The winding road always manages to bend around some. And I'm thinking today, as I seem incapable of using some of the technology that exists today, namely the automated system some school districts use, and will continue to use, to allocate substitute teaching jobs......is it better? I have one district, where, if they happen to be in need of my services, they CALL me, before 6:00 a.m., usually, and ask if I can be there. A real person does this. Purposely. Next year, this said-same district will be implementing an automated system to do the same job; in my experience, the one district I deal with that DOES use such a system, I end up having to call every morning if I'm not working anyway, because if the system calls me, half the time I can't get through to respond. Thank God for the person in HR who IS there in the morning.
In other instances, I've seen ads recently for the new Mercedes Benz S-Class, where owners crow about all the wonderful features they're privy to, driving an S-class here in 2007. In one ad, a male owner is crowing about the fact that he can adjust the radio, heat, and LUMBAR MASSAGE, all with one handy, relatively intuitive, I suppose, console control. And how it made him "feel like a king." I should hope so; Lumbar massage?! In a car?! I suppose for the $70-$150,000 they want for a Mercedes S-class these days, lumbar massage almost qualifies as a no-brainer bit of opulence, but come on; There was a time in this world, not so terribly long ago, when $15-$20,000 would just about get you a one-of-a-kind Rolls-Royce, or a custom-bodied Cadillac. Eighty grand would get that same Rolls-Royce, only gold-plated, in the manner one Maharajah did with his in the 1920s. Now it gets you lumbar massage. That just doesn't strike me as the same level of special. And since when can we NOT do without things like heated seats, DVD entertainment systems, and heated and cooled cupholders? Your standard cupholder serves the purpose of preventing inner-thigh-freeze after you've come through the drive-through at Mickey-D's which is a tangent in and of itself. But presumably, we could be just as happy living simply. I mean, come on, Homo Sapiens did without BATHROOMS for pretty much the first 5-6,000 years we were ON this planet, why is a Blackberry or in-car navigation such an incredible necessity to the survival of mankind now?! I rave about safety, and the importance of education and all that, and I consider all of this to be the proper endeavors of mankind, in whatever form it takes. And truly, the advances in safety, and that which entends the life and happiness potential of any given person, has been the subject of almost innumerable advances, from air bags to Zocor. So the next time you want to look covetously at a diamond-encrusted Rolex, consider then, that your real need in this instance is to tell time. I don't discount that style matters, but let's do our best to keep everything in it's place, shall we?