Planned Obsolescence

Outtt wittth the old, in wittth ttthe new…

“Planned Obsolescence” is the producing of products that rapidly become obsolete or breakdown so they have to be replaced, which is totally different than “Planned Adolescence” which has been my approach to aging and when former Kansas City Royals player Mitch Maier found out just how old I was, he said “no way” and I said he only thought I was younger because I behaved like an immature teenager.

And now that we’ve got that out of the way…

Thank God and the Baby Jesus that “planned obsolescence” doesn’t contain a “t” or a “y” because my 15-year-old Dell XPS laptop’s keyboard is finally wearing out and if I press “t” or “y” too lightly I don’t get a letter and if I press the keys harder I get “tttt” and “yyyy” and have to go back later and delete the extra letters which, as you might imagine, is a pain in ttthe ass.

So I go to my local computer guy and explain the problem and he says I need a new keyboard, but they don’t make them anymore so I’ll have to buy a “pre-owned” keyboard which sounds an awful lot like a “used” keyboard and the one I’m getting is coming from Hong Kong and will take several weeks to get here because it’s apparently being sent on a Slow Boat from China and now we should all take a break and listen to Jimmy Buffett’s version of that song:

OK, I feel bettttter alreadyyyy.

(I’ve decided I’m not going to correctt my laptop when it won’t produce a letter or produces too manyy of them and lett yyou figure out what I’m trying tto sa.)

But now I’m imagining some poor Hong Kong sweatshop worker feeding his family by selling off his Dell computer parts and the occasional kidney which reminds that when Walter Payton was dying from liver disease, a number of Chicago Bear fans offered him one of their livers because apparently theyy thought they had more than one.

Sports fans, theyyy’re the best aren’t they?

Anyway…

The computer dude (and apparently tthere’s a Constitutional Amendment that says all computer dudes need to be overweight and wear a man bun) asked me just how long I intended to use my 15-year-old Dell laptop and seemed highly disappointed when I answered:

“As long as possible.”

Which is clearly un-American because we no longer fix things, we just throw them away and get new ones and use our old shit to form toxic landfills and what could possibly go wrong with that plan?

Now here’s an article about what could possibly go wrong with that plan:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9399006/

But don’t worry, it comes from The National Library of Medicine which is funded by the U.S. government and Our Glorious Leader is getting rid of all the people who tell us stuff we don’t want to hear (like maybe we should get vaccinated during a pandemic) because No News Is Good News to the people who are fucking up and don’t want us to read about ittt.

So where were we?

Right, not buying a new laptop although I did consider it until one of my sons said use the one you have as long as possible because the new ones are built like shit and will break down much sooner.

Also…

When I asked Comic Book Guy about a buying a new computer and getting all my old shit transferred on to that new computer he said he could do most of that, but couldn’t transfer things like Word or Photoshop and here’s the deal on that.

You used to be able to buy things like Word or Photoshop and install them on yyour computer, bu then Mr. Burns (I’m finding it a lot easier to explain all this through the use of Simpsons characters) said what the fuck are we doing?

We can make a lot more money if we rent those products to the suckers that use them.

Smithers said, “Excellent idea, sir” and now Word (which I own on my current computer) would cost me $6.99 a month or $149.99 if I decide to buy an old version, but they don’t recommend that and warn you that it has “limited support” and now seems like an excellent time to remind you of The Simpson’s episode that revealed Homer was actually brilliant, but had been dumbed down by the crayon he stuffed up his nose as a child and when Homer decided being brilliant wasn’t for him and wanted to go back to his old dumb self, he had Moe use a hammer to drive the crayon back up his nose and into his brain and they knew they had achieved the right amount of stupid when Homer said:

“Extended warranty! How can I lose?”

I have been warned repeatedly that if I don’t buy the new Word they will no longer “support” the old version and now I’m getting the same “we will no longer support it” warning about Windows 10 and I really need Windows 11 which—according to reviews on the internet—is filled with glitches, but they’re still warning me about all the bad shit that can happen if they no longer “support” me which I was largely unaware they were doing in the first place.

Yy’know…

Tthis used to be called a “protection racket”—“You’ve got a real nice compuer here…itt would be a shame if something bad happened o it”—and you could go to jail for ttrying this, but now it’s called “business as usual” and the people who come up with this crap don’t get arrested; they get a bigger office and a pay raise.

“You’ll own nothing and be happy”

According to the internet that was the phrase published by the World Economic Forum (y’know, that meeting of billionaires in Davos, Switzerland to plan our future and their fortunes) and the idea behind it was the rest of us would own nothing—including our clothes—and we’d rent everything from those billionaires like our homes and cars and possibly children and when those plans became public and people freaked the fuck out, the WEF said that wasn’t their plan at all and we should all calm down and if it would help they’d be happy to rent us some Xanax.

Just in case this sounds unlikely, here’s a link to the clothing rental company Nuuly where for the low, low price of $98 a month they’ll rent you six outfits and try not to think of all the people who wore them before you because then the outfits are kind of disgusting, but if you really really really concerned with what strangers on Instagram think of your clothing you can always be in style:

https://www.nuuly.com/rent/

And if Nuuly doesn’t float what appears to be your very fragile ego boat, you can rent your clothing from Armoire Style or Stitch Fix or Rent the Runway or—if you’re on a budget and who isn’t—just go down to Goodwill because basically it’s the exact same clothing system.

Once again we seem to be off-track and we will now return to our main theme; products designed to break and be thrown away and we will now talk about cell phones.

Through an unfortunate series of alcohol-related mishaps (after a couple cocktails I jumped into a swimming pool with my phone in my bathing suit pocket and spilled wine on another) I have had to replace a couple cellphones and every time I get a new one it’s bigger than the last one (my current phone is the size of an Encyclopedia Britannica which is an apt comparison because they both get the same phone call reception) and this last phone started to have trouble charging so I went to Target where I purchased it and asked about a new battery and the eighth-grader in charge of the Target’s Electronics Department reacted as if I’d asked about a replacement for my Model T’s hand crank:

“Sir, these phones don’t have replaceable batteries.”

And he said it in the same tone usually reserved for explaining what year it is to a retirement home resident.

So now you’re expected to just throw your old phone away and buy a new one and if at all possible make it one of those phones that fold up because they break way more easily than the regular phones and the regular phones break about as easily as Samuel L. Jackson in Glass.

(Just in case you’re not up on your M. Night Shyamalan movies—and I gave up on him about two movies after The Sixth Sense—Mr. Glass was an evil genius with brittle bones and could snap his spine by sneezing too hard. It’s a solid joke if you’ve done your movie homework so if you didn’t laugh that’s clearly your fault.)

BTW: Turned out my old phone was having trouble charging because the charging port was filled with pocket lint which I didn’t know could happen, but now I do and after having it cleaned for $30 it works like new and I expect to keep it right up until I have two Manhattans and get within forty feet of a swimming pool.

In Conclusion Which Mistakenly Assumes I Have One

I wrote this for alll (oops, there goes the “l”) you regular readers to let you know I’m scuffling with my laptop and have no idea when it will give out completely so if you see too many “ttttt”s or a missing “yyyy” now you know what the deal is and we’re all going to have to wait for my used keyboard to get here from Hong Kong and now I’m thinking I should have ordered a used liver at the same time because the way I’m going through cellphones it’s pretty clear I’m going to need one.

Hang in ttthere, everyyyyybodyyyy.