Dismemberment and Mechanization are the Answer

Graffiti on a board

Wheatpaste poster

It's official, I'm a geezer.

Time-Life is advertising Ultimate Rock Ballads of the 1970's & 1980's...they've finally hit a musical sweet spot. Boston, Journey, REO Speedwagon, Elton John, Peter Frampton, Styx, Foreigner, Cheap Trick, The Doobie Brothers, The Pretenders, Phil Collins, Rod Stewart, Toto, Queen, Eddie Money, Air Supply, Heart, Pat Benatar, Tina Turner, Bonnie Tyler, Starship, Mr. Mister, Fleetwood Mac,Genesis, The Cars, Survivor...these are the life blood of radio during my youth.

The music that accompanied my transition from childhood to adolescence. The age when I first started noticing girls and owned my first radio. It's fairly universal as I was in the Philippines, in an all-boys Catholic School and yet I was listening to the same music anyone in Everytown, America was hearing at the same time. 

My grandfather had given me an unexpected gift of a portable radio/dual-cassette player the first year I spent in boarding school and I was a bit retrograde musically, Frank Sinatra was still in rotation on the airwaves and my taste pretty much ran along those lines. Sinatra, Ray Conniff & His Orchestra, Nat King Cole, ABBA, The Carpenters...these were the 78's lying aroundthe house during my holidays in Zamboanga City. My Grandpa's and Nimpha's (his young wife) music.  

MTV still played music and in the Philippines it was a daily two-hour block of television as cable was a distant rumor of America's bounty. Life was pregnant with future promise...I took it for granted that I would one day take over my father's many businesses and there would be all that romance and heartache that Hollywood and popular media bombarded me with on an hourly basis. 

I wish I'd known how empty this promise would end up being in my own isolated case. 

In any case, my point is that I am now Time-Life's target demographic and therefore youth had passed me by. I only wished I had lived it other than vicariously.

Everything seems flimsier these days...

There I go sounding like an old man whinging...but it's true. You buy
something, anything and unless you pay through the nose for it and
maybe even then...it breaks. Shoe horns that can't stand up to the
stress of the work it's designed for, earphones that stop working a
few weeks after purchase, keyboards that have keys go non-functional
after only a few months use, printers that clog up between every use,
chairs that break just from daily use, everything seems to be junk
nowadays and I'm tired of paying for items that don't last.

I had an old Swingline stapler from the 40's and a rotary pencil
sharpener from the 50's that worked like brand new until the day they
were stolen. I have a portable typewriter from the 60's that's only
faded in color but not in functionality. I know why objects are
manufactured shoddily these days: profit. Planned obsolescence results
in repeat purchases and much quicker replacement and thus a better
bottom line for corporations. I don't have to like it though and I
think that the mean time between failures has reached the point of
absurdity.