plodding along in my young old age

I could've sworn it was just a few weeks ago I heard about CDs. Obviously employing some hyperbole here, but groove with me on it...

I was still quite happy with the improvement of cassettes over records and 8-tracks, honestly. Tapes you could record...create with. Capture your own voice, snippets of the teevee, or your little brother scratching with your Sesame Street records.

I read storybooks, told jokes, and made my brothers laugh on those old tapes. They're in a box around here somewhere. You'd think I'd wanna listen to them, but any time I do the voices sound alien - like someone and somebody else. So I rarely listen to them anymore.

But there came a day when Grandma started to be reluctant to let me use her tape recorder. I chalked it up to the random moody nature of these adult things, and went back to watching Woody Woodpecker on the black and white teevee at the foot of her bed. And no cookies, either, or I'd spoil my dinner. :P

About two weeks later was my birthday, which for a kid of that single-digit-age was months away. But I got my very own tape recorder for my birthday. Which I then proceeded to wear out, leave running as I fell asleep, or push my fingers into when it was running without a tape in it. Mom and dad always wondered why we had to get it repaired so often. Yeah...we're all stupid sometimes...at least most of mine was back then, eh?

I've never been well-off monetarily. I've worked and earned and bought things that were on sale, spent wisely. I've never been able to afford the newest, latest, greatest tech. I usually have to wait till all the gaudy, stupid, classless people with the money and none of the brains buy, break, wear out, and replace the new shit.

So here we are in some year they all claim is 1020. ...oh, wait...2010. (Oops/same diff.) I have a collection of slightly outdated tech that serves me decently. A few key pieces are almost new, just a year or two old. But I still feel proud of my 3G ipod and my phat old pre-lite nintendo ds.

I have a digital camera, but it damn sure doesn't fit in my pocket. It shoots RAW and has other features I wanted, but it doesn't do HD video or anything. I got it cheap off craigslist. My spare digital cam, the one that does fit in my pocket...it's from savers and the battery has to be taken out after every shot or it drains quickly.

I found myself finally lusting after the Wii when I've seen all the "homebrew" independent software filling the gaps in the "legitimate" usefulness of the console. I couldn't really care less about it, despite the obvious lure of the actual Mario title Super Mario Galaxy.

So many false Mario games have come out in the last 7 years. These Mario Party things, the Smash Brothers BS...I've never understood those. Like taking Mario's face and slapping it on a ton of things. I have owned many nintendo titles. But the only ones worth keeping were the ones with actual Mario doing actual Super things. Not golf, not dancing, not board games, and not Rf'nPGs.

RPGs interest me about as much as steampunk. Like a cheerleader with a 40-year-old antique calculator keypad where her face is supposed to be.

New SMB for Wii took the game I enjoyed so much on that little tiny DS screen and lets it breathe on a bigger screen. Pretty much at the same time, nintendo announced a bigger handheld for those of us who could hardly play anything on their existing millions of kiddie devices. Our hands, fingers, thumbs and arms are not compatible with the twee itty bitty size of these things for long...no how.

It's worth mentioning that the most fun I had with the DS were doing two things. Playing NSMB until I got sick of holding the tiny system up to my face, and scratching samples with protein-ds.

I want a Wii. I've wanted to check it out since I played exactly ONE swing of golf during a micro-break at a relentlessly-aggressive media company's call center one day over two years ago. That's the sum total of experience I have with the concept, controls, any of it first-hand.

I use my xbox every other day or so, but couldn't care less about the 330 or whatever it is they're calling the new one. Linux and open-source hackers and freedom fighters created the useful part of the xbox for me, Xbox Media Center. I can't say enough good things about it, and if you've ever used it, you wouldn't be able to stop gushing about it either.

Seeing this level of functionality being achieved in fits and starts on the wii is inspiring me to want to pony up the loot and fetch me one. I'm not prepared to spend more than I have to. So maybe $120-150 for the console, all connections, at least one controller and one game. *shrug*

That's assuming I can find the deal, the pieces all look in good enough shape, and it's after April. I'm not in any hurry. I might be able to do tons of tricks with my xbox but I still can't get the damn thing to play N64 games.

I've seen the emulation for the 64 improving. Since the xbox thwarts my attempts and I have a couple of usb controllers, I'm gonna give mupen64 a try under an operating system or two. Last I tried to emu the 64 on the mac, the controller wouldn't map the sticks, just the buttons. Either the controller's borked or the mac's just an asshole!?!

I came over here - well-caffeinated as one might by this point assume - after seeing evidence in the chatter here and there that ye olde apple nee computer finally dropped their long-awaited "tablet" device.

I watched the video. I love how condescendingly they proclaim that it's "affordable" at five hundred fucking dollars. Maybe if I'm one of the artists whose music you use as bed under the video. I'm sure Ben fucking Folds gets a free iPad. I could - you know - actually use one. He's undoubtedly already got either an iphone or a widescreen kickass imac and laptop.

The world spins out of control and wobbles on its axis. These sorts of minor injustices bear my bleeding brain to spew them out here in the land of digitally volatile futuretext, where any old emp or rogue pulse can wipe them from the collective consciousness just like *that*?

I watch the carnage unfolding from Haiti. The statistics claim that anyone left in the rubble is dead. But they keep pulling live people out after 15 days. I can't imagine the horror of making it this far, perhaps even able to hear the rescuers but unable to make a sound...and having them pass you by because a statistician told them to!?!?

And all the aid workers getting hammered down there. Haiti wasn't a wealthy nation before. I hesitate to even think it...but how many of these hungry mouths, these homeless people were homeless and hungry before the quake? How many of them didn't have anyone even in their own neighborhood noticing their plight 90 days ago?

I digress...but with good cause.

I came here to whine about how the ipad might go on my list of wanted items. But not for the obvious reasons. No...for painfully few of those.

I'm not a cellphone user. I have one, but only a basic model that does just what it needs to, and charges me the least amount of loot to do it.

I once had aspirations of being a techological gadget man, up on the times and buying every new thing. I have long since abandoned such expensive foolishness. And I'm not even old enough to have any grey hairs, I just got wise.

If I had an ipad, I'd basically playtest it, see where it wobbled, where I could poke at the underpinnings, and what I could do with it to amuse myself that perhaps no one intended. I'd play games, I'd run apps, I'd learn a lot of what my friends and family have been getting from their iphones for years already.

I'd catch up and I'd run loops out ahead of many of the people using these things now. Or at least I'd try.

I'm still amused at recent news that someone busted the outermost ring of the onion that is no doubt the security features of the sony/fony pee-ess 3. I have been calling for the fall of sony for a long time. Their minidiscs were an abomination before logic and reason and the company's folly has only grown since.

I'd love to play the newest Ratchet and Clank games, but on my terms, NOT theirs. So the console can take a big leap until the price of admission is no greater than it would've been to buy another game for my PS2. I saw no need to upgrade, and won't pay to be forced to do it.

So that's it. I'm a cellphone noob, hate microsoft and fony, not so hot on apple's bloated app issues and phone phetish, want a wii, would gladly playtest and rigorously use an ipad - but it'll be at least a year and probably three before I could/would pay for the privilege.

(But go ahead, let commence the consumeristic stampede of blind sheep and early adopters. Don't let me stop you from blazing the path, stomping down the bugs, and selling me your used 1G ipad for $120 about 18-24 months from now!)