Recently I unearthed a rather large, dusty box of cassette tapes. These relics made it all the way from Minneapolis and I regret telling the lady to bring them along, instead of tossing them as she had planned. There are some questionable gems in there (buh-uuuuudy,) not to mention a hell of a lovingly crafted custom gift from her then heavy metal sister. Some are albums we still listen to, while others have not been blessed with any attention in the last twenty years and never made the transition to compact disc. So we'll be buying a few of these so we can relive some of these fond audiorific memories. However, once we get the CD, we'll just be packing it away with the others.
Last year I took on the daunting task of uploading all of our music onto the computer. I have painstakingly tweaked info about each release, collected or scanned every piece of cover art into a perfect, digital square, and backed it all up so that I won't cry if one of my hard drives fails. My 5 year old iPod holds a mere 20 gigs (equaling 400 CDs) of the 220 gigs of music. Because of the iPod, I haven't played a CD in years. That's why, in accordance with my overly organized / anal self, I recently packed all our CDs away.
Technology has always been a part of my life. My father went to college for computers in the 60's, back when they had reel to reel and punch-card computers, I remember typing messages back and forth to my cousin on the computer back in 1984, waiting a half an hour for video games to load off a tape cassette on the Commodore 64, and writing choose your own adventure text based, basic language programs back before I kissed my first girl. While I'll miss looking at the booklets of my CDs, I'll trade that for the convenience of carrying 400 albums in a device the size of a calculator over large format anything. I don't want to be 70 with 12 O'Clock continually flashing on my iPod ala your grandma's VCR. Technology is my fountain of youth.
I don't currently own an high definition television. Even if I did, I don't have an HD signal from the cable company. I pay nine dollars for cable and I like the idea of dieing with that plan in place. Especially since, through an honest, accidental miscommunication, we get the fifty dollar plan at the nine dollar price. Am I going to replace the hundreds of DVDs with their digitally superior, younger, and high definition brother the Blu-ray? Not a chance; DVD is good enough. But from this point forward, I'll be purchasing Blu-ray discs for any new releases, even though I don't own a player to watch them. Because I'm young, hip, and my future kids will not be cooler than me.
1 comment:
old hard rock/heavy metal cassettes? i'll show you mine if you show me yours....
i just set up a stereo in our living room and have actually been playing my old cherished tapes - memories come rushing back - David Lee Roth Skyscraper, Kingdom Come, House Of Lords, Pretty Boy Floyd, Tyger Tailz...I could go on but now I'm wet....
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