The Goat Pen

eCat wrote: ↑Fri Feb 03, 2023 12:52 pm I know this is going to sound stupid but I was watching Nate Borgatske on Netflix. The guy is really funny is you haven't heard of him.

In his latest special he talks about the family going to McDonalds and buying all the kids happy meals but they only had like $2 on them and this was back when fast food places were cash only.

The joke was he had to do without while everyone else got a happy meal and he thought he'd be rewarded but 40 years later everyone still laughs at him asking him if he wants them to get a happy meal when they leave.

But what struck me is how I can't even really remember carrying cash around for everything and having to use it.

I remember going to Sweden in 1998 and how cool it was I could pay with my bank debit card at an airport Burger King because you couldn't do that here, so it wasn't that long ago.

hedge wrote: ↑Fri Feb 03, 2023 7:29 pm " I need to use a valet while travelling on business."

Weeellll, who knew we were in the presence of Lord "sometimes I need a valet when I travel" Beauregard?

aTm wrote: ↑Fri Feb 03, 2023 5:15 pm

I always think of the past in ways like that. If I don't actually think hard about how things actually were I imagine that like the internet existed and everybody had cell phones, and that I've always had a smart phone, or that the internet was always high speed.

Someone mentioned a baseball game somewhere one day that I remembered watching in 2005. It was the ALCS and I remembered watching it because I had gone to an A&M Football game that day with a White Sox fan, and then we went out to a bar in College Station after the game and watched the ALCS game. The Astros had played during the football game in the NLCS, and my brain was going down the track of how weird it was that I hadn't watched the Astros game at the football game, because now at A&M game I can sit on my phone during timeouts and watch in HD like five other games going on at the same time on the stadium wifi. It was weird to think about how in 2005, I barely had a phone that could send text messages, much less surf the internet or get scores, and even if you needed to, you certainly couldn't use that phone for anything other than a brick to throw at somebody while you were standing in a crowd of 80,000 people.

Dave23 wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2023 10:39 pm I haven’t carried a back pocket wallet in 30 years or so.

I carried license, cash, and a card or two in my front pocket loose for years. About 10 years ago, I got one of those thin front pocket wallet things, and it’s all I’ve used since.

No Costanza wallet here…

sardis wrote: ↑Sun Feb 05, 2023 10:06 am I think you’ll see a little comeback with use of cash. In 2023 the money platforms like PP, Venmo, and CashApp have to report your cash receipts to the IRS.