There used to be a time where we can make excuses to wiggle out of certain situations.
Say good-bye to that time.
Here are four different occasions that should never be met with any excuses.
Settling a Debate
There is no feeling more dreadful than that precise moment in an argument where you realize you are wrong. However, back in the day, even if you knew you were wrong, you could take your argument to the grave. No one carried an encyclopedia around! Even if the entire room is against your argument, just fight it. You’re right until proven otherwise with hard, concrete evidence.
It wouldn’t be until hours or days later that your friend, who was actually correct, shoves a book in your face and says, “SEE! HAWAII IS THE 50TH STATE, NOT ALASKA.”
But it’s cool, by that point you’re over it. You were only fighting against it so hard earlier because of the heat of the moment.
Welcome to 2012, where no debate should ever go unsettled.
Make sure you only argue about concrete facts that you are 100% sure about. Any doubt in your mind and you risk finding yourself in embarrassment. These days, two people arguing about facts don’t last long.
All answers are just a few virtual touchscreen-buttons away.
Knowing the Title/Artist of a Song
It would always be heartbreaking to hear a catchy tune on the radio, at a party, or while trying on clothes at a store and let it slip you by without ever finding out the artist or title of the song. Back in the day, the only way to recuperate this information was attempt to remember the beat and as many words as you can. You could try to ask your friends later.
“Hey, you guys know that one song, I think it’s a love song, kind of goes like ‘dooooo do doooo looove dooo dee doo laa’?”
Otherwise, you will just have to hope and pray that the song will one day fatefully cross paths with your ears again.
Welcome to 2012, where a song shall never remain untitled or uncredited.
One way of finding out the title or artist of a song is to remember as many words as you can from that particular song, or at least the key words or phrases that are most repeated, and Google it.
Every. Single. Word.
Google does a pretty good job relating to idiots and will usually know what you’re talking about.
However, this method can be tedious and unreliable.
Now there are apps like Shazam and SoundHound that, with a simple press of a button, listen to a song for a few seconds and tell you the title of the song and which artist it is by. It will conveniently save that song in your history list so you can refer to it later and download the song. You go, technology!!!
Out of Reach
There weren’t many forms of immediate communication in the past. Most households only had a single phone line used to reach several different people. If nobody was home, the best you could do was leave a message on the answering machine and hope your call was returned as soon as possible. The person you were trying to reach could be out of town and you may not hear back from them for days or weeks.
Welcome to 2012, where no message should go unanswered for more than 24 hours (unless your arm is pinned between a boulder and canyon wall in an isolated desert, then you should take no longer than 127 hours).
There are so many modes of communications to choose from: cell phone, house phone, text, e-mail, facebook, AIM, skype, etc. There is no way you cannot get a hold of someone.
Lose your phone and don’t have your contacts? Not an excuse! You should never lose your contact information. Sync up your phone with Google contacts, which adds phone numbers automatically to your Google account when you add it to your phone! So stop making those dumb facebook events about needing people’s phone numbers. I get all excited for nothing when I get invited to events titled “PARTY! PARTY! PARTY! ……….In my phone”
I will kill you.
Forgetting Birthdays
Remembering birthdays always proved to be a daunting task. You had to rely on memory or transfer all the information from your previous planner to the next. It always sucked when your entire group of friends didn’t know the precise date of an upcoming birthday.
“Hey, is Alice’s birthday on the 12th or 22nd?”
“What? I thought it was the 18th!”
“Oh, we’re screwed.”
You could never ask the actual person because it would show them that you forgot when their birthday is.
Welcome to 2012, where no birthday should ever go forgotten… Unless they don’t have a facebook.
Facebook has done wonders when it comes to birthdays. You can have them e-mail you every Sunday about the upcoming birthdays for the week. And, of course, there is that nifty birthday section on the upper-right hand corner of your page that shows the birthdays.
Image by Rai Moshin Sheraz Bhatti
