THE 1970s SUCKED
Enter next decade: Ever been to a 70s-themed dance party? As you’re dancing around in your bell-bottoms to endless droners like “Do the Hustle” it’s hard not to think, “Shit, dance music has really improved over the last 30 years.” This is true of just about everything from the past. Sure Jimi Hendrix played a mean guitar but there’s more music available to us in the past 10 years than there has been in all of history combined (this applies to all information by the way). You might be able to argue movies have gotten a little shittier in the past 20 years but the sheer number of them has increased so drastically the total number of good movies is still higher. Nice try.
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ECONOMY’S ALWAYS IMPROVED
The stock market may have just crashed, again, but if you look at a graph of the stock market since it began you’d see what is essentially a 45? line going up. The depression was a dip, so was the dot com collapse, but in the grand scheme of things it’s been up, up and away.
WE’RE LIVING LONGER
Life expectancy has been skyrocketing for 200 years and even since 1950 it’s gone from 68 in North America to almost 80 today. Is that a world where corporations are poisoning us with toxins and everyone is dying of cancer?
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(photo of Boogie’s show over at PowerHouse Books)
TAXING GLOBAL WARMING
Yes the earth is warming (a bit) and the population is growing fast but we’ve been hearing environmental apocalypse stories since the 60s and we’re yet to see it affect life span or anything significant. Most of these “catastrophes” are just a scary word for Guilt Tax.
ENDLESS FOOD
You know why your little brother is so huge? It’s only been the past two generations where kids could go to the fridge and get whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. Your grandpa is tiny because he’d be lucky to get scraps as a kid. Shit, during the depression, when babies were going through their picky phase, the rest of the family would say, “No problem kid!” and grab whatever wasn’t eaten.
THE BEGINNING OF CIVILIZATION
Which brings us to today. This is the beginning of civilization. We’ve finally learned how to spell our own names. We finally have access to everything. We can finally get antibiotics when we’re sick.
You can bitch about inequality or how fascist our governments are, but when you compare them to the past or any non-Western country in the world today, they look like an orgasm. In fact, when you make speeches about how there’s no free speech and complain about how unhealthy everything is until you’re 80-years-old, you’re actually proving the opposite. So please, continue.
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STREET BONER 1127
Being straight edge as a kid is a great way to rebel against: puking, getting pregnant, and wrapping your parent’s car around a tree.
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I like the part that happened before this article started and after it ended
04.01.08 at 9:16 am
That was nice!
04.01.08 at 9:55 am
The 70s had no equivalent of “70s dance parties,” mainly because the 70s were busy being the 70s.
Score one for the 70s.
04.01.08 at 11:08 am
What Neezy said, but louder. Way to take a good idea and hit a dribbler back to the mound for an easy out.
04.01.08 at 11:40 am
I’ve got four acid head friends, a bi-polar artist, and two enviornmentalists to show this article to. Nice.
04.01.08 at 11:40 am
When adjusted for inflation, that graph of annualized returns in teh stock market is really flat.
04.01.08 at 12:06 pm
written by the simple-minded
04.01.08 at 12:12 pm
^ has mad debt. Can’t give up his dreams to be in a band. Can’t stop mooching his parents for money. Can’t get a decent job. Has to go to graduate school to be anything.
04.01.08 at 12:51 pm
^ white
04.01.08 at 1:36 pm
1979:
Wearing a Black Flag t-shirt and sportin’ a mohawk got you a ticket straight to getting your ass kicked in and people calling you a “DEVO FAG” while cops literally harassed you for how you looked as if they really were the fashion police.
2008:
Wearing a Black Flag t-shirt and sportin’ a mohawk got you laid with girls at my highschool because you know what “real punk” is.
04.01.08 at 2:31 pm
ive had big arguments with people about this shit before and they dont want to believe you, like they want to believe things are getting worse.
maybe its an excuse for how sucky their lives are.
a list of things that were good in the ancient world would include:
the great library at alexandria.
the sumerians.
a completely and utterly pristine world.
04.01.08 at 7:06 pm
What you know about the alexandrian library? I’ve just picked up a Callimachus book and Jason and the Argonauts–both were/were written by the heads of the alexandrian library.
04.01.08 at 8:39 pm
^ I’m half white. Help me.
04.01.08 at 8:40 pm
no, you’ve got it right for the most part
close enough
04.01.08 at 10:23 pm
You know, people who consciously shorten their words and add an apostrophe for “casual” effect, i.e. ” sportin’ ” – are a teensy bit gay.
Don’t abandon your consonants.
04.02.08 at 3:08 am
You guys totally forgot about The Niggatorium! Helloooooooooo?
04.02.08 at 5:12 am
Sisyphus Jones is obviously a communist.
04.02.08 at 8:29 am
[...] PART 2 Previous Blog Post Next Blog Post [...]
04.02.08 at 9:44 am
this article is crap. there comes a point in time when the party’s over. it’s happened to every civilization, and you know what? it’s happening right now in this civilisation. we’ve reached the peak. stay blind, stay ignorant!
i hope this article is some april fool’s joke.
p.s. that graph of the stock markets? what the fuck is that?
04.02.08 at 11:27 am
way to open your mouth and reveal the fact that you are a stupid dolt. Please don’t have children and please get your fingers away from that keyboard. Don’t even bother reading or trying to correct your intellect. It’s too late.
But please have another….your brain isn’t using using those cells anyways
04.02.08 at 7:18 pm
yea man, right on
schuster is an idiot
i dont even understand what youre argument was…and i dont think you did either
try thinking and forming thoughts, views and opinions first before you just fuckin mind fart all over the screen, leaving the watered down shit intellect you have for all of us to…i lost my train of thought
you suck, bottomline
04.02.08 at 7:30 pm
We could say that civilization- as WE know it -has reached it’s pinnacle point……when the most powerful nation, technologically and militaristically speaking, wants to expunge the earth’s natural resources in order to go to, of all places, mars, then any rational thinking person must know the end of all life on this planet is just on the horizon; we don’t even know of what animal species lie still undiscovered within the Earth’s oceans but fuck all that WE’RE GOING TO MARS! why don’t they discover how to end war, first? just saying. What is the point of going to mars? There’s so much radioactive space junk revolving around the earth as it is but let’s put more and more radioactive material in space why don’t we? I’m off point here but someone must know what I’m talking about. Gavin McInnes, save our souls!
04.02.08 at 7:31 pm
the price of rice has doubled in the last three months. rice is a staple for billions of people.
when the price of energy rises, so does every thing else, especially food. you hipsters are going to have a difficult time dressing ironically when you only have enough money to buy food. do you realised how much food will cost when fuel costs five dollars a litre? you should all stop jerking off in the mirror and look around and connect the dots.
p.s. waytogo and gayton: ever been to a farm in your life?
04.03.08 at 4:05 am
this article is a big pile of steaming shit
04.03.08 at 12:40 pm
hi5es thats a real good fucking point. It’s funny how many people look at a graph thats going up and think, well fuck me everythings fine then.
04.03.08 at 6:08 pm
This article is actually fucking brilliant. I recently finished a much more high brow version of the same thing called “The Idea of Decline in Western History.”
http://www.amazon.com/Idea-Decline-Western-History/dp/0684827913
In it Arthur Herman points out, people have been bitching about how bad things are getting and how we’re all going to die since forever. Life spans just keep getting longer and everyone just keeps getting happier. Ooops. It doesn’t sell papers and it doesn’t get politicians elected but screaming “The sky is falling” is nothing new.
The only exceptions I can think of is NYPD uniforms and cars. Both of those things looked way better 20 years ago.
04.03.08 at 8:59 pm
yo hasn’t gavin already been saying this for the past 10 years or so. the drawings were funny but you’re preaching to the choir. and the choir is getting finger fucked and snarfing poppers and licking panther (black cougar) cunts
yo my Kazantip is covered in blood, raves are so now now and mariah carey is so yeah yeah
04.05.08 at 10:07 am