could use grease for year-round sledding! And you wouldn’t get really wet afterwards, maybe just greasy!
Mini Trees: Laptops used to be big and clunky but now they’re small and more awesome. I say we do the same thing with trees. Imagine if you had a whole forest right in your front yard. You could probably make a lot of money, because if a movie director wanted to make a movie about giants, they’d pay to use your yard! Plus, then you’d get celebrities in your yard!
One giant swimming pool: Who says swimming pools need to be in one part of your yard? What if you had a swimming pool that was your whole yard? It wouldn’t be too different if you think about it: you have to water your yard if it gets dry and you would put water in your pool yard if it got dry; when you wake up really early the grass in your yard is wet and if you woke up with a pool yard, that would be pretty wet too. The big difference is, if you sit in a boat in your grass yard you look weird, but if you sit in a boat in your pool yard you would look awesome!
Dancing light-up grass: This would be grass that looks normal most of the time, but then if you wanted to, you could plug your MP3 player into it and it would start dancing and glowing and turning different colors. People would be like, “man, that guy must know how to party! Even his lawn is rocking out!”
Our forefathers had grass yards and so it seems like we should too because it’s traditional. But our forefathers also wore weird curly wigs that made it look like they had white hair even if they were totally young. The “fore” in forefathers is short for “before” as in “before we had any cool stuff.” Maybe we should try to be Fterfathers, where the fter stands for “after” as in “after we got rid of the lame stuff.”
Categories: Technology
Tagged: awesome, future, grass, humor, party, Technology
Pro-bowlers and people who work on computers have one thing in common: they can both hurt their hands at their jobs. A pro-bowler could hurt his wrist if someone accidentally puts some super glue in the finger holes on his bowling ball. Then his fingers could get stuck without him knowing and when he goes to roll his ball hard towards the pins, his hand might come off with the ball and go down the lane and score a strike. With computers, you don’t get any points for hurting your hands.
On the scale of what’s dangerous for your hand and what’s not, computer keyboards are medium dangerous. Some things that are less dangerous than using technology are turning doorknobs, pointing at stuff and touching sand. Some things that are more dangerous for your hands than technology are punching mirrors, reaching into fire, and checking if big turtles are snapping turtles or normal turtles using your fingers. Some other medium dangerous things are high-fiving musclemen who are usually gentle but can get excited and entering knuckle-cracking contests.
I didn’t know keyboards were dangerous until my roommate, Greg, started complaining about his wrist hurting all the time. I asked if it had anything to do with him wearing the really stupid-looking bracelet that his girlfriend got him and he said, no, the bracelet was soothing and not painful because it showed their love for each other (lame). He said his wrist hurt because he typed at work all day. He said if it got really bad he might get something called carpel tunnel syndrome.
You’re probably thinking, carpel tunnel syndrome? How am I supposed to remember something as weird-sounding as that? Well, I have a way. Imagine you work at a place that also has a room for an orchestra to practice music, so you carpool with some orchestra guys. One day, you try to take a shortcut through a tunnel, but you get stuck in a traffic jam underground. You’re going to be late for work so the orchestra guys start freaking out because they need time to warm up, so they take out their giant horns and stuff and start warming up in your car, which is really small. This carpool tunnel situation can get uncomfortable, just like carpel tunnel is uncomfortable for your wrists if you type too much.
Unfortunately there is no way to avoid using keyboards for a lot of people. You might be able to get a microphone that types into your computer for you, but that could get embarrassing. For example, what if you work for a doctor typing up stuff his patients have said to him? There might be a patient who had butt problems and was like, “my butt hurts, and it smells pretty nasty, and I looked at it in a mirror and it looks pretty gross too.” You would have to say that and if hot girls were walking by, they might think you’re talking about your own butt.
So the only thing to do is take breaks when typing and don’t type too hard. Also, look for signs that would make typing even more dangerous than it usually is, like if the keyboard is really hot and melting or there’s a big poisonous snake on it.
Categories: Health · Technology
Tagged: awesome, hands, Health, humor, snakes, Technology
