YOU KNOW IT'S 2003 WHEN... (PART 1) 1. Your reason for not staying in touch with family is because they don't have e-mail. 2. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of three. 3. Your grandmother asks you to send her a JPEG file of your newborn so she can create a screen saver. 4. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home. 5. Every commercial on television has a web site address at the bottom of the screen. 6. You buy a computer and 3 months later it's out of date and sells for half the price you paid. 7. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn't have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go get it. 8. Using real money, instead of credit or debit, to make a purchase would be a hassle and take planning. 9. You just tried to enter your password on the microwave. 10. You consider second-day air delivery painfully slow.
YOU KNOW IT'S 2003 WHEN... (PART 2) 11. Your dining room table is now your flat filing cabinet. 12. Your idea of being organized is multiple-colored Post-it notes. 13. You hear most of your jokes via e-mail instead of in person. 14. You get an extra phone line so you can get phone calls. 15. You disconnect from the Internet and get this awful feeling, as if you just pulled the plug on a loved one. 16. You get up in the morning and go online before getting your coffee. 17. You wake up at 2 AM to go to the bathroom and check your E-mail on your way back to bed. 18. You start tilting your head sideways to smile. 19. You're reading this and nodding and laughing. 20. Even worse; you know exactly who you're going to forward this to...
1. Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks. 2. Some people are like a Slinky ... not really good for anything, but you still can't help but smile when you see one tumble down the stairs. 3. I read recipes the same way I read science fiction. I get to the end and think, "Well, that's not going to happen." 4. Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing. 5. The other night I ate at a real family restaurant. Every table had an argument going on. 6. Have you noticed since everyone has a camcorder these days no one talks about seeing UFOs like they used to? 7. According to a recent survey, men say the first thing they notice about a woman is their eyes, and women say the first thing they notice about men is they're a bunch of liars. 8. Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again. 9. All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism. 10. Have you noticed that a slight tax increase costs you two hundred dollars and a substantial tax cut saves you thirty cents? 11. In the 60's people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal. 12. Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. 13. There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. 14. How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box of matches to start a campfire? 15. You read about all these terrorists--most of them came here legally, but they hung around on these expired visas, some for as long as 10-15 years. Now, compare that to Blockbuster; you're two days late with a video and those people are all over you. Let's put Blockbuster in charge of immigration.
LOOK BACK 100 YEARS · Only 14 Percent of the homes in the US had a bathtub. · Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone. · A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost eleven dollars. · There were only 8,000 cars in the US (most if not all had no registration) and only 144 miles of paved roads. · The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph. · Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California. With a mere1.4 million residents, California was only the 21st most populous state in the Union. · The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower. · The average wage in the US was 22 cents an hour. · The average US worker made between $200 and $400 per year. · A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year, a dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year. · More than 95 percent of all births in the US took place at home. · Ninety percent of all US physicians had no college education. Instead, they attended medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and by the government as "substandard." · Sugar cost four cents a pound. Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen. Coffee cost fifteen cents a pound. · Most women only washed their hair once a month and used borax or egg yolks for shampoo. · Canada passed a law prohibiting poor people from entering the country for any reason. · The five leading causes of death in the US were: o 1. Pneumonia and influenza o 2. Tuberculosis o 3. Diarrhea o 4. Heart disease o 5. Stroke · The American flag had 45 stars. Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii and Alaska hadn't been admitted to the Union yet. · The population of Las Vegas, Nevada was 30. · Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn't been invented. · One in ten US adults couldn't read or write. Only 10 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school. · Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at corner drugstores. According to one pharmacist, "Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and the bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health." · Eighteen percent of households in the US had at least one full-time servant or domestic. · There were only 230 reported murders in the entire US.