Forgotten Inconveniences (Patreon)

Lately, I've been scrolling through issues of "The Videophile" (it's what it sounds like: a magazine about VCRs).

There's a regularly published comic featuring a pig mascot. I have no idea why. But he regularly exposes humorous aspects of the "culture" of VCRs, including the dreaded Short Tape. Helpfully, this comic explains exactly what the short tape is.

I'd never heard this term, but I knew what it meant. I totally remember the idea of a videotape running out of tape before a show had finished (especially common if a show went over its proper time). Yet this, like so many other technological quirks and inconveniences, is something I'd forgotten about completely until I saw this strip.

I wish there were a name or index of these weird shortcomings of technological magic. Something to describe the hours you had to wait for your phone to charge, or the skips in a CD when it got scratched. We think of technological history as a linear progression, but it's full of spits, and sputters, and super-Pigs complaining the entire time.