Radiohead and Dilbert

Disclaimer: If you know Radiohead and love their music, don’t read this. Or at least don’t be offended.

We got this week’s edition of Rolling Stone and there’s a picture of a blond guy with a headline that says The Future Belongs to Radiohead. I assumed Radiohead was the blond dude and I thought the headline was intriguing. How could the future, THE FUTURE, belong to Radiohead and I had never heard of him?

The future belongs to Radiohead. I read the article, rather than attempting to talk about this as if I knew something about it which I sometimes do, and discovered the name of the cover lad is Thom Yorke and the name of the band is Radiohead. Ohhhhh. I get it.

Then I started thinking about all the bands I haven’t heard of anymore. If you’ve gone by the CD racks at Target, you know what I mean. Who the hell is Radiohead? Now 26? OneRepublic? Maroon 5? There are a couple on the Top 40 list I recognize: Led Zeppelin and Rascal Flatts, the last one only because I made a wedding DVD for some friends and this was one of their favorite bands. This was a band that almost made me jump off the roof.

It’s the beginning of the slide. First you can’t name any bands on the Top 40 list, then you can’t set a digital clock or program the VCR, and pretty soon you can’t operate a motor vehicle or comb your own hair.

I've tried to keep up in small ways. I say back in the day instead of back in the old days. I have a blog and an iPod and I know about things like web-based news readers and uploading digital video to Youtube. But I get the feeling that it's not enough.

Speaking of teachers, I got the seniority list the other day. I was one of the few hired in the 70's and I was at the top of the list in several categories. I sent an email to the superintendent's secretary: Dear Nancy, There is a mistake with the seniority list. The top of the list is for old people. Please correct. Love, Teresa

And yet one more segue. There was a great Dilbert cartoon in the paper yesterday that reminded me of some aspects of my job…the sweet nectar of the illusion of progress…that euphoric feeling you get between the time you make a plan and the time some moron comes along to thwart it. It can last anywhere from less than a minute to as much as a minute. Yeah, that’s it.