Tag Archives: reading

Backward Reading & Forward Looking

 

Stanko & Tibor: Reading Diaries

 


These Thoughts Fuelled by C12H22O11 and C8H10N4O

After a very strong, brain stem-rattling, intestinal-clearing espresso, I decided to eat what medical practitioners and health & nutrition experts commonly refer to in technical jargon as “baked death”, a.k.a. a gooey chocolate danish. Then after ingesting this, I couldn’t help but begin think about things — largely as a result of the consumption of the aforementioned sugar-drenched confection spawned by Satan’s best bakers that kicked my brain into overdrive, giving synapse impulses free reign to fire wildly and circumvent the the IQ-suppressing and dullard-enhancing lead I absorbed as a child through toys, leaded gasoline in the early 70’s and no doubt Chinese food cooked in woks from the Ming dynasty.

I came to the conclusion rather quickly that you can divide the world broadly into two categories: Based on the premise if you could actually travel through time, there would be those who would travel to the future, and those who travel to the past. Two groups. That’s it. Let me explain before I digress into a nap in the fetal position in front of the TV.

Future People – Forward Thinking

I strongly believe that those people who would travel to the future are by nature explorers, people who like uncertainty, adventure, are curious, open-minded and who want to know about wild new cool technologies, what new buildings we will design, what will the world look like, see if we conquered space travel and inhabited another plant. Or if fashion followed all those Hollywood movies that predicted we would be wearing a lot of spandex jump suits, and if we would be having sex with aliens that so many pimply geeks — bunkered away in their basements, terminally on the Internet with sticky keyboards and tied to their computers — long dreamed about.

I also think the other sort of future traveler would be the type of person who is trying to flee something dark in their past (probably something sordid in a bathroom stall at a fast food restaurant). By launching forward, in time the general public will have likely forgotten what made them so heinous to begin with. This group probably has some mass murderers on a good behavior break.

Wouldn’t it be cool to see if science has found a cure for stupidity and maybe try new mixed drinks that 23rd century bartenders have come up with? Also you would be treated like royalty just for being an ancient artifact in the future world, and you would be studied (and possibly dissected) and fêted by others so that is a plus for future travel. You could actually tell people how it really was in the olden days when times were simpler and we only had 1400 TV channels.

A negative of future travel may be, however, that humans will have physically evolved to such a point that everyone will have seven fingers on each hand and giant, powerful brains performing telepathic feats and be seven feet tall, and you would be a shrimpy, bakward, unevolved little mental reprobate who would be laughed at and bullied by society at large and on the cover of a major magazine and what would pass for social media.

Past People – Reading Backwards

After numerous scientific experiments involving shaved monkeys, a bottle or three of cough syrup, a blow torch, some cleaning solvents, some strawberries, and a case of malt liquor, I woke a few days later having had time to think about this. I am scientifically convinced that people who would desire to travel back in time are sissies and control freaks. Why? Because you already know the outcome of world events. You could bet on sporting events or political assassinations and Hollywood couple divorces with absolute certainty as a get rich quick scheme. You know what’s coming.

Think how many bets with that annoying relative or that know-it-all jerk at the office you could win with stuff like “I’ll bet you a million bucks that the dumbest human alive is elected to the office of US President by the year 2000.” You’d clean up. Bring a history book with you and spend every evening reading, and you’d be the Jeopardy champ. What fun is knowing everything ahead of time? Control-freak sissy time traveler.

And don’t give me that garbage about traveling back in time and assassinating Hitler or Osama Bin Laden. You’d be too distracted by the cheap beer and hot dogs and glossy “adult” magazines that you now have to fork over a credit card for when you’re online. I am told by a doctor. Also don’t forget the fact that taking a gun back in time would violate travel safety rules at the time port. There is a pat down before you going the time machine, you know, so dischargeable weapons are a no-no.

Sex & Money – That’s All They Ever Think About

A potential positive of travelling back in time would be that you could sleep with people who looked good a long, long time ago in photos or old movies, but are now either dead or wrinkly and on oxygen. If you chose to return to the mid to late 1960s and early 1970s, however, when there was still a lot of free love, you could sleep around and do dope and be a rebel. The lazy time travelers among you could submit patents for things you know were invented by someone else so you could submit the patent and then sue them later when they actually invent it and make some easy money.

I am sure there are those who would happily travel back in time just so they could make all kinds of racist and politically incorrect jokes that were accepted back then that you can’t say now without being pillaged in the press and social media. My guess is the folks who want to travel back in time believe “in the good ole times” largely because they can’t handle modern day complexity. Like the television remote or getting your computer printer to work.

You could go back and marry that other person you dated to see how poorly your life would have turned out anyway. Or maybe go back and redo your 9th grade chemistry exam and just barely pass it again to prove either you or the teacher were deficient in doing their jobs. Or both.

Then And Then

Let’s face it, humans have always thought it was simpler “back then” whenever “then” was. What did cavemen and cavewomen really have to figure out apart from eating, not being eaten, and pleasing the angry gods who thundered every so often? Not much. What did our relatives of ancient Africa ever have to figure out? Pretty much eating, not being eaten, leaving Africa (it was a dump then too, I heard) and running the other way when a lion or tiger or bear came looking for an appetizer.

Same goes for our only slightly more advanced relatives in China, India, Europe and elsewhere as humans began working with metals and killing each other with spears, swords, knives, and other stuff. None of them has it as complicated as I do, what with a dozen loyalty coffee cards in my wallet, and Costco tempting me all the time with special offers on crap I am told I need to be socially accepted, and, of course, my father’s iPhone that needs constant updating because he patently refuses to update ANY of his software. If he had to start reading the instruction manual, I could see his aversion. Just press the damn button and agree to the terms of use and be done with it!

I can see why you’d want to travel back in time, just to avoid being the family help desk 24/7.

What About Me?

What does this insightful rant have to do with the latest episode of the comic that was recently branded by the Oprah book club and Lady’s Home Knitting Journal, May Edition, as “sub-mental” and “proof of society’s inability to stitch together a coherent thought, let alone a sweater “? Not much, to be honest, but it does tell us to live in the present because you can’t control the past or the future. Unless you have a lot of money.

Unsure of the time of day,

Randy “Winner-Winner Chicken Dinner” McSnowden