If there is one thing I hate, it’s people who opt to complicate stuff that is naturally simple. Something that, unaltered, would be the easiest, most basic form of that entity, but people feel that is it there job to “make it better” because they drive a Lexus.
Take, for example, the art of communication; something that is constantly being developed and changed. Tens of thousands of years ago, man was a primitive species. He would sit around the cave picking the crust out of his belly button and grunting at his wife. Thankfully, man has evolved exponentially from this archaic time. Now we have Xbox. Back in the time of the caveman, the only form of communication was through pictures. Everyone drew pictures for everything. Stars, rivers, trees, bears, and rocks were all displayed as a genuine drawing on the cave walls. Unfortunately, the average caveman had the intelligence of apple juice, which led to some very interesting pictures. That is why, today, archeologists can all be found sitting in a circle debating over the meaning of a certain cave drawing. “I think it’s a dog,” one of them would guess, rubbing his chin; “although if you tilt your head this way, it looks like a volcano.”
These primitive wall drawings did not help the cavemen very much. They would be in their caves, gnawing on tree bark when, suddenly, a massive Tyrannosaurus Rex would come barging through the forest, demolishing the landscape and obliterating everything in its path. “Look out!” the caveman would want to yell, but he wouldn’t warn any of his friends without a canvas to draw on. So, acting quickly, he would have to scamper around the cave, find a piece of chalk, scan the walls for an open spot, decide how he’s going to depict a T-Rex, draw the T-Rex, and present it to his family. And by the time all this happened, the caveman’s house would have been ruined, his family would have been eaten, and his insurance premium would have been raised. Sadly, even with the great advancements in modern technology, innocent people who draw on their walls are still being relentlessly attacked by slanderous, blood-crazed dinosaurs: our mothers.
Seeing as how the wall-drawing method of communication led to destruction, the cavemen—who, after thousands of years of evolution, had now discovered fire, weapons, and the Department of Motor Vehicles—decided upon a new structure of expression. This form consisted of four of five different grunts, moans and wails to relay ideas. For example, “Grr” may mean “I need food,” “Run for safety,” or even, “$13.47 is your total, please drive around.” This new system enabled the cavemen to still draw on their cave walls, but now they could label their drawings with words. The only downfall with this evolved form of intelligence was distinguishing the definition of each specific grunt, moan and wail. Archeologists were now found sitting in circles, Indian style, arguing over what each “word” meant.
“It obviously means ‘we need to find water’,” one would point out. “Clearly not,” another would rebut. “It must mean ‘look out!’.” But no matter how much they argued, not one of them would truly know because archeologists don’t know anything.
This type of communication progression continued over hundreds of thousands of years. As the cavemen evolved into human, forms of conversation also matured. Grunts became words; words became sentences; sentences became paragraphs, and paragraphs became Shakespeare plays. In time, people would be able to openly talk to each other, share stories, and—most importantly—scream at each other on Jerry Springer. At that point, thanks to man’s gift to comprehend one another through distinguished sounds, one could understand someone in case of an emergency. “Look out!” we would yell to each other; “A landscape demolishing T-Rex is about to consume you!” And instead of the hassle of scribbling on a cave wall or agreeing upon the definition of “Ugh,” we would avoid utter chaos. And it was at this point in history that all of mankind sat back and relaxed, knowing that they had created the perfect form of communication, right?
WRONG!!! People wanted faster, simpler types of language. They wanted to be able to talk over a great distance without much effort, and they wanted it NOW. Because of this, scientists invented things like smoke signals—which is where a complicated language is broken down into random puffs of smoke—Morse code—which is where the same complicated language is broken down into random dots and dashes—and carrier pigeons—which is where a heavily decorated army official relies it’s entire military strategy on a bird with the brains of confetti.
Needless to say, these forms of message-relaying didn’t last long (birdfeeders in New York were receiving blueprints to nuclear weapons). But luckily, a new invention was brought to life that would soon change the entire face of communication: the Cotton Gin the Internet. With the help of the internet, people were able to freely display messages that could be viewed by anyone from anywhere at anytime. Instead of relying on retarded birds to send a message, general could post their army orders on an online blog like this one for their commander to read overseas.
oH mii GaWd, the post would read; tOoDaii Wii aTtAcKeD dOzE gErMaN BiiTcHz. This would allow the army commander to track the progress of his army without “those German bitches” finding out. Of course, with every technological advancement comes a horrible downfall, and the convenience of the internet allowed opposing forced to intercept messages sent by their enemies. Fortunately, we don’t have to worry about that here because Germans are too stupid to use the internet.
As time passed and technology advanced further, communication fell further and further away from simplicity. The internet gained a list of complex rules that were never to ever be broken and was punishable by—at minimum—death.
1. Do not present any explicit images on your webpage
2. Cite everything you display to confirm clarity
3. Do not EVER use Wikipedia.
These laws of the internet made it much more difficult to communicate. Now, in order to send the daily happenings of a battle, the army lieutenant would have to write, “We are moving out forced northwest into Poland[1]” This citation would let the general of the around know that the lieutenant wasn’t lying and moving his forces somewhere else like, for example, Mars. Likewise, if a disaster were to strike and—somehow—a dinosaur were to attack a major city, innocent civilians would only be able to yell “Look out! A terrorizing dinosaur is about to crush your car[2]” otherwise people would doubt that it was actually a dinosaur and could confuse it for another terrifying creature, like Drew Carey.
According to the Arlington High School librarian, you must constantly cite your work. She says that whatever information you include in a paper/project/poster that is not “known information by all” must have a source available from where you got it. For example, if a person you were researching were said, “kill those pigs; death to police. I want to shoot all pigs in the head with my gat and bathe in their crooked blood,” you would have to include a citation in that essay to prove that the person who said that was, in fact, Mr. Rogers, because that is not known information by all. Also, you have to keep in mind that if you were presenting to a 3rd grade class, you would have to cite basically everything you said because 3rd graders don’t know anything.
In high school, citing sources in simple: you write down made up information, cite it with a made up website, and pray that no one checks your source. Unfortunately, even though citing sources has grown fairly simple (Step 1: Lie. Step 2: Lie about lying), communication continues to confuse people. With today’s modern innovations, anyone with a cell phone can send a message across the world; allowing people to openly interact without having to physically meet. This newfound convenience has led to pen pals, business negotiations, and pedophilic rapists. Over phones, computers, and organizers, child molesters are able to contact children without actually talking to them; something that is not only scary but very very real. Just two seconds ago over 4 thousands teenagers were kidnapped by abductors over the internet
(source: http://www.pleasedontcheckthissource.com).
So how can we use our new, sophisticated technology to prevent these men from harnessing our communication machines for evil? Simple, we just need to stop displaying our personal information everywhere we can. There is nothing worse than when a girl gets abducted and raped and then wonders how the guy managed to find her. The guy found you because you had your name, address, school, social security number, and favorite flavor of ice cream displayed in flashing lights for everyone to see. If everyone wants to stop getting stalked by these guys, eliminate the one thing that’s attracting them. Yeah, you know what I’m saying: DESTROY YOUR MYSPACE.
I’m not going to ramble on about how much I hate Myspace and how much is sucks because a) I don’t have that much time, and b) I may grow angry and punch my dog. Instead, I will simply remind you that the reason women and children are getting murdered, cut in into hundreds of pieces, and mailed to every major city in America is because they have a Myspace.
So here we are folks; in the present of our time. We are the most advanced species in the world; and by “we” I mean “Americans.” The U.S. Army is the most disciplined, best trained, and more expensive force in the known universe. We can literally aim a nuclear missile within four feet of our target anywhere around the world; we can digitally track and duplicate anything with a pulse and— best of all—we can rewind TV. The only thing American can’t do is kill Osama Bin Laden. A while ago I watched a documentary on the U.S.’s “relationship” with Bin Laden. The documentary was your typical type: boring and four hours long, but I did learn one interesting thing from it. According to some man, American soldiers were actually able to pick up the radio of a dead Islam and hear Bin Laden’s voice on the other end. Do your realize how close we were to him? We could have hit the most hated man in America with a thrown rock, yet he still got away. Why, you ask? Not because he doesn’t have a Myspace (he does: http://myspace.com/americamustdie), but because of communication.
You would think that in a time like this, in which robots vacuum our house and deep fryers cook out food, we would be able to communicate properly. You would think that upon the finding of Osama’s location, the troops would have quickly received orders from the Secretary Of Defense (or whoever the hell was put in charge of killing Bin Laden) as to what to do.
And thanks to today’s technology, they did. Upon hearing that Bin Laden was close, America sent an urgent message out to their troops. They did this by first starting up their computer, then by easily signing in, forgetting their password, remembering their password after hours of blindly guessing, waiting for their email to boot up, checking their inbox, getting distracted by a friend’s funny email, calling that friend to tell them how funny their email was, forwarding the email to everyone on their email list, creating a new message, writing out “Storm Bin Laden’s cave,” trying to send the message, realizing that they lost internet connection, reattaching the internet plug, rebooting their computer, opening their email again, retyping “Storm Bin Laden’s cave” (this time with a quick spellcheck), and finally sending the message.
Meanwhile, over in Afghanistan (or wherever the hell Bin Laden was hiding), the U.S. army was receiving the message. They did this by starting up their computer, signing onto the internet, moving around to try and find a strong wireless connection, accessing their email, double clicking the attachment, changing the batteries of their wireless mouse, double clicking again, uploading the file, downloading the file, installing the file, reinstalling the file, subscribing to the company that hosts the file, restarting their computer as to confirm the installation, opening the document, downloading the newest version of Microsoft Word, subscribing to the Microsoft Office gift package, re-visiting the file, and finally reading the message, doing the hokey pokey, and turning themselves around. By this time, Osama Bin Laden was thousands of miles away eating Dominos Pizza and watching Caddyshack.
What I’m getting at is that if the world had simply stayed with the simple form of communication instead of adding all the complicated crap to ruin it, we would all be better off. And even though I’ve just spend 13 hours rambling on about how communication is the only thing ruined by this technological innovation, there is something that has been destroyed even worse. Something that originally triggered my hatred for complexity; something that has been working perfectly for decades, and something more precious, more substantial, and more important that communication. Thanks to greedy, despicable lifestyle of America, they have ruined the Cheez-It.
The Cheez-It has gone by many different names. They include “America’s favorite snack,” “America’s favorite treat,” “America’s favorite food,” and “The best damn cracker to ever be made.” And it’s true! We all love Cheez-Its! Whenever I have friends over my house the first thing they grab are the Cheez-Its. And what’s better, the Cheez-It was even broad-minded enough to release different flavors of itself. Now, people who claimed that they didn’t like regular Cheez-Its could enjoy white cheddar, parmesan and garlic, cheddar-jack, and even reduced fat Cheez-Its. In a word, the Cheez-It was the balls.
But that wasn’t good enough for the big bad Kellogg Company. They were under the impression that the old fashioned Cheez-It wasn’t good enough for the advanced society of America. They thought that the old Cheez-It was like the cave drawings in that it needed to be updated. So they invented Cheez-It Stix, the newest form of cracker. The Cheez-It Stix is essentially the exact same as a Cheez-It, only it looks different, tastes different, and was hated by all of America the second it was made. I realize that people want new things, but no one truly recognizes the damage that we’re doing with the invention of this new snack. If Cheez-It Stix replaces the classic Cheez-It, who knows what could happen to the old cracker (“Old Cracker” would be a great name for a band). My guess is that it would become a beggar on the street; a washed up has-been asking for change only to be ignored by its once loving fans. This would, in turn, lead to it committing suicide and leaving a painful note:
To the few who cared and the rest who changed. You can not live life knowing that someone is better than you; knowing that someone will always be younger, stronger, and taster. That is why I have taken my life.
~~Cheez-It
Of course, we wouldn’t know if he actually killed himself or not, because he would have forgotten to cite his sources.
