Tuesday, July 12, 2022

"Uncool things Boomers still do"

Source

Racquetball

Sounds like envy. I bet most of the 70 year olds who play racquetball could mop up the court with you.

Potpourri

Must be the older boomers. I don't know anybody who did this unless they had a Gen-Y-or-Z living in the basement and smoking weed rather than going to work.

24-hour news stations

CNN. Yeah. Right. Sure. Maybe in airports.

Readers Digest

They lost the ERJ family about 15 years ago. No content.

Fine china and knick-knacks

Probably cannot afford fine china. Agree about the dust-collectors. Collectables are a stupid investment because of the thin market, convex-up value curve and skin-in-the-game market-maker.

Waiting for shopping catalogs

Stupid boomers. Waiting for November first to buy Christmas items when they could buy them on-line in February... Of course it is easy to buy Christmas items in February when you and your pronouns are your only friends.

Chain restaurants

Belladonna used to work as a waitress at Applebee's and the training she received was two orders of magnitude better than what she had received at the small, local, boutique restaurant. Say what you will about chains but their QC is head-and-shoulders above little restaurants.

Processed foods

Odd comment coming from a generation who eats outside the home as often as they do.

Processed foods have the advantage of easy clean-up. I will accept this criticism when the person leveling it is eating 95% of their meals at home and is cleaning up all of their pans after meal prep.

Yahoo

You mean like what you hollar when you are really excited?

I know a few people with ".yahoo.com" legacy email addresses. Otherwise, we moved on. Even the boomers.

It will be interesting to see if you are still "tweeting" five years from now.

Dry toast i.e., no butter.

I used to be young and I weighed 133 pounds. Now I look for easy calories to avoid. It is not a generational thing. It is a slowing metabolism thing. Get back to me when you are over sixty.

Mrs Dash

My mom has those in her cupboard. Another slowing metabolism thing. Less renal capability, higher blood-pressure. Avoiding sodium will catch up with Gen X/Y/Z too.

Patterned wallpaper

Sounds like envy vis-a-vis being able to afford your own home and decorate it any way you want. I suppose if you have $60k of student debt and are stuck sharing an apartment you will do the mental gymnastics required to make your enforced beige-dom some kind of virtue.

Toilet seat covers

Those covers make them self-closing. You sound like an incel who has yet to experience the seat-up/seat-down wars.

Infomercials

You mean like the videos you stream? Explain the difference to me.

Unique salads

So "unique" is cool if you call it "fusion" but is uncool if you call it "unique"?

Lemme tell you, Z-gen, you are so ugly your milk will curdle unless U-nique up on it.

Multi-level marketing scams (Amway, Tupperware, Avon)

Cannabis? Crypto? Battery-dependent-transportation? Do the industries that are emblematic of your generations offer more value to the public than soap, food storage or deodorant? Are you ABSOLUTELY SURE they are not MLM schemes or Ponzi schemes?

Throw pillows

Mrs ERJ informs me that pillows are essential ergonomic aids for making furniture conform to the shape of her body. When she was in her mid-20s she could sleep on coils of chain.

Of course, Mrs ERJ is very slender and doesn't carry her pillows around her waist and in her slacks. So maybe that is the difference.

Metal detecting

Guilty as charged. I think it is very cool that metal artifacts from 2000 years ago can be found and we can glean insights into how people adapted and overcame environmental challenges in their day.

One presumes the author has no interest in what happened before January of 2021, so it is understandable that he does not share that interest. ADHD is such a burden.

Using fossil fuels

We are fossils. We use fossil fuels. Get used to it. You are an insufferable twit. What are you using for fuel? IST?

What are you wearing? Cotton grown in fields plowed by diesel tractors, irrigated by NG powered pumps, sprayed with petroleum based pesticides and processed by diesel tractors, trucks and fossil-fuel powered factories? Polyester synthesized in factories? Leather? Vinyl?

Do you enjoy air-conditioning? Heat in the winter?

Do you ride a bus made from aluminum and steel and composites, running on rubber tires?

Cable TV packages

Nope. Not here although my mom got a package so she would watch EWTN.

TYPING IN ALL CAPS

Cliché. As a talking point, most boomers know when to capitalize and how to punctuate. I doubt if that can be said for most of your generation.

Keeping physical paperwork

Documentation wins. How do you know the cloud will be there when you are audited?

Sending emails

Yeah, I get that. A well-written email requires thought and exposes the writer to accountability in the future. Might as well be Gen-Y kryptonite. I can see why you avoid emails.

And that documentation thing. Do you really think you will be able to recover those texts three years from now if the facts are contested? Really?

Ironing

Never ironed an article of clothing in my life.


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11 comments:

  1. Another uncool thing we do is tolerate judgmental little a-holes rather than giving them the beatings they deserve.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The only things I agree with on that list are Readers Digest, collectibles, and ironing.
    I take collectibles to mean items with no other use, for example figurines.
    On the contrary, some tools and guns are collectible but still eminently usable.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Agree vis a vis tools and guns, although I collect mostly antique and vintage woodworking tools. What would be called "User grade", not the NOS still in original box found collecting dust in the back corner of an old hardware store or grandpa's barn.

      Back in the day, my wife used to collect a couple of genres, Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls. And state shot glasses and teaspoons. After a fire destroyed most of our stuff that was in storage, she became disheartened and decided that those things weren't important anymore, although she still has a couple of the autographed first edition Raggedy Ann books and a couple of dolls made by her late Aunt. (The reason our stuff was in storage was because we were in between moves and had temporarily rented a furnished house. Some idiot got mad at the owners of the storage units and set the place on fire. Our unit just happened to be next to the empty unit where the fire was started.)

      We also gave up on cable/satellite TV many years ago. There are a multitude of free streaming services that have old TV shows and movies that are so much better than the dreck produced today.

      One of the minerals or chemicals in salt is very important for the human body, Iodine. I developed an aversion to salt 40+ years ago because of forced intake of salt tablets when going through basic training during a hot summer at Lackland AFB in the summer of '76. Took me a long time to realize that salt in moderation is good for you.

      Delete
  3. 'Dry toast i.e., no butter.'

    Joe, nutritional science has moved on. Eat the butter and ditch the bread. See the book 'Wheat Belly' for details.

    ReplyDelete
  4. The 'Dry Toast' observation rings true. I don't use mayonaisse in my sandwiches as much as before either, replacing it with mustard.

    I stretch a package of Ramen into three separate meals, reducing the amount of carbs and ramen seasonings. Adding a bit of salsa to the liquid before heating is often done as well.

    Also agree with Jonathan H above, some collectibles that can be used to make, repair and do tasks are good barter goods. Especially if they are manufactured better - some of the tools available for sale new in store are not manufactured well at all.

    ReplyDelete
  5. And.. you guys make stupid fucking lists about shit nobody but a Boomer would give a shit about. Nobody is thinking about you but you. Enjoy your nursing homes and your black attendants.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You do know that " what goes around, comes around", right?

      With age comes experience and wisdom. Us older folks try to impart that wisdom to you youngsters so that perhaps you won't make the same mistakes we did.

      But then, some people have to learn the hard way.

      Delete
    2. Calm down Anon and Mouse:
      The referenced (i.e. linked) article was a snarky list of outdated, derogatory stereotypes. One must assume that many in the intended audience find that kind of article screamingly funny.

      Turnabout is fair game. I apologize if the shoe pinched. Apparently the intended audience finds those articles funny only if they are slagging other generations. Imagine that!

      With regard to nursing homes, I intend to avoid them but for the record I have several immediate family members who sport melanin-rich skin and I have family members who are only slightly more distant who are LEGAL immigrants from Central America.

      I have no fear of being taken care of in my old-age by "black attendants" and one of my back-up plans is to move to Central America if TCFKATUSA gets too sporty.

      Your mileage WILL vary.

      Delete
  6. I use exercise to maintain weight, rather than diet-based weight control.
    Stay fit and I eat what I want, within reason.
    AT 66, it's working well for me.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Christmas, birthday, mother / father's day shopping is year round for me. I usually stick to giving silver ounces, they are cheap without being "cheap", but I'm not beyond buying small box-store items for a holiday that might be 7+ months away. Silver is great because it works in a pinch if I forget a holiday or birthday.

    +1 for paper records. I keep paper records of nearly everything in my home business and it's neatly sorted in folders by quarter on a shelf. If there is no receipt then it's hard to claim an expense against revenue.

    I recall that the only thing I ironed was my uniforms but even that didn't last and dry cleaning took over.

    Email is referred to as "evidence mail" in the legal world and it's a double edged sword that can work for or against you; use has little to do with generations. Text messaging stands on the same ground as email and is the equivalent of a physical document or record. It's good to use Email / text / paper when you WANT a record to protect yourself with or to collect evidence.

    Employers and politicians avoid *evidence*mail or text when they know something is probably illegal or bad optics and use voice calls instead. Texas has single-party consent and call recording apps are free so calling won't save bad actors either. Texas is also a verbal contract state but you need to be able to prove there was an agreement or have evidence supporting it.

    Email is actually my preferred communications method since I can keep records of everything, followed by Discord or direct messages on web forums. The surveillance age is here to stay, embrace it, make it work for you.
    - Arc

    ReplyDelete
  8. It is always easier to mock other generations than mock one's own (less profitable and less enticing for audience numbers as well, I imagine).

    In turn, the writer's generation will be mocked by those that follow. At best, a short sighted jab that ignores both history and human nature.

    ReplyDelete

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