Dinosaurs Don't 'Tweet'

Psychedelic Geezerdom Dispatch #4 RE: The Spoiled Under 30 Crowd. A Procrutean Response from an Acerbic Dinosaur. While I may agree that you can't help when you were born, you can help your insipid slackerism. So to my dear coy Yuppie,Gen-X or ‘or i-twittering Millennials attempting to mark your territory- vagitus and ignorance is no excuse. I was born in 1954. (Yeah. Go ahead and snort. A BOOMER.) Let’s get this missive of generational remonstration started, shall we? Our Cable was that steel wound stuff we used to hold the chariot together.(just kidding.) We used other Cable to hang a transistor radio from our belts, or on the handle bar of our bikes. I actually remember 8-track tape being a wonder of scientific ingenuity. I bought 45 records. Lots of them...and rode my bike with Angel wing handle bars and a Banana seat to the record store to buy them. The L.P. (that stands for Long Player phonograph record-a round black thing made out of black vinyl. Google it for a picture) was an extravagance few could afford on 35 cents allowance per week. We could afford, however to go to the Saturday Matinee and get a BIG ASS Milky Way candy bar and fountain drink for under a buck. Easy. We got change back. In my case I grew up in the deep south – Miami, Florida –Red State then, Red State now. There they shot and beat the shit out of people for having long hair.Tattoos were found in the circus or the jailhouse. Earrings were usually of the clunky clip-on variety. They were worn by women or movie Pirates.(Sandals –because it was Florida –were A.O.K.)The hoop-type were worn by Carmen Miranda or dancing Latinas in Desi Arnaz movies.(Google him too.) Gay meant happy at Christmas or the church dance (preferably White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.) After Lent. (Yeah non-Catholics celebrated this religious trope too.) We rarely fasted and self-flagellated. We were taught sex was dirty, but we strongly doubted it. Bikinis sold soap.Sister was hot for Moon-Doggie.( read: Life guard surfer dude with a Woody. Both kinds.) Listening to Rock N' Roll was a subversive act. It took actual guts to be different. It took guts to have Black(a.k.a. African-American) Friends. It took guts to refuse to say the pledge of allegiance in school because you had questions for an AUTHORITY who forced you to do so in what was supposed to be a free country. They tried to tell us to "Duck and Cover" under our desks at school because that would protect us from Nuclear Attack. We saw riots in the streets daily. They assassinated anyone who tried to tell the truth. They expelled you from school for being a non-conformist. They beat you with belts, and paddles for not wearing socks, talking back, not tucking your shirt tail in, citing the poetry of Bob Dylan, or falling asleep in Civics class. The Space Race kept us awake. Space travel was miraculous. God help you if you questioned the Vietnam War. They told us "Potted Meat Food Product" was healthy for lunch. If we wanted to know what was happening, we turned on Ed Sullivan, or Dick Clark, for new music. We had 3 channels. Maybe. AM Radio was the shit.(meaning cool as). Disc Jockeys were sought-after personalities with mystique. They gave you cool free stuff if you used your rotary-dial telephone to call in requests. Gidget was the epitome of beach babe. Pat Boone was used as a cultural shill to clean up "race music". We kids knew better. He sucked then and he sucks now. We knew that if we wanted change we would have to take the initiative --we got off our asses into the street and protested to stop Racism, War, the Draft, and the use of wax paper to wrap potted meat food product festering in our un-refrigerated lunchboxes. Which, by the way, were truly cool because we had cool bands on them and of course- Mr. Ed the Horse, My Favorite Martian, Gidget and The Beatles. These things are worth a CRAPLOAD of money today. Radio pushed vinyl which pushed us onto the dance floor to pantomime sex-acts we didn’t really understand. It was good practice. Sweat mixed with lust and the din of a garage band IS the elixir of life. Being caught with POT would get you a life sentence in a Federal penal colony in the Aleutian Islands. So would nudity in public.Or sewing the American flag on the ass of those fruity-ass bell-bottom pants. We did our best to change this. You pesky little twerps can thank us later for tits and balls on T.V. Go ahead and smoke a little weed. Just NEVER wear idiot egregious Nehru jackets OR bell-bottoms(with or without Old Glory on the ass) –those things looked ridiculous. We lived for the next new song to make us dance and be happy. None of you under 45 year olds would have survived the 60's OR 70's, because we would have beat your ass and took your lunch money then bought Rolling Stones records with it. Kiss the glove. Now go Twitter. P.S. That bit about ending War and Racism? We got off to a good start, but admittedly, we need your help on that --so get crackin’ newbies and show us what you can do. While you’re at it get rid of that= Corporations are People thing, willya?