A Girl...

Media Rich, Substance Poor

Every time I summon Simon to the computer to watch something along the lines of Riley staggering down the hall or Charlotte telling Benoit to get down off the table, he counters with some random clip from YouTube or Milk and Cookies or Devil Ducky that nine times out of ten leaves me silent and blinking and wondering if this is what hundreds of thousands of years of evolution and technology and progress hath wrought.

Occasionally he finds some real gems, like the clip he shared here earlier this week, but mostly they're things I just don't get, like last night's "Closet Cases of the Nerd Kind," which as far as I could tell was the same as the original. (In his defense, he said it was funnier when he was seven, but then isn't everything?)

Last night during our break from packing (will it ever end?), we found ourselves slumped on the couch with both the tv on and the laptop playing clips from YouTube. After watching both semi-simultaneously for about an hour and a half (WE WERE ON A BREAK!), we decided that our brains were approaching dangerous levels of media overstimulation and something had to be turned off or else. So it was that Simon mustered his willpower, closed the YouTube window, shut down his computer, put it away, and then focused all of his attention at the television, on which was playing for some reason (rained out ballgame?) a vintage episode of America's Funniest Home Videos, starring all ten awkward feet of Bob Saget.

We stared, we blinked, we had flashbacks to the days we too wore flowered dresses with puffy sleeves and Peter Pan collars (well, one of us, anyway). And then, while staring at those unknowing spectres of the early nineties and contemplating how far we've come since those days--mentally, emotionally, and fashionably--we came upon the sad realization that those hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, technology, and progress? Had only brought us to the critical crossroad of "Do we turn off the computer to watch funny videos on the teevee or do we turn off the teevee to watch funny videos on the computer?" Mankind: There is yet much work to be done.