Things You Miss

There are still places for brain-havers to gather. Certain Reddit subreddits. Some internet forums.

I personally am glad that the internet is wider now—makes it harder for da guvmint to successfully shut it down.

Can't stop the signal, Mal. They can never....stop....th..e....sig...na...l....

Guy killed me with a sword. How weird is that?

I miss Samurai Jack.

Especially that Scottish madman.

Scotsman is bestman.

I miss the internet when I first got on it, back when running a google search was like playing twenty questions with a schizophrenic with attention deficit disorder. You never had any idea what you'd find.

You could run a search for "frozen pizza", and the first page of results would be like a fundamentalist website proclaiming frozen pizza the work of Satan, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fanfiction, someone's account of the year they spent living in a hostel on their geocities page, an anarchist cookbook entry on how to turn a frozen pizza into a bomb, and porn. Now, you run the same search, you get the Digiorno website, the Totinos website, the red baron website, the Wal-mart website, a page on the Good Housekeeping website reviewing different brands of frozen pizza, and porn.

Granted, it's easier to find immediately relevant information on a given topic (and the porn downloads much faster these days), but I kind of feel like some of the magic's gone. What used to be a scavenger hunt has just become a transaction. It's went from "what in God's name will this bring up?" to "I know exactly what this will bring up, and it's boring."

Addition: I miss those little blister packs of inch-high figurines you used to see at 99 cent stores; the kind that came five to a pack and tended to be either robots or ninjas. It wasn't until I realized that they were almost the perfect size to use as field expediant D&D minis that I found out they apparently no longer make those. Now all the toys at the dollar store are like three inches tall or more, with multiple points of articulation and at least one accessory; exactly the things I wanted to play with when I was seven, but completely out of scale with our battle mat. It's like the universe is just screwing with me at this point.

edited 13th May '12 10:22:06 PM by SuperHeroineAddict

We all miss him. If you see him, tell him to come home.

Sometimes I miss that too. Once in a while it was fun to look for stuff and find totally off the rails craziness.

I miss real Peppermint Crisps. Since Nestlé took over... they've done something. It's not quite the same as it used to be. I think they've messed with the chocolate. And, the old puller, called Samson (if I remember rightly), has long since retired (and is most likely dead by now): he was the master at making the straws line up just right.

I also miss the smell of Dad coming home after the Wilson-Rowntree factory in East London had been batching either them, Mint Imperials or real XXX Mints (British ones? Bah... they don't even rate two Xs). The car always smelled minty-fresh for a good 4 or 5 hours afterwards. He'd open the door and you'd be knocked off your feet.

If they'd been making the eucalyptus boiled-sweets (for some reason, that line hasn't lasted: I think it was even called SOS)... ye gads: he didn't need to open the door for us to know he'd come home.

edited 22nd May '12 3:11:40 PM by Euodiachloris

I have never seen one of those before. It looks like crazy Borg-chocolate!

That is so cool. When my pop worked at the railway, he'd spend all day around boxes and boxes of in-transit Cherry Ripe. Inevitable, we knew when he came home because a tornado of tobacco-cherry-chocolate-leather redolence would come into the house. Seriously, I've been trying to engineer a cologne that smells like that my whole life. It was priceless.

I miss the simplicity of AOL and cheesy Power Rangers :)

@Steventheman - Oh man, I miss that show too.

I miss the days when kids didn't know how to use computers. I remember until I was at least 10-11 having people saying that they didn't have computers at home or they had dial up. I remember other kids bragging that they could play games on Disney Channel.com (I think back then it was Zoog Disney.com, not sure) and everyone thought they were awesome. I remember having to hope that my mom wasn't on the phone so that I could go on AOL and talk in the kids chatrooms. Nowadays, my 2 year old godsister can use the You Tube app on a cell phone (I kid you not).

I miss being unable to comprehend the idea of a bad movie as a kid. As in, I could watch anything from Warriors of Virtue to Batman and Robin and think they were the best things ever.

Whilst nowadays; seeing either of those movies would make me cringe.

I miss playing games on the Disney Channel, Cartoon Network, and Nickelodeon websites. (Not that they're not around anymore, just not for the shows that I watched.

I miss That's So Raven.

I miss the Nintendo DS.

I miss the giant imagination I had as a child. I miss the feeling of just wanting to make everyone happy. I miss drawing with my nest friends in elementary school. I miss enjoying Halloween. I miss waking up in the morning and feeling like the day was going to be really long, that I had so much time before the sun set. I miss playing with toys and role playing with my brother.

In no particular order:

The Animaniacs.

Game Cube.

Blockbuster (They used to give out balloons to kids)

The first few Pokémon movies.

Bionicle.

The What A Cartoon show.

The Secret World of Alex Mack.

All That.

Toonami.

Homestar Runner updates.

edited 17th Feb '14 3:00:41 PM by burinnu

The DCAU.

I miss the old Mighty Morphin Power Rangers

The Mighty Morphine Power Rangers.

Yeah, after watching an episode you lapse into a stupor...

Malaysia actually banned the show for a time because of that.

UNO bars. They are no longer made. However there is hope. The company who bought them up may attempt a relaunch soon.

I miss when videogames had lavishly illustrated manuals with backstories - instead of just giving you everything in the game. I also miss when you couldn't just go online and look up a walkthrough for game-help, you really had to puzzle it out.

To this day, I try very hard not to look at walkthroughs unless I'm really, really stuck, but it is tempting.

Also, since I'm living on the East Coast during a brutal winter, I miss Arizona. I grew up in a podunk town in the desert and used to take walks and hike around the hills this time of year. I'm ice-locked in cabin fever now.

I also miss having ambitious dreams and the future out before me. I wonder where it went.

I miss waking up and not having to stretch and pop out the kinks from last night's sleep.

I miss having energy and not being in pain all the time. I miss being able to hike for ten miles without my knee threatening mutiny.

I am much too young to feel this damn old.