What to do in the year 2042?

A friend of mine sent me a link to an amusing timeline of the future (at XKCD). It's a window into what the future is "supposed" to be like, as predicted by Google searches starting with "in the year".

So, it's really clear to me what I'm gonna be doing in the years 2050, and 2069. Really no doubt in either of those years.  The less said the better.

But what to do in the year 2042?

2042 has no news! It looks likely to be the only boring year before the 2070s, and if I live to the 2070s, I'll be so damn happy to have made it that far I won't mind boredom. 2042, on the other hand, is something many of us can expect to live to see. If you don't want 2042 to be a let down, you should start thinking ahead now.

So, perhaps as a group, we should brainstorm. What would you like to be doing in the year 2042?

I figure by that time I'll be in recovery at the LEGO addicts halfway house. Most of my money will go to repurchasing my entire music and movie collections in 7th and 5th formats I've felt compelled to buy into. I imagine I'll do something stupid and Hitchhikers themed, just because it is '42. When that gets boring, I may just get around to building the Time Machine I've always wanted, or I may just wimp out yet again and leave the machine project to yet another future self. But beyond that, I don't have any real plans for 2042. My calendar is largely open.

Not Quite Country

Hell is going to have all of the really cool motherfuckers in it.

Praise Be To Zeppo

A tangent I wandered off on while looking for a good link to The Zeppo for my previous post.

While he was best known as the unfunny wooden straightman of the Marx Brothers, turns out Zeppo was also a businessman, agent, and inventor. His factory built motorcycles, and vital parts for the war effort. He invented the Marman Clamp and a portable cardiac monitor. He stopped doing what he was famous for, and found a whole new niche.

Way to take one for the team, dude.

If it wasn't for WWI, nations wouldn't "need" secret services*
If it wasn't for the British Secret Service, Ian Fleming would be just another geek not unlike you or me.**
If it wasn't for James Bond, we wouldn't have had Secret Agent Man***
If it wasn't for Secret Agent Man, we wouldn't have The Prisoner****
If it wasn't for The Prisoner, we wouldn't have had Twin Peaks or Babylon 5.*****
If it wasn't for Twin Peaks, we wouldn't have Lost or Buffy.******
If it wasn't for Buffy and Babylon 5, then Dr. Who never would have reinvented itself******* into something good.********


So I guess geeks everywhere (like you and me) owe a debt of gratitude to Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Way to take one for the team, dude.

*: World War I was started by the assassination of the Austrian Archduke. This illustrated two points. One, the power that fanatical individuals and clandestine conspiracies could have upon the global political structure. Two, that if forced to solve things via traditional means, conflict between superpowers would risk collapsing society on a planetary scale. Hence the "need" for Secret Services. Or anarchy.
**: And thus we'd have no James Bond. Ian Fleming was not only a novelist and an actor, he was also a spy for MI-6. He wrote Casino Royale based in part on his own experiences as an agent. From there he just kept glamorizing it, and building on the myth.
***: Secret Agent Man (aka Danger Man) was a cheap rip-off with a really catchy themesong.
****: The Prisoner was a surreal later show starring the same actor playing what is not officially the same character, but no doubt is quite clearly the same Secret Agent Man, just in a different (more artsy and meaningful) context.
*****: Both shows make numerous references to The Prisoner. So does the Simpsons, but I think it would have come to be without The Prisoner. Twin Peak's references are mostly in Fire Walk With Me, the movie prequel, which is pretty overt about it's nods to the last episode of the Prisoner. Peaks also references many other films and TV shows. Babylon 5 actually stole lines and salutes out of The Prisoner, the implication being that PsyCorps runs The Village.
******: Twin Peaks revolutionized the way TV series were engineered. It raised the artistic bar and forced you to talk about the show in order to get it's many levels. It had hidden mysteries that were alluded to throughout the show, but not revealed till near the end. It used language in ways that were very unique. It used an ensemble cast of very quirky / goofy characters, juxtaposed against a darker backdrop. It started mundane, then slowly doled out tantilizing hints at the supernatural big picture, just as Lost does. It occurred to me today that Twin Peaks even pioneered the concept of "This Season's Big Bad" which Buffy would later perfect. That's what inspired this post.
*******: Buffy's perfection of the Big Bad is clearly emulated in Dr Who's current seasons. Babylon 5, despite it's many flaws, showed us that a weekly genre TV show could, over time, strive to be something more epic and meaningful than it previously had been.
********: Not that I didn't love old Dr. Who, but much of it is really hard to watch today. In contrast, I'm confident that the current Dr Who will be worth re-watching when I'm 50.

The Dilbert In Me

Jeremy sent me a link to a post by Scott Adams. He sent it to me because Scott is talking about a sort of correspondance-based art school, which I had some books from. Said books did not make it up here when I moved. Nor when the rest of my stuff arrived at Thanksgiving. Instead, they've been sitting in Jeremy's house. He'd kept them for me when they didn't fit in the truck, and then mistakenly didn't get them into the second truck. No biggie. I would like the books, but don't really need them in a terrible hurry. They weren't even mine originally, they were my Mom's. I hauled them around less because I liked the books, and more because I just felt I'd need them one day. Sarah said "I've never seen you look at these, do they have to make it into this load or can you live without them for a few months?" For the first time in my life, I felt like I didn't need them near me, so I said yes.

And that's where this gets interesting to me. Scott Adams' post isn't really about those art-school books. Hell, I wouldn't have even known it was the same course, if Jeremy didn't point it out. His post is instead about prophecy, arguably of the self-fulfilling variety, and about coincidence (or the lack thereof). It's about how he, all his life, knew he would one day become a Cartoonist living in San Francisco. This was less a goal, and more a thing he just knew would happen.

Suffice it to say, this parallels my life in ways I've never spoken of publicly before. It may be self-fulfilling, it may be (as Adams also acknowledges) selective memory, or it may be terribly incredibly powerful and meaningful.

Lately, I find myself pondering and growing comfortable with one of those quotes I mentioned a few posts ago. "Is there such a thing as positive, uplifting delusions?" Provided I'm not some crazy fool who lets the coincidences of his life carry him to an armed compound in waco, and that my "voices" (metaphorical only - they've never been actual voices) don't start telling me to hurt people, perhaps it's okay to acknowledge them and no longer fear them. I think I'll wait till Sarah gets home tonight, revisit the topic with her more thoroughly than ever before, and see if she thinks I'm likely to be tarred and feathered.

I got hurt several years back for sharing my insights. That clammed me up for years. Lately, I've shared tales of ghosts on this very blog, and no one drove me out of town or even stopped associating responding to me for it. I've spoken a bit about my religious beliefs, and while it lead to some tense conversations, it all worked out for the best. Maybe we're actually bordering on a time in my life where I can be honest with more than just one person. That would be nice.

Don't expect more than this here, at least not any time soon. I'm just testing the waters - and checking to see if there's any great messages, written there by unknown hands in the sand and the surf.

p.s.: Jeremy, please mail me the books as you offered, I suddenly feel I need them again.

Zombie Hordes of Synchonicity

A few days ago, Kevin Bacon lead me to thinking about Necroville. A couple days after that, Brad proposed a rule naming certain Nomiblog players dead. This morning I innocently responded with a counter-bill naming them undead instead. In the 9 hours since that point:

1. Sarah opened up a birthday gift from her sister. It included the Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks.
2. While waiting for dinner to boil, I popped over to Brendan's website, where (unknown to me) his most recent post was about another of Max Brook's books about zombies, World War Z. Not terribly surprising, since I new about the zombie class he'll be teaching next semester.
   
3. Sarah's mom called, and they're yacking now. I got bored, so I figured I'd check out some other blogs to kill time while they talk. First one I checked was pointing and giggling, where Daved has a review of World War Z on the front page. He and Brendan have never met, so it's not interrelated. Having never talked to Daved about Zombies, I certainly wasn't expecting this.

I do not believe in Coincidence, yet I do not want to understand what the world is trying to tell me. Suddenly I find myself hoping there is coincidence after all, since the alternative seems to be that we are on the verge of a zombie infestation... :)

Syncretic Me

One could fairly say my belief system is blandly syncretic. I mostly identify myself as Christian. Yet I believe in reincarnation, life on other planets, ghosts, nature spirits, psychic powers, and magic.

I once did, but no longer do, have Jesus Christ Superstar memorized verbatim from "My mind is clearer now" to "into your hands I commend my spirit." I admire the way JCS finds sympathetic angles on characters that are often demonized by the church. For that same reason, my least favorite part is Harod's song and dance.

My favorite translation of the bible is The Unvarnished New Testament. I appreciate it's humble humanity.

I believe in shades of grey, the power of myth, synchronicity, galactic conspiracies, multiple subjective realities, and in objective truths that we cannot easily put our hands upon. I'm certainly not agnostic or atheist, yet I don't really practice what that one could call religion. I have beliefs both concrete and abstract. But I'm not much fond of worship or supplication.

I think the ancient peoples of the world had a lot of things right, but also a lot of things wrong. I suspect that contradiction is part of being human. Most of what are identified as "Gods" or "Demons", I would categorize by the more neutral term "Spirits". Such things deserve respect, but in the same and varied ways that your dearest friend, or an aloof and rarely-spoken-with neighbor, or a heat-packin' mafioso deserve respect.

I have a few specific memories of another life, though I tend to be very tight-lipped about them. They are very detailed first-person recollections, and unlikely to be mere hallucinations. I've never done psychedelics, so I suppose I don't have a frame of reference to say what a hallucination feels like. But I do know what a memory of a defining moment in your lifetime feels like, and that's how these feel. Lessons learned at an age when I did not yet have the worldly experience to pick them up in this body. They have served as bulwarks to me in the stormy seasons of my life.

I think the Dalai Lama more-than-likely is the reborn bodhisattva his supporters claim him to be, though they may have muddied certain details in the ritual systemization of it all. In the unlikely event he turns out not to be the genuine article, he's still pretty fuckin' cool.

Though I understand a good deal of the math behind probability, I do not actually believe in chance. There are, however, forces beyond our control.

This is more than I have said publicly about my beliefs in a great many years.

Words in your Yet.

These are words you already know, but only your elders have used them all...

Frag (Noun): What you feel when the world you live in is no longer the world you remember. Left untreated it can lead to insanity, death and/or everyone else forgetting you ever existed.

Frag (Verb): To go back in time and change some aspect of a person's life so as to cause them Frag.
As in "So I hopped in my time machine, prevented their first date, and Fragged them both!"

Spanner (Noun): 1. A time-traveller, specifically one capable of moving through time without an external time-machine. 2. A member of the Continuum. 3. A wrench.

Chrony or Chronie (Noun): A friend or ally, especially one who is a spanner.

Gemini (Noun): 1. In incident or event in which you meet your self. 2. Your junior or elder self.

Slipshank (Verb): 1. To declare that you will one day do something, and thereby cause it to have already happened. 2. To bring something from your own future into your own past by force of will. 3. To get yourself an item by means of Slipshank.
As in "I needed a gun, so I slipshanked one, duct-taped to the bottom of my chair"
Warning: Slipshank causes Frag. It's easily cured Frag, but it's still Frag.

Yet (Noun): 1. Your destiny. 2. Events you know happen(ed) to you sometime, but you haven't experienced them.
As in "I slipshanked myself that gun, so going back and taping it to the chair in the first place is in my Yet."
Warning: Failure to complete events in your Yet causes Frag.

Frune (Verb): 1. To gather information by talking to other Spanners. 2. To gather information by traveling up the time stream and researching the historical records available there.

Cobweb (Verb): 1. To falsely plant information about an event or person, so as to create the appearance of them existing at a particular time, for the specific purpose of deceiving time-travellers or preventing a Frune. 2. To manufacture an event that never occurred for the express purpose of sewing confusion.
As in: "I didn't want them to know I was responsible for all the Freebirding, so I cobwebbed it."

Iron Man (Verb): 1. A dangerous attempt to Frune 2. To determine whether (and how) you survive the current dilemma by means of traveling into the future and checking to see if you're still alive then. 3. A desperate gambit in Time Combat.
As in: "After the cobwebbing, I did a quick Iron Man to make sure I lived through their retaliation - thankfully they don't kill me. For this."
Warning: Iron Manning does not cause Frag, but denying the items in your Yet that were revealed by means of an Iron Man gambit may. Many find it deeply disturbing to know the manner of their own demise.