"Mr Discontinued"

*Disclaimer:this post is going to be full of cliques-but what the heck! When my house caught fire on Chirstmas eve my bt broadband modem melted. Now, I had had that modem for nearly two years and it may not have been a gem, but it was efficient, reliable and good enough. Because it was melted beyond repair (to this day the stench of liquified rubber haunts my bedroom), my beloved BT announced me that I would have had to buy a new one for the bargain price of £25! So the lovely lady over the phone said in that annoingly sterile and repetitive tone of telephone operators: "we will be posting you the BT Broadband Voyager 210"(picture on the left)... that's when I abrubtly stopped her to say that what I wanted was a BT Broadband Voyager 105. At that point the operator laughed and said that that model had been discontinued a whole year ago..too old,not pretty enough, not fast enough. And there was me thinking that it was brilliant when I used to be able to browse for Japanese prints one minute and then switch to my friend's blog in south America in a second when, apparently, I was stuck in the Flinstone era because it shouldn't have taken me more than a quarter of a second - dah! Or is like my friend who has been pestering us for the past year going on about how much he wants a 30G i-pod. I have been advocating for my 1G nano my sister gave me which is cool and suits me just fine. Not enough space for music? Just change it every day (how much time do you really have to listen to music from your i-pod when you are out anyway!?). But he is tenaciously persists in wanting this huge storage i-pod. So last night we browsed the web looking for the best deal when, there behold, the new fancy super supreme 80G i-pod appeared! Wow! All of a sudden his demands for hi-tech sounded shabby. Guess what I am trying to say is that technology and society are moving superfast in this world we are living in and in as much as it is all good and fancy, the question remains: "do we really need it?". Now going back to my original title,"Mr Discontinued" is how Steve Martin in the rom-com "Father of the Bride"(1991) describes himself by comparing his self-perceived rejection as first man in his soon to-be-married daughter's life to a one of his discontinued shoe productions. Thereby the comparison between material consummerism and emotional consummerism (if that's a word). This is something I often discuss about with my peers and I imagine it is a problem as old as the world but in our global society the issue must have biggened: how to be sure you have met "the one"?!. Blokes and ladies alike seem to be awefully concerned they may marry someone and then meet someone "better"(be it more intelligent,funny,attractive,sophisticated..whatever takes your fancy really). My take on this is that it is not a possibility we may meet someone better,rather it is a virtual certainty we are all likely to become,sooner or later, Mr or Mrs Discontinued. The point is that, as exciting as the new may be, they haven't had to wake up next to you even on "bad hair days"and the truth is that no-one is ever going to love you as loyally,faithfully and honestly as the person who has chosen to love you through the thick and the thin,sickness and health,better or worse. In other words,I would have been perfectly happy with my old modem - I don't want to spend the rest of my life chasing after the "latest model",the fastest car, the best paid job,the most handsome man. Give me my modem back!