But what about the children?
Today, with some time on my hands as some of the grandparents have taken my lovely urchins for a fun-filled afternoon at the museum, I started thinking about how sad it is for them that there are certainties of my life that they'll miss.
For example, the certainty that the hot air hand dryers in the public restroom would have had the instructions defaced so that they read something like:
- Push Butt
on. - Rub hands under
warm Hair.
Today's automatic dryers use pictographs instead of words, which will be harder to vandalize at first. Until a clever soul is the first to discover the simple strokes and slashes that will make the passing world smile - the first thousand times or so they see it in every other public bathroom in the world, for the instant it is generated the joke will spread worldwide.
But that will be then. For now, it's clear that my children will be growing up in a mirthless world.
Further, I listen to some godawful racket by people who are self-admittedly ab/users of drugs and alcohol, cross-dressers, omnisexual or depressive psychopaths - sometimes all of those traits together simultaneously and on stage!
I have been a fan for years, and, the joke goes, it hasn't affected me.
My saintly mother, bless her, took my championing of all of these musicians (and authors and filmmakers and visual artists and so on) without a skip in her stride (well, after that Cheech & Chong record I got in 3rd grade). My dad? Hell, he gave me that record!
Time honored stereotypes be damned, I don't think I did much to shock my parents (although they're both still a little uncertain how they raised such a diehard liberal, but that's another post...)
I find it difficult to see how their musical choices will shock me. Cause me discomfort, sure, but that will more likely be on the grounds of musical distaste than on the fuddy-duddy grounds of unruly or inappropriate behavior and lifestyle choices by the artists.
Pity my children! They're growing up in a society which has debased its own chestnuts of eternal humor by offering instructions for the illiterate and in an environment in which their laissez-faire liberal parents practice some sort of Summerhill School-like hands-off childrearing and don't care what sort of things cultural organs are filling their pumpkin skulls with.
Or am I just whistling past the graveyard? Are my kids more likely to find something so new and unique and shocking that my elderly reptilian brain can't even fathom or predict it?
That's a rhetorical question, isn't it?
Today, with some time on my hands as some of the grandparents have taken my lovely urchins for a fun-filled afternoon at the museum, I started thinking about how sad it is for them that there are certainties of my life that they'll miss.
For example, the certainty that the hot air hand dryers in the public restroom would have had the instructions defaced so that they read something like:
- Push Butt
on. - Rub hands under
warm Hair.
Today's automatic dryers use pictographs instead of words, which will be harder to vandalize at first. Until a clever soul is the first to discover the simple strokes and slashes that will make the passing world smile - the first thousand times or so they see it in every other public bathroom in the world, for the instant it is generated the joke will spread worldwide.
But that will be then. For now, it's clear that my children will be growing up in a mirthless world.
Further, I listen to some godawful racket by people who are self-admittedly ab/users of drugs and alcohol, cross-dressers, omnisexual or depressive psychopaths - sometimes all of those traits together simultaneously and on stage!
I have been a fan for years, and, the joke goes, it hasn't affected me.
My saintly mother, bless her, took my championing of all of these musicians (and authors and filmmakers and visual artists and so on) without a skip in her stride (well, after that Cheech & Chong record I got in 3rd grade). My dad? Hell, he gave me that record!
Time honored stereotypes be damned, I don't think I did much to shock my parents (although they're both still a little uncertain how they raised such a diehard liberal, but that's another post...)
I find it difficult to see how their musical choices will shock me. Cause me discomfort, sure, but that will more likely be on the grounds of musical distaste than on the fuddy-duddy grounds of unruly or inappropriate behavior and lifestyle choices by the artists.
Pity my children! They're growing up in a society which has debased its own chestnuts of eternal humor by offering instructions for the illiterate and in an environment in which their laissez-faire liberal parents practice some sort of Summerhill School-like hands-off childrearing and don't care what sort of things cultural organs are filling their pumpkin skulls with.
Or am I just whistling past the graveyard? Are my kids more likely to find something so new and unique and shocking that my elderly reptilian brain can't even fathom or predict it?
That's a rhetorical question, isn't it?
First of all, you are SO right about the hot air hand dryers. I can still feel my delighted shock when I first discovered one as a child, and to this day I look carefully in every truck stop bathroom, hoping to turn back the clock.
Second of all, you could always make your kids watch this each morning before Sesame Street, just to balance things out:
http://jezebel.com/gossip/clips/amy-winehouse-sings-off-key-slurs-words-wipes-nose-often-during-performance-318504.php
Keep fightin' the good fight, friend. Know you're not in it alone.