The Weekly Mattian: Episode 5: The Boob Tube

Are you lucky? Do you feel privileged to live in a world where anything and everything is at your fingertips? Do you take for granted the great little gadgets we humans have today, such as the iPod, or eBay or any other thing with the second letter capitalized? Well, duh! Of course you do and are! Our technological era right now is so advanced that it is hard to keep up with all the new gadgets that constantly come out on the line. We enjoy luxuries today that weren't even dreamed of or remotely possible as close as 20 to 30 years ago! But which gadgets are the best, and which ones have really made an imprint on our lives? That's the question our brilliant team of writers here at "THE WEEKLY MATTIAN" are going to dissect for you this week. We've narrowed the list down to five inventions, and have described how each one has made us lazier.
#5: THE AUTOMOBILE: Around 90 or so years ago, a man by the name of Henry Ford sat around with his colleagues and tried to think of a way to transport people faster than a horse & carriage. The unicycle had been invented before the auto by some people with a level of common sense much lower than the average human being. As "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane once stated: "If we're going to make a device able to transport and support human weight, it has to have a giant wheel in front of it! Let's make it 90 feet tall!" This brought about the invention of the giant wheel unicycle. Then came the modern bicycle and Henry Ford and other auto inventors, finally discovered that they could take this model, add a couple extra wheels, and give it power. Soon enough, the first Model T's came rolling off the assembly line and people were traveling faster than ever before. They also became much lazier and quit walking.
#4: THE MICROWAVE OVEN: All people love to eat, and all people love to cook. In fact, cooking has been recorded in history going all the way back to the Stone Age. Igor would go out into the wilderness each morning and bring back a nice big cougar for himself, Stump, Lump, and Stumpina to feast on in the evening. The four would roast the giant beast over a fire, which by the way Igor helped to invent and thereafter suffered severe burns. Unfortunately, this method took too long for these primitive primates, and they took the cougar off the flame early, ate the undercooked cougar, and died thereafter of food poisoning. Luckily, we humans don't have to wait as long today thanks to the invention of the microwave oven. When it was first introduced on the market back in 1947, a microwave stood over 5 feet tall and weighed over 750 pounds! The price on this bad boy? Approximately $5000. Today, you can walk into any ma & pa or Wal-Mart and pick up a macro-microwave for less than $50. And again, people became lazier.
#3: THE CELL PHONE: Do you remember that guy from the Verizon commercials who used to say "Can you here me now", but now just stands there with a bunch of underpaid, digitally added extras? He, to a lesser extent, helped bring the cell phone to the homes and lives of everyday people. Humans can now interact with the world merely by pressing some teeny tiny buttons. There's the text messaging, which has long replaced simple letter writing and the USPS. There are the games you can play on the thing. And there's also the Internet access on your fingertips. Heck, half the people who own a cell phone don't even use it to talk on!
#2: THE TELEVISION: Who doesn't watch TV daily? Even most classrooms have a television in their room for a greater learning experience. Possibly the world's greatest invention, TV brought instant entertainment to our lives. All old Carl has to do is get a great big bag of chips, a nice large bowl of dip, his nightly 32oz can of beer, sit in an overstuffed chair, and press a button. He is then locked in to a world of entertainment. We love the TV and can't imagine what life would be like without it.
#1: THE INTERNET: Ok, now that you think we’re complete nuts and have lost all our marbles, we've finally reached the number one invention on our list: The Internet. When it comes to the Internet, we’ll keep it short and sweet since there is so very little to say about it. Instant access, instant information, instant communication, instant anything. With the Internet, we can now do things never before possible. We can talk to Aunt Mabel who lives 1500 miles away, look up a recipe for pecan pie, and even buy a pair of underwear ALL AT THE SAME TIME!!! Really, can you imagine your world without this Internet medium? What would life be like without it? Firstly, you wouldn't be reading this episode!