that only exists in the minds of

Bucky's finally dropped a fresh cut, but we're withholding our wit and wisdom until a later time. Deal with it. In the meantime I'm going to take a moment to complain about a particular pet peeve of mine.

First, I enjoy country music. It's typically mellow, and if it isn't they're probably singing about drinking. Which is always fun. I've been to plenty of country music concerts, and am going to see Keith Urban on October 9th. He's a great show. But there is one particular aspect of country music that drives me crazy. And I'm not talking about Darryl Worley. As least right now, anyways. It's the Nostalgia Song.

Now, fondly remembering earlier days is no real big deal. Nostalgia can be fun, just ask VH1. What I'm talking about if a particular brand of song that talks about how great it was back in like 1951. You can find examples of these songs in plenty of places. I hate them.

I hate the implication that life currently sucks and everything back then was perfect. There's no marvel at our current state, only lamentations that we're no longer back where we were. Yep, it rocked, driving around cars that got about three miles per gallon (oil is limitless, right?), asbestos was a sweet and effective way to insulate your home or especially your place of business, women stayed in the home (where they apparently belong) and those uppity colored folk knew their place. Right? Woo!

It wouldn't be true to say everything we've done to get ourselves to where we all are collectively is beneficial or worth the hassle. We've still got our problems, but the advances we've made in the past half century, while maybe not eliminating or even reducing some of the difficulties we had a while back but at least we're at a point where we can't really deny them anymore. And we have more tools than ever with which to go forward. It may have been easier to decide among three different channels, but it's far more informative to have upwards of 200. Even if most of them are home shopping.

What made this more acute for me lately was Brad Paisley's most recent single Welcome to the Future. I'm a huge Brad Paisley fan, and as this song was playing the first time I was getting a little more angry than usual, because I was so mad one of my favorites would drop one of these. But as I listened to it, this one was clearly different. And as I've listened to it multiple times (thank you Sirius radio) since it's become even clearer why I like it. There's a definitive nostalgic aspect to the song, but it also carries a certain marvel at where we are. It's not just "Wow, life really sucks now. Remember how it used to be awesome?"

The part that drives it home is when the song mentions how the narrator in the song recalls how the runningback on his high school football team earned a hearty cross burning for asking out "the homecoming queen." Thank you, sir, for at least acknowledging that "back when" had its own share of problems. Lacking the media avenues and outlets we have now, it was simpler then only in the sense that you could ignore a lot of that stuff a whole lot easier.

To end, I think it best to hear from Ned Flanders: "I wish we lived in the America of yesteryear that only exists in the minds of us Republicans." There, I said it.