2010: One Damn Futuristic Sounding Year

It’s practically 2010, are you ready for the most futuristic-sounding year since 2000?

I sure am not, but I am ready to start talking like Captain Kirk of the USS Enterprise.  He was so dramatic, you just can’t help feel like it’s way in the future when you say everything like him.

Even simple communications take on a new futuristic drama filtered through your own version of Kirk-speak:

“Scotty, are you able to you pass the dilithium crystals for my coffee? (No, Jim, we’re breaking up.)

“Spock, did you fuel up the earth vehicle after running your space errands? (Sorry, Jim, I had difficulty finding a docking station at the space mall, and spending further time in the earth vehicle did not seem… rational.)

“Uhura, we have guests beaming in at Oh 400 hours. We need the crew to square the decks.” (Well, Jim, I’m getting my hair done, and I’m getting waxed. Does that count?)

**

In the future, there will be a hair salon on every block but no place to get a bite to eat for miles and miles. 

Wait a minute — that’s not the future. That’s now! Let me try this again…

In the future, all the hair salons will have little snack shops in them, for all the hungry people who wander the neighborhoods and would otherwise starve.  This is my humble dream.

You need a myface page (like you need another hole in your head)

I finally got on facebook this weekend and I can’t believe it.  I can’t believe I’ve waited this long to find such a colossal way to dispose of time. 

I really had no idea.  I had no idea that  stumbling instructionless through cyberspace could turn-up so many lost friends and relatives.  Here is where they’ve all been and why none of them will ever return an email or pick up their phones.  

Why bother with obsolete one-on-one communications when you can just as easily “share” it on your wall and enjoy the group mind at work?  Nevermind that not everyone on the planet is on myface.  Some are on spacebook.  And some aren’t even on that, although this is hard for some people to believe.

 And oh the shame, the shame of my late entrance to the party.  Not to mention the irritation.  Couldn’t those who had arrived earlier have left a little crumb trail or provided any warning?  

They could have warned, for example, that maybe signing up all your friends before trying out the software isn’t the smartest.  But that’s exactly what fb has you do: get’s you linked in to your entire network without so much as a single instruction as to who is receiving what.   Then you get to publically fumble around trying to learn the inane ways of their crabby little website.  Since helpful explanations aren’t exactly jumping off the page to bite you on the ass, it’s a hit or miss prospect - with an audience.  That is so messed up.

The good news is, starting facebook inspired me to come post a Bad Apple for the first time in way too long.  Apparently, one colossal “use” of cybertime can lead to another.

Steve Gets Fed

“Burp–mmm–yum. Mmm.  Good,” muttered Steve.  A quick jump into the Lucky Creation restaurant had shut my bionic tooth up — for the moment.

“Yum–mmm–foood!  Mmm- Wait!  Where’s it going?  Where’d it go!  Where it go!!!???” Steve demanded.

“I swallowed it.”

“Why’d you DO that?”

“Listen, Steve.  We have to come to some kind of understanding.”

“Food! Food! I want want food!”

“Steve, Do I have your attention?”

“Foo-oood!”

“Steve, I didn’t get a bionic tooth so I can have some whiny six million dollar baby on my hands.”

“Oh.  So why did you get a six million dollar tooth, then?”

“As far as I can tell, Steve, this is a secret government experiment to find out if the Six Million Dollar Tooth program is worthwhile or not.”

“Well, it it? Is it worthwhile?”

“I have no idea, Steve. That’s what we are going to find out. You and me.”

“So what is the govenment secret and why are you part of it and what do you expect from me and does it involve something a little more exciting than this interminable dialogue???”

That’s when I shoved another fork full of Lucky Creation Chow Mein in my mouth and shut that freaken tooth up. Man, does that tooth ever sleep?

Steve, My Bionic Tooth

Well, no sooner had Steve and I left the dentist when we got in the first little bit of a good deal of trouble.   I was waiting to cross the street when a little voice in my head said, “JUMP!”  

I refrained from hopping into the oncoming Hummer’s pretty silver grill, but just barely.  What was going on here?   ”Who the hell just told me to jump,” I asked the contents of my head.

“That was me,” said Steve, my bionic tooth.  ”I just wanted to see how much influence I have on you.”

“Steve,” I said, “Dude, try not to kill me, okay? If I die, they probably will bury you in my mouth.”

“No way,” he said.  “I’m worth six million dollars.  They are not leaving me to rot in your mouth.”

“Listen Steve,” I said, casting about for a better argument. “Maybe you won’t be buried in my mouth, but you are there now, so we should try to get along.”

“Whatever.  Are you always this boring?  I need more action. Can’t you run out in traffic or something?  I like the taste of blood.”

“Oh Steve, this is going to be a long…” and my thoughts trailed off.  A long what?  A long lifetime, that’s what. Steve had been placed in my head for the rest of my days on earth.  My living days on earth, that is.

“JUMP!” he said, as a bus approached.  I considered returning to the dentist that moment, but decided to give it time.  Maybe we just got off on the wrong foot.

What’s Hotter: Molton Lava or Your Car Seats?

In a surprise leap of logic out of the volcano and onto the asphalt, leading scientists recently discovered the hottest place on earth is not buried deep in some obsure sleeping volcano. Instead, earth’s hottest high temperatures were recently found to exist on seat surfaces inside the average parked family automobile.

“The skin searing temperatures reached on even the lightest-colored car seat far exede what we had first assumed,” announced Winslow P. Star, the heatometrist credited with the discovery.  “I mean, it always felt like a cajillion degrees to me and the kids, but you never know anything until a meter reading tells you what you know.”

Star decided to test the temperature on his car seat one day after a long day of volcano temperature testing.  That’s when he made the discovery that molten lava can’t hold a candle to the heat stored in car seats. 

 

The Future is Fondue

It’s 2008, and I’m just going about my weekly round of Get Your Ass to Work Days with my nose down and my spirit out to lunch. Soon I may settle down and start contemplating resolutions, but for now all future plans bubble and burble in the primordial ooze of my unconscious, which I imagine to be the texture and flavor of a dairy-free chocolate fondue. 

2008 is going to be great.  It rhymes, so it must be true.  Bad Apple’s gonna break it out in Oh Eight, bet your bippy.  This is the year we become our own super heroes standing on the shoulders of all the super-freaks who’ve ever busted a move sideways and backwards. 

The way I see it, we’ve all got to get working on our inner fondue game, then throw a party that re-invents melting-pot plate tectonics, testing new combinations of ways to enjoy the many unusual pathways to that elusive but inclusive property we all call “delicious.”

Why in heck did god or darwin give us these incredibly-intricate fondue-makers, anyway??  Why provide such a complicated contraption when a simple double-boiler could have done the job?  We moderns barely browse the surface potentiality of our fondueing faculties.  Even Einstein is said to have only used ten percent or so of his appliance.  

It seems we haven’t even stumbled upon the use for 90 percent of the most complicated mechanism the universe ever spat out, and for all we know, 2008 may be the year we discover it!  So let’s all try to eat well and get enough rest so we’re in a good mood when that happens, what do you say?

My Latest Money-Making Screenplay Idea That Has Yet to Make Money

Now let me turn to an ”elevator speech” example of my unique gift for money-making screenplay ideas that have yet to make money.  Imagine, if you can, a future-fantasy-action meets The Secret Life of Plants thriller, a parallel bio-freaky universe where the future of everything comes down to: 

Terminato and the Last Tomato…

Critics (in my head) call Terminato and the Last Tomato,
“the most suspenseful blog post of the last five minutes–ever!”

Something’s worse than rotten in the remote city-state known as Tomatofornia, and the stink trail leads right to Governor “Terminato,” the region’s tough celebrity governor.  Originally famous for playing Terminato The Deadly Tomato in the phenomenally popular film series, that was before he got into politics.  Now the “Governato” is quietly taking over Tomatofornia’s treasured Public Tomato-torium and seems seed-bent on directing it right into the ground. 

At stake is nothing less than the combined world’s knowledge of tomatoes, including when to use an “e” or not.  Its ruin in a tomato-centric world like Tomatofornia would lead to certain tomatastrophy, with dreadful implications for the Tomato-state and beyond. 

But before Tomatofornia’s last slice turns Gang Green, there’s one last hope.  The adorable and powerless Aliseedison Bowmato trips upon Terminato’s tomato-hater plot, and how he’s using the town’s crack-addicted wood elves and pink lawn flamingos to carry it out.  But how can little old she stop the spread of rotten death stank before the it reaches….

The Last Tomato?

Can Aliseedison take on Terminato’s gang and save the precious seeds for all future generations, or will tomatoes go the way of carrots and apples?  Will the evil celebrity governor make sauce of Tomatofornia’s public treasure?  What in hell is a Public Tomato-torium anyway? All these intrigues and more will unfold before you eyes in what other critics (in my head) call “the freshest take on the whole tomato-film concept blog post in years.”

Tune in soon here, for the first episode of Terminato and the Last Tomato.  In the meantime, if you like Terminato and the Last Tomato, you might enjoy reading about the Cannibal Chickens.

Feeling Paranoid I’m the Only One…

Feelings.  Can’t live with them, can’t smother them into annihilation.  The main problem with these incredibly irrational moods, stupid thoughts and crazy impulses that we group in the “emotions” category is that the damn things are so often spot-on right – in their own knotted-up, backward way, of course.

For example, I’m going to try to think of the most irrational emotion I can think of – paranoia is usually pretty irrational, right? What, am I the only one who occasionally feels like the world is whispering behind my back, plotting to put me in my place, or at minimum, thinking wrongly of me? 

It doesn’t matter that I know I have to “get over it” because the fact is that everyone thinks wrongly about everyone else all the time anyway – that is, when they aren’t entirely wrapped up thinking exclusively about themselves.  Yes, today people are just too bleeding busy and self-absorbed even to talk about you behind your back with any passion.  And when others do decide to spend a nanosecond deciphering your flaws, they rarely do it in any kind of original or scientific fashion.

Anyway, if life has taught me one thing it’s that even on those rare occasions when people do take the time to think qualitatively badly of you, it turns out it isn’t really you they see at all anyway, but themselves all over again. Isn’t that the story these days on the human psyche: that no one knows another, we only see what we look for, all is filtered through self? Like what they say about dreams – that every character is really you – everyone you encounter in the world is really a reflection of that amorphous quagmire called your “self.” 

That’s why it’s really so irrational to be paranoid about what others think of you, because it’s all one big bloody illusion anyway, and why don’t I just get on with living my illusion and letting you live yours?  I don’t know about you, but I really need to work on making my illusion over here a lot more comfortable and less effort to maintain, which I might do better if I spent less time feeling paranoid about other people.

But twisted and tormented as it may be, even an emotion as apparently irrational as paranoia makes perfect, beautiful sense, and really no one would ever want to lose the corner of the human palette, the emotional “color,” if you will, of paranoia.  Sure, it could destroy ya, but like all of these backward human emotions, paranoia has a super-important lesson to impart.  If only you learn to listen, your own personal paranoia can teach you something important, too, like what mine taught me:

There’s really only one person in this world that you can count on to think badly of you in any kind of truthful way.  Only one saboteur is singularly devoted to watching each moment of your systematic demise.  That person, my friend, is your own one and only self,  the only perfect enemy and true foe any of us can expect in this mean, selfish world.

*** 
How about it, got something irrational that needs explaining?  Send Bad Apple your most brain-breaking queries for a final answer on practically any topic.

Celebrity Mayor Meets With Crack-Head Wood Elves

Just to prove even Bad Apples can be burdened with a conscience, I admit that I do, I feel a tiny twinge of something approaching guilt over having put Mayor Sellums in the Celebrity Mayor category in yesterday’s post.  I agree, it’s still early in the game.  It’s only been a year.  Give him a chance, the little twinge tells me.  Things look bad, yes, but he still has a couple more years to really blow it.

After all, at least Outland’s latest Celebrity Mayor is famous for being a politician, but then again, so was the last one and he was the worst of all, even worse than Mayor Willy, another celebrity politician Celebrity Mayor I suffered under, back when I resided over the bay waters in San Franabismal. In fact, now that I think about it, celebrity politicians may prove to be the worst Celebrity Mayors of them all, if you can imagine that’s even possible! 

So naturally it’s so hard to keep an open mind about Mayor Sellums, even though, yes, he had a great run over there in Congress, and even if he practically had to teach them old boys social justice at the ABC level, even if he pretty much shook down South African apartheid with his little finger — let’s remember, this here is the City of Outland we’re talking about now.  This place eats Celebrity Mayors for a midnight toothpick.

The problem is, it’s one thing to take on the seat of national and international power, the good old boys, the White House, etc.  It’s quite another to take on the local gangs, the good old city bureaucrats, the Crack Houses, etc.  

Probably anyone would choose being stroked and seduced by a harem of Satan’s lobbyists over a forced listening-to of local activists trying to save the last transvestite albino Redwood tree and its population of homeless wood elves addicted to hookers and crack.  I mean, who wouldn’t?? 

The fact is, there’s very little in life that a fat check from a cute lobbyist can’t solve or at least make feel a little better.  But almost nothing in life can be done about those crack-addicted wood elves.  Those things be hella nasty!

Well, Mayor Sellums, may the Force be with you as you take on the armies of gnome, leprechauns, pink lawn flamingos, iron maidens, ugly Betty’s, and every other kind of citizen here in the great cheesefood-melt of Outland, California.  Remember, we only expect you to fix everything, and chopping Bad Apple’s job in your first budget really is not something we here call an “auspicious start.”

Oh, for a Cubed Dream Well Lived OR Is It a Lived Cube Well Dreamed?

Lately, I’ve been preoccupied something terrible by my new cubicle in the basement. Princess Bad Apple, you see, was recently “sent to the dungeons” after her last job was sliced and diced in the new celebrity mayor budget. Don’t even get me started on celebrity mayor budgets – that’s a whole, other musical.

Anyway, about the time my latest grip on things started to slide, a new bible crossed my desk and suddenly everything that was fogging up my inner windshield went all crystal clear! The question, I realized now, was not between my eating, paying rent and beating back the ghost on this body age creep OR feeding my anorexic creative soul – the real question, it turned out, was whether to turn my grey windowless cubicle into a miniature working Irish Pub OR transcending the space into a heaven-sent cloud-lined nap-atorium. 

The book, Cube Chic: Take Your Office Space from Drab to Fab actually offered so many different design themes, I found myself at a design deadlock trying to determine my true future cube theme.  Oh, decisions, decisions. 

Well, decision-making has never been the strongman in my skill circus.  In fact one of my favorite modern television characters of all time is Toweley from South Park, a talking towel who gave me the life mantra we share, me and Toweley: “I choose….BOTH!”

That explains why I was pinning a grass skirt to my Tiki Cube file cabinet and astroturfing my Golf Cube bulletin board when I glanced at my NYC King Kong Cube inbox (where I’d chained my Rap Cube rim) and suddenly saw what an awful lot of work I had to catch up upon!!

Apparently while I had been either painting the asbestos floor tiles here with a colorful meditative design, or perhaps while I was brewing ice tea for my Library Cube brandy snifters, someone had dumped even more work on the work I already had been avoiding while I worked on adjusting to my new environment.

Besides the fact that all this work hardly fits into my whole cubicle design scheme as imagined (and of course the book doesn’t say word one what to do about that), yes, other than this, I’m adjusting to my new place in the world as can be expected. I will say, my dungeon-mates are exceptionally good to me down here. They understand me enough to know that when I crawl into my under-desk napitorium box and draw the grass curtain shut that it’s best to just leave me alone.