Phoebe and Her Unicorn by Dana Simpson for August 17, 2021

Instead of the usual platitudes to nostalgia, how about thinkpeices about where we draw the line between tools and technology.

What’s that bit? If it was invented before you were born, it’s just a part of the natural order; if it was invented while you were a kid it’s new and exciting, and if it was invented after you grew up it’s the tool of the devil?

Well that sounds like a you problem Phoebe. Use your imagination:-D.

“AM I A JOKE TO YOU?!”

People upload and read comics on the internet too. LAME.

Does Phoebe even have any imagination?

Superman III .. TBH, I thought that part was stupid, back then.

.. but TBF — while it did have a few good scenes — most of that movie was stupid.

no offense meant to Phoebe’s dad (or anyone else who enjoyed it).

So she wants to be laughably mistaken about something?

Nostalgia is so yesterday…

I kinda wonder that movie it is. I certainly don’t remember even hearing about it.

Imagination, one’s greatest gift!

My Dad was born in 1928. I asked him once what modern technological advancement impressed him the most, and he said television. He said it still seemed like “magic”, even though he knew how it worked.

This actually reminds me of an old novel, “The Murder League”, in which included a computer that was able to accurately predict the number of murders in a city to one death. This was written back when computers were programmed with punch-cards and used reel to reel tape as a storage medium.

Real magic and pretend magic are two very different things!

Does this mean Marigold is not able to change the weather for the whole world?

What about the magic of reading?

Pfft!

What I want to know is what movie is she looking at?

“I don’t get to use my imagination.” — But Dana does!

That is kind of a next level thought that Marigold actually being an understandable magic takes the fun out of magic.

C’mon, Dana Simpson… you’ve heard of this little thing called “drones” haven’t you? I’m pretty sure the fancy ones can change the weather…

(but sometimes they change it to lightning… yikes!)

Read a Harry Potter Book……

My husband (we’re Gen Xers) was in elementary school when the “Wargames” movie came out in the early 80s. He wrote a program on one of their rudimentary computers that convinced his teacher he had hacked into the local bank. I still find this hilarious.

There was no phone line. He told her he was doing it through the electrical outlet. The interface was him typing gibberish and he had it reply back “Hello, [Grump’s Future Husband]!” She called his mom: “I know he did it. I saw him do it.” His sister was also in the classroom—she thought he’d done it, and she was proud.

His Mom, who of course knows him all too well, calmly said, “He figured out he could convince you.” He walked out of the school grinning like a million bucks. Then he saw his mom standing on the school grounds with her hands on her hips, and he deflated quickly.

He says now, “It never occurred to me that the teacher would TATTLE on me.”

Oh, Phoebe, just wait until Dad tells you about TRON.

I reember a movie about a boy who was a computer wizard, but the computer was more like a universal remote, and he could manipulate any kind of things with it, in ways that are not really possible even now. Computers really were regarded as magic back then when very few really had them. That movie was definitely a B-class movie, when video clubs were starting and getting any flick they could find to rent.

Magick is not what you do on stage it is manipulation of the exocosm by other scientific means. Magick is what Magus Alistair Crowley taught.

Quit taking your magical talking unicorn for granted, kiddo.

Movies about computers were silly back then, but they were fun. Most people did not have a home computer yet so they were kind of mysterious and there was no limit to what people thought they could do. I remember “Electric Dreams” where this guy buys a computer and it becomes sentient and falls in love with his girlfriend, and of course there was WarGames, still one of my favorite movies.

“Hey, maybe if we hook these electrodes up to a Barbie doll during a thunderstorm while hacking into a defense department supercomputer…”