I had a really great babysitter when I was young. I have nothing but glowing reviews, literally. I loved my babysitter so much that I will recommend that my kids and grandkids even use my babysitter. If you’ve ever seen Cable Guy with Jim Carrey or numerous other shows or movies when you were young, you know exactly who I’m referring to, ironically. Or rather what. Of course, I’m referring to TV.
What a great babysitter TV was for me. TV introduced me to the Transformers, my all-time favorite cartoon. It introduced me the Simpsons, Knight Rider, ALF, Cheers, Miami Vice and Friday Night Videos. The first music video I ever saw was “Beat it” by Michael Jackson on Friday Night Videos. MTV also introduced me to artists like The Police, Phil Collins, Madonna, and Dire Straits, who sang the line, “I want my MTV….”
Now Michael Jackson is no longer with us, MTV is a station without any music videos, Phil Collins has a daughter that is more famous than him, The Police is now Sting, and Madonna, in the words of Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, “is transforming into Jar Jar Binks and no one is talking about it.”
These people were big influences in my life at the time, and when I saw them, it inspired me to want to grow up and be like them. I would see movies like the Matrix that changed the way I thought about the world, and then later there were people like Al Gore that invented the internet, Mark Zuckerberg starting Facebook, Jack Dorsey founding Twitter and the Chinese bringing Tik Tok to the world.
The problem with all these people changing the world is that they never stopped to help clean up after themselves. The world needs a little change, but they need a lot more maintaining.
Stop trying to change the world please, because people like me end up having to clean up your messes. Huge changers just leave messes everywhere. They are like earthquakes that everyone else has to deal with. They create the earthquakes, but after the earthquake they expect lots of money, praise by everyone and they think they don’t have to clean up the mess afterwards.
Too many people want to change the world and not enough of us want to maintain it.
The morning janitors that wake up at 4 am are sick and tired of having to clean up all the 1’s and 0’s you leave all over the floor. The warehouse people are sick of having to ship the bullcrap you sell to everyone. After all, it’s hard to find boxes that keep the smell out.
The people that maintain the websites of Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Tik Tok, didn’t learn coding from the Matrix and their computers only type horizontally, not vertically, and their screens aren’t green. The actors that are creating the illusion that VR works in Mark Zuckerberg’s head are getting a little exhausted.
The people that squash all the bugs in the code of video games about squashing bugs are tired of working millions of hours or overtime, squashing bugs so the creators can get all credit of their amazing vision, while the programmers get bugged about there being so many bugs in the game when it is released.
The people that are the most bugged about maintenance are the ghost writers that maintain this blog, while I get all the credit.
I didn’t even create any of the Giftures for this post. I steal them from people that maintain Giphy…So with further ado, I present…this week’s Giftures…
I’m guessing that Andy…
The Rock might have said he was cooking something…
Michael cleaned up the criminals…
Squidward was the artist…
While Mark Z. and others are trying to pretend a VR world exists…
While some people making stacks of cash…
While professors are busy trying to teach math…
While my son is out tackling kids with footballs…
She got all the glory…
Lincoln may have said four score and seven years ago…
It might be fun to get a hat trick…
Just remember, for everything you create…
Stop trying to change the world. No one asked for all this change. We don’t want to clean up all your messes. Stop creating for a minute and clean up after yourself for once.
ARRRRGGGHHHHHHH
Bitter Maintenance Ben
Ben's Bitter Blog 
My problem with Television was that the technical aspects (back in the analog days, anyway) were often more interesting than the programs- at least for me. I largely gave up on TV when I realized I was paying $50/month for cable and watching maybe a nickel’s worth. Then things went digital and the place were I am is “served equally poorly” by all – so no over-the-air signal to speak of. But this doesn’t me much. I find when I go someplace that does have TV, that if I turn it on all, it’s ANNOYING. Mind, I do NOT claim this makes me in any way better than anyone else. If there were “free air” stations I could get, I have no doubt I’d be watch *something* at least once in a while, And there is YouTube and others like to, so… yeah.
I have explained that between Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, I was indeed “raised by monsters.” And considering what I see of those NOT ‘raised by monsters’, I figure I had he better deal.
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I was raised by puppets, thus explaining why we are lead by puppets and we don’t even blink when it happens.
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Man about man about, didn’t Gore also invent entropy? What a far king genius.
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Yeah, he was a frickin genius. He also invented ManBearPig on South Park.
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Man, you just spoke to my Gen X’er heart. Friday Night videos, Knight Rider……Great Blog
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Yeah, Gen X’ers are probably the only people that have any idea what I’m talking about ever. Thank goodness there are still a few of us still alive.
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Love this! And you are correct. The innovative mess makers get all the credit for changing the world, but if the rest of us weren’t in the mix cleaning up for them their accomplishments wouldn’t seem as impressive. And, shout out to all the Gen Xers raised by a television set. Perhaps this is why I still know dialogue from 80s television but possess no life skills?
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The innovators leave us holding the bag. And want all the praise. I would hope their mothers were talking to them and telling them to keep their rooms clean though.
Yeah, the 80’s were great, because parents didn’t have to do anything about raising kids. They would either leave you to TV or the outdoors and just make sure you had dinner…sometimes.
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