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Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Kids Today...

The YouTube Generation - I'm concerned, ladies and gentlemen, I'm considered about the directions society is going. It's not so much what the generation behind us is doing, since I'm sure it's nothing really new in the grand scheme of things, but rather why they are doing it. Allow me to explain - I've done stupid things in my day, there's no denying that and I accept that reality. Most of my friends have done stupid things that I know about, others have done stupid things I just don't know about it. Every does stupid things when they are young - this is a fact...however, recently making the news has been stories about teenagers doing stupid things so they can post the video on YouTube. Now, I'm not a huge fan of YouTube, I like it I suppose but this isn't a thousand monkeys with a thousand video cameras making Schindler's List or anything, this is a bunch of idiotic people making mostly idiotic videos. So when you hear a story about a bunch of teenagers in Florida inviting over a former friend for the sole purpose of video taping a vicious beat down, it's troubling...mostly because they were obviously arrested, making one question whether or not they thought of any of the possible consequences of video taping something so illicitly illegal. Obviously, former friends have been beat up before by their former cliche - but nobody was ever dumb enough to film, let alone the sole justification behind the beat down was the video taping itself! What's wrong with these kids? Are they really that desperate for attention that posting a video on YouTube for a bunch of strangers is really going to fill whatever void in their lives? Really? Then there is the story of the marine who threw a puppy over a cliff in Iraq for a camera phone...okay - and what did we gain from doing this? Yes, there's some question of the legitimacy of the video (based on the audio) but regardless - what's the point? The really scary thing about all this is, I sometimes wonder of which generation I'm apart of...I think I'm in the general age group of the rest of these losers and yet, I'm not that stupid and I can't think of anybody I know who is either. This is a troubling trend and because technology only makes it easier and easier for these idiots to make asses of themselves on a grand scale thanks to the Internet, I'm afraid it'll likely only get worse before it gets better...if it gets better at all. Granted, we all do irresponsible things in our youth - it's natural youthful indiscretion, but I don't think any of my high school hijinks made the local news let alone Good Morning America! The only stupid teenage prank I remember making the news was those students who put a bunch of animal carcasses in the Gull Lake (I'll need my fact checker on this one) parking lot. No, I don't see the point in it either, but I'm sure it seemed funny when they came up with the idea...granted it's a bad idea and should have been shot down before implementation, but again - we all make mistakes. Ridiculous, I say - therefore, in addition to discussing this topic, I'm asking all you lovely participants to look for more stories of people (particularly young people, although extending it to all generations would be just as interesting) doing stupid things for cameras resulting in terrible consequences (since the whole Fear Factor concept doesn't really apply to this because they get paid) AND also stories of teenagers doing good things, so we don't lose complete faith in the next generation...or our generation, depending on how you look at the age groups.

Dream Car - going along with the concept of my dream life, I would like to talk about cars. Now cars differ from houses in many ways; where a house can be a complete reflection of one's private self (if these walls could talk...) and can be a combination of both form and function, a car must be function above all other things. Furthermore, a car is a reflection of a person's public image...a person living in a trailer, but driving a Cadillac is a perfect example of this - their outer image is someone of luxury, whereas they choose to live in a relative dump. It is easy to assume that these people put perception above reality. I'm a much more practical being, and I believe that my car and house should say the relatively same thing about me (and, consequentially, my income bracket). Because this is my dream car, I'm completely open to assume that I am successful and wealthy, although I still choose to succumb to current technological limitations. Now there's a couple things I don't need - a muscle car? No thank you. Big trucks or Hummers or anything like that, I can do without. Vans and station wagons I avoid on principle. Personally, I've always taking a liking to the Jeep company. In particular, the Cherokee (and Grand Cherokee) and more recently, the Liberty. Now Tori would like a Liberty (perhaps by the end of the year, if we play our cards right) so that handles that for me (we have a 'what's mine is yours' relationship). I've also formed a kind of soft spot for the Jeep Wrangler...now, the Wrangler is in no way shape or form a practical vehicle - it's like a convertible in Michigan, you can only use it six months out of the year - why bother paying the extra? However, I have this soft spot because during my Taco Bell days, this cute girl would come through the drive through very frequently in an orange Wrangler. It was fun, she was cute - I'll be honest, I formed a bit of a crush on the combination. What's funny about that story is that one day Josh called me when he was working and had me come up to the building and she was eating there with her boyfriend but the Jeep wasn't there...I had already quit at this point, so I figured I'd probably never see her again, so I had to ask - what happened to the Jeep? She sold it! At the time I was in the market for a car, or at least I would be for that particular Jeep, but alas...it was gone. Because of that story, I want an orange Wrangler as a recreation vehicle...something to take to the beach in the summer, stuff like that. Bonus use is that it's a crappy, cheap vehicle perfect for the kid who turns 16 first! Now for me...currently I drive a little blue Kia Spectra and I love it. Yes, I got the plain Jane model (I named her Winnie after the Wonder Years character, but I should have named her Jane since she has NO features). The Spectra is perfect for right now in my life...it even matches the house, which is almost as plain and simple as the car. This being said, this is not my car of the future. I think my car of the future is going to end up being one of those luxury sedans. Gas mileage is important to me, but so is comfort - for some reason I feel rather natural in this commuting lifestyle and regardless of where I end up, I'm sure I'll be spending much more time than is probably preferable to most in my car and therefore, comfort is a must. Now I like the sporty look to cars, I prefer foreign to domestic and because of these preferences I think my dream car is in the Lexus S series. Like I said before, performance doesn't matter much to me, but availability as a hybrid is. For Lexus, this only provides the upper end of the S series, but that's okay because they all look good to me. I'm going to require a wicked sound system, naturally, that probably has an internal hard drive for mp3s and a GPS. So that's my dream car...maybe I'll be able to get it in the not too distant future, but probably at least somewhat distant and now the only question that remains is color. Ta.

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