So between the news of Dom DeLuise's passing and just hearing "Tiny Bubbles" on iTunes radio here at the office, it's reminded me that I need to transfer all the old cassette tapes to CD. 

See, chilluns, back in the Stone Age of the '70s and '80s, better known as the Carter-zoic and Reaganomic Eras to future scientists, our less yuppie-fied cave-dwellers didn't have easy access to those gigantic VHS camcorders, much less the kind of digital mini-camcorder that fits around your fingertip.  All of our memories were transcribed via magical film-based things like Kodachrome and Polaroid, and recorded to cassette tapes via scratchy-sounding microphones on clunky Radio Shack tape machines.

Part of me wants to just say, "Fuck it, it's too much sit there and transfer.  I've got better things to do."  But the other, more nagging part says, "This is your duty.  If you don't hold onto these things, you will lose them forever, and you'll regret it the rest of your days."  You can't get back the moment you said your first words or the audio from Mom and Dad's wedding as a 99-cent download on iTunes or Rhapsody.  I've already brought all of our old videotapes (pretty much every birthday, Christmas, and Easter from 1987 through 1999) over to DVD.

Also, does anyone agree with me that the very nature of digital media causes more of our memories to get lost?  I mean, how hard was it to misplace a big VHS tape, aside from not labelling it?  I've got so many long-forgotten MPEG clips and JPEGs floating around on hard drives it's unreal.  The once-sacred photograph and video recording are so disposable now.