Random Access 3.0

OK, so it all started this morning when I got up and saw that Brian had finally responded to Scott's Challenge about what music you listen too, blah blah.

Well Brian made a comment about Marilyn Manson:

Marilyn Manson – Mr. Manson has managed to perfectly capture the frustration experienced by the American public school underclasses (described perfectly by Paul Graham in this essay).  I was one of them, and so I relate to his music, even though I think Goth guys are unintentionally hilarious.

Of course I thought of every time I hear Mr. Manson's The Beautiful People of how I almost go into a fuege when I'm listening to it as I drive into work.

See there used to be this co-worker of mine that felt that Manson's music was the devil incarnate. In fact she'd run off if she hear Nine Inch Nails Closer start anywhere, and often commented how 'God would Get Them for doing that' and other weird things.

Now this isn't a slam against her in anyway, but let me describe her cube.

In two words: Popular Girl. A lot of us geeky scary smart kids know Popular Girl. Her locker door was covered with photographs (or cube wall) and she was attractive, had the jock boyfriend, praised god every chance she got so that it seemed self serving to the rest of us, things like that.

Well Manson's Beautiful People pretty much sums her up. I didn't actually get the track (wasn't on iTunes) until after she went on maternity leave but every time I'd listen to this I get myself worked up mentally for a confrontation over me listening to the song in my cube because it was 'against god' or whatever. However if you just listened to the words you'd see that what he was really against was 'the popular girl' and all her friends and the shit they'd put us smart geeky kids through in school.

High School is a shitty invention, and Paul Grahm's essay really smacked it hard on the head for me.

Then we went and saw the show 'In Good Company' with Topher Grace and Dennis Quaid. Basic premise in case you don't do movies or haven't watch TV and seen the ad campaign is that an older guy's (Quaid) company gets bought out and a young hotshot half his age (Grace) comes in to take over, falls in love with his daughter, and poignant hilarity ensues (it was a good movie). I got to thinking that hey, I'm 33 now and I'm getting closer to the 'old guy' age vs. 'young hotshot'. After being all reminiscing about how much life sucked in school it was kind of weird. I don't want to ruin the ending too much but it was kinda the 'young whippersnapper gets his due' type of thing but what I felt was more important is that in this current computer technology revolution I think *some* things are getting lost. Human interaction for one. The basic sales call, the relationship building, things like that. "old guys' that do that get mocked to young hot shots, and I think something is being lost.

It's like 'the old days' of working on your car. I'm talking the 60s and 70s before things got all computerized and crap. There are people now in their 70s and 80s that could pick up a piston to a 327 and tell you by holding it if it was out of round. They handled enough of the components of an engine that they could get it to the right tolerances needed by eyeballing it.

Now of course in the name of efficiency we computerize the shit out of our cars and if mine broke right now I couldn't do jack with it and would have to call in an expert to hook a computer up to it to have the computer tell him what to replace or what sensor is stuck or whatever to make my car run again.

I'm not pining away for simplicity, hell I'm typing this in on a computer. I just think a few things get lost in the shuffle along the way.

Well that's it for my going deep or 'Wil Wheaton' on the three people that read this. Just seemed strange. Last two times I got to deep thinking like this I bought my first sports car, and picked up my entire family and moved them to North Carolina. We'll see what comes of this one.