90’s problems

Three-6 Mafia – 2-way Freak

Harken back to the days of yore.  Bring it on back, Three-6, to a simpler time.  A time when we didn’t have to worry about the frivols (sounds right, is not right) of mobile bidirectional voice communication.

My friend’s¹ phone got disconnected yesterday, after the bill was one day (one day!) late.  AT&T is cracking down, apparently, and will call you the day after your bill is due to collect payment or suspend service, under some sort of blame-it-on-the-recession guise, maybe.  Instead of giving in right then and there, my friend decided to take a few days off from the mobile…a few days off from getting charged for incoming international calls (didn’t know they could do that!) and a few days off from general distraction.  Sometimes, I kind of want to do the same².  Gosh, work would get a lot easier; I wouldn’t have 20-minute (charged) conversations about strategy that are mostly unnecessary, etc….

Speaking of 20-minute conversations, my first mobile à la 1998 came with twenty anytime minutes!  Plus free weekends and nights, so then you could go crazy…however the craziness was limited to paging people for the most part, as I was the first person I knew to have a cell phone…well, with the exception of my friend Chris who had a bag- or briefcase-phone, but that hardly counts since you have to set up an office on the hood of your car to use it.  Mine was a medium-sized Motorola Brick and it had the Atlanta 1996 Olympics logo on it.  Teal and purple…no, but I wish.  No caller ID, no voicemail.  Seven-digit display, and that was enough because you didn’t need to dial an area code back then.

Anyway, um, what was I saying.  Oh yes, maybe the point of this is that there were less problems in the 90s.  Maybe I was just a lot younger and a lot more isolated and therefore kind of limited in my scope in saying that.  But, you sure didn’t have to be so conscious of your iPod getting stolen, your Facebook account getting hacked, your text message usage (for further analysis and discussion of this particular issue from an historical historic perspective, please see song lyrics from above), your various environmental footprints, et al.  There was a lot more worry about how loud I could turn up my car stereo before the mix cassette (of MP3’s!…yes this was possible and I didn’t have a CD burner for a long time but I did have a DAT machine/go figure) would distort, how to call someone after 10pm–let it ring once–hang up–have them call you back–don’t wanna wake the parents–but also don’t wanna stay on the phone too long because I’m hoping to get another call and we don’t have call waiting, the list goes on³.

Relevant footnotes:

¹Phone-less friend’s car CD player permanently displays the title of the Ying-Yang Twins’ immortal 1999 single “Whistle While You Twurk” on the LCD readout; I think this has something to do with Y2K¹

¹CD player displays “Whurstle While You Twurk”, further jainkiness

²My 3G iPhone service speed is faster than the DSL at my house.  WTF.  Who am I kidding, I’m never gonna give you up!

³Any or all of this post is possible regurgitation from some previous post; apologies if so; I can’t really remember because I’m so bad at writing in this thing these days; aren’t you glad I’m still alive.