Life...according to Ellen DeGeneres

Modern life requires hardly any physical activity. We just push a button and stand there. Take the car window. Someone decided that having to crank the window down yourself was too hard. “I don’t wanna churn butter, I just want fresh air!” So we got a button to do it.

We’re just so lazy. We used to have breath mints. Now we have breath strips that just dissolve on our tongue. Can we not suck anymore?

Yes, we are lazy. Yet we also can’t seem to sit still. So we started making things like GO-GURT. That’s yogurt for people on the go. Let me ask you, was there a big mobility problem with yogurt before? How time-consuming was it, really? “Hello?...Oh, hi, Tom…Oh, I’ve been dying to see that movie…Umm, no…I just opened up some yogurt…Yeah, I’m in for the night…No, not even later—it’s the kind with fruit on the bottom. Well, have fun. Thanks anyway.”

There are certain things that they’re coming up with that I just don’t think we need. Top of the list is that moving sidewalk you find in airports. It’s like a little ride in the middle of nowhere, but I don’t know what function it really serves. I mean, it’s fun because it moves, so if you walk while you’re on it you’re almost like the Bionic Woman, just flying past the people trudging beside you on the ground. But you know how hard it is to adjust to walking again once you get off that thing? And what about those people who get on there and just stand? I guess we have to thank God they found the moving sidewalk. Without it, I don’t know how they’d get anywhere.

You’d think with all these innovations that are speeding things up for us and moving us along, people would be early—or at least on time—when they’re going places. But somehow, everybody’s still always late. And people always say the same thing when they finally show up after you’ve been waiting for them. “Oh, sorry. Traffic.” Really? How do you think I got here? Helicoptered in? I allow for it.

How else does technology torture us? Well, try opening up a brand new CD. What has happened to the packaging of CDs? These are angry, angry people, these CD packagers. “Open here,” it says. Is that sarcasm? Are they mocking me? The plastic they use is so thick, it’s like government plastic—civilians can’t buy this stuff. And you can’t get through it without slashing it with a knife or scissors or something. In fact, I find you need a sharp pair of scissors to into just about anything these days. Have you tried to open a package of scissors lately? You need scissors to get into scissors. And what if you’re buying scissors for the first time? I mean, how can you possibly get in there?

(Taken from the book, The Funny Thing Is… by Ellen DeGeneres, pgs. 59-61)