#960 Reference Madness

Time marches on. And it eventually meets its Waterloo. So I have a question. Do our young folks understand what “meeting your Waterloo” means anymore? Do the young people in England who call their bathrooms by the name “water closet” or “loo” think Waterloo is some reference to Napoleon falling down the toilet?
Things change so quickly these days and the subjects they teach kids need to be so much more technically relevant; do all of our cultural references still apply?
The other day I heard a radio DJ making reference to an upcoming thing on the program. He said it was “all stacked up and on the way.” Since no one stacks Mp3s in their iPods I’m not sure younger listeners got the reference. That’s at least two technologies back, because you never stacked CDs either.
Hell, even I don’t know what he meant. Was he referring to the way we used to put a stack of records on a spindle on a turntable? Each one would automatically drop down when the last one was done playing. Or was he referring to the stacks of 8-track cassettes radio stations used to use to keep songs, jingles, and commercials in order?
Or take the term DJ itself. It comes from “disc jockey.” I’ve seen DJs at weddings who don’t have a disc anywhere for them to jockey. They use all Mp3 files on their computerized systems. No discs whatsoever, compact or vinyl.
Do they still teach the Greek classics in school? All those morality fables that make points about human frailties and the capricious gods. Do they still tell the story of Narcissus?
I wrote something about Google alerts being the ultimate techno narcissistic tool and I had someone write in and ask me what I meant. He was apparently too caught up in his own life to check Wikipedia, where all our cultural references are stacked up. Just a click away for you mouse-jockeys.
If he had only gone there, he could have posted the story of the Waterloo-like defeat of his ignorance on his, um, narcissistic Facebook site.
America, ya gotta love it.