meet the new boss
Posted on 13. Jan, 2011 by Carrie in op-ed
words > BART WILCOX
We fear and dislike the future because it is really the present, hiding behind a tree, waiting to jump out and scare the crap out of us after we have repeatedly told it not to do so. Then it immediately becomes the past, with no surprises or thrills left, like a relationship once you’ve decided you can fart in front of each other. But at the beginning of this new decade we have cracked open like a ripe Easter egg, I’ll not let the future cow me into some timid Look Back at the Last 10 Years. So, hold your Nostradamus and get ready for my Look Back at the Next 10 Years.
Flying Cars. Of course there will be flying cars. It would be irresponsible and slightly crazy to suggest otherwise. But walk with me through this one. Our optimistic predecessors in the 1930s thought surely by the next millennium white males smoking pipes would fly home from work, fold up the wings and snug the family Gulfstream into the garage next to the wife’s sensible Cessna Volt.
“Sorry, Honey. The traffic over Kellogg was brutal. When the hell are they going to finish that flyover? Umm. Somethin’ smells good!”
Then over a nice dinner of liver tablets and onion polymer the little woman would sheepishly confess that she had a teensy weensy fender bender flying home after an itsy bitsy martini at Mort’s when, searching for her dropped eyebrow tattoo laser pen, she took out Channel 10’s transmission tower. So, let’s rethink the flying car. Imagine the same people you see on the road today in the air with you. Most of them will be drunk. Many of them will be asleep. Great when you’re on the ground, but flying brings a whole new level of danger to operating a vehicle while trying to give someone the finger and post a picture of the incident to your Facebook page.
Your Facebook Page. Contrary to popular fears, Facebook will not become Big Brother, who watches everything you do, like in “1984.” It will become Little Sister, who gets into all your stuff, like in 1984, when she stole your diary and showed it to your mother. We’ll no longer call it Facebook, the puny social medium, but worship it as FaceBeing the Omnappotent, The One and Eternal Application with the newly added USB Anal Probe. We’ll lose all control of our personal data because you will insist on clicking ALLOW like a lab rat slapping the cocaine lever. Did you never ask why Farmville needs to “access all your records, the financial and criminal records and DNA of all your friends and ancestors” just so you can harvest an imaginary rutabaga? Well, thanks to your carelessness we will no longer even need to tweet. Via the USB anal probe, any random thought that used to fly harmlessly out of your butt will now appear as a hologram in your friends’ living rooms: “What is it with Bart and the Diane Keaton fantasy? Eeewwww.” Your family and ex-spouses will be able to update and revise your life at will, like Wikipedia. WikiLeaks.com, which used to spill the beans on the scandalous conduct of diplomats and world leaders, will become redundant:
“Did you know the Sultan of Baruba proposed to a goat?”
“Are you kidding? He’s a FaceBeing friend. I already Etsy’d him a wedding gift.”
Politics. Thanks to the omniscient benevolent omniscience of FaceBeing the All-Knowing – Long Live Little Sister! – politics will become as pointless as WikiLeaks. With no prurient secrets left, there will be nothing to campaign on. Senators will set up their senate offices directly in airport men’s rooms. First, though, we’ll see the Democratic Party collapse like a neutron star. Here’s how history will record this: The Republican Party stops the Democratic Party on the way to Congress one morning and demands its lunch money. The much larger Democratic Party begins to reason with its smaller opponent, which makes the media get sleepy and lie down for a nap. With no one watching, the Libertarian Party gets on all fours behind the Democrats. The Republicans say, “Hey, is that tea partier over there urinating on an endangered redwood?” and when the Democratic Party looks, the Republican Party shoves it down over the Libertarians and steals its Capitol building pass. It’s all over in less time than it takes to say “filibuster.”
The Economy. One thing we won’t have to worry about is the deficit. The strategy of giving money to rich people to create jobs will eventually pay off, in that the rich Chinese who will now own the country will give us jobs. In Chinese factories. Making tiny cocktail umbrellas and sewing Made in the USA labels into our People’s Republic of FaceBeing uniforms. But that won’t be for, oh, six – eight years. So, relax. Go pick your rutabagas.
