Got your attention didn't I? It was a cheap stunt, which is my favorite category of stunt, as it happens.
Lately I have been thinking about what things will be like in the future. In fact, I am almost always thinking about the future, because I like spaceships and Seven of Nine. On the TV show, Star Trek the Next Generation they introduced this species called the Borg. The Borg have cybernetic implants and kitchen appliance attachments on their arms and gonards, and they are basically half man, half machine, and all ass kicker. The Borg are villainous and they force everyone to be like them, and assimilate other species and cultures into their own collective hive brain.
So I was having a conversation with someone about facebook the other day and I called it faceborg, and then the whole thing came into focus. The Borg force people to join them, become like them, and join the hive brain. But people won't need to be forced, they'll go willingly. Faceborg and the hive brain will be an unqualified success, because most people will do just about anything just so they can fit in. But not me motherfuckers, but I'm unique in this respect.
Right now facebook doesn't require you cut a hole in the carpace of your skull and wire a nanohub into your brain glands. But, you know what they say - the only constant is change. So in 100 years will facebook have been the beginning of people becoming half man, half machine-man? And if so, and if we are more like the Borg in the future, will we have one collective consciousness and cybernetically enhanced bodies?
If so, then how will the people of the future bang? Will we bang slowly at first, getting into a rhythm, and change it up a bit, faster and faster for while, then slow it down, then faster again, and then go on and on banging away right up until our thorium ion / hard on cell diffuses its charge?
Whatever happens, the only thing I hope, is that I live to see it. But I probably won't be alive in 100 years. Movies have taught me that there are only a few routes to immortality, and each comes with a pretty high price. There is becoming a Vampire, becoming a Werewolf, or becoming one of the aliens from the movie StarGate, who apparently were immortal.
The Vampire one is a mixed bag, you have immortality, but you only get to drink blood. I like to drink coffee, soda, and booze, and especially booze. So like all that blood drinking would totally cramp on my cramfoolery. The werewolf one seems alright, except for like the rampage aspect of it of course. And I have kind of a guilty conscience so I would be spending all my money on I'm Sorry cards and Get Well soon cards for all the people I may have mangled. And the Stargate one of course won't work because it was a fictional movie and doesn't exist. Just like the other two options.
So the only way I am going to live to see the future of fucking, is if I can find a way to extend my life within the available non immortality alternatives. So I am going to look into that. But it might not matter anyway, because the fact I have lived this long is mostly luck. I am one of the most unsafe people I know, and one day the total failure of my instincts for self preservation will lead to my untimely farewell from this veil of tears. Allow me to illustrate this phenomena with an example.
Two years ago in the winter I got into a car accident. This was kind of bad news, but thankfully I wasn't hurt, which is what really matters I guess. No one else was hurt either I think. Here's what happened. I was driving along a very busy icy road in the winter, and then all of a sudden the car in front of me surprised me, and several people, by plowing full speed into the back of a row of 3 cars that were at a complete stop in front of him. Then my car slid into the back end of his car, wrecking his bumper and wrecking my bumper, front grill and hood. His car was conveniently almost completely destroyed 1 second earlier. But because I hit him I did get the responsibility of replacing the rear bumper of his wreck. But on the bright side, it was his fault so he got the blame for causing the 4 car crash in front of him. So, yeah, hooray. But nobody was hurt, so it was just a bunch of car damage which nobody really cares about in the big picture.
So why is this interesting? It isn't, except that I was in a car accident about 3 weeks before that one. When I got my car back from the body shop, I smashed it again within a few weeks. But even that isn't really all that interesting. But I'll tell you what was exciting though. After the second accident the car was still half ass drivable, so I drove it home. The front end was pretty messed up, and because the front grill and frame was bent and wrecked, the hood of the car wouldn't latch shut properly, but I still could drive the car, albeit unsafely.
Very unsafely. Because the next day I drove it to a body shop where I got an estimate for the repairs. I had to wait a week to book the car in for repairs, and my insurance would pay for a rental, but I drove my car back home from the shop. As I was driving it back home, I was listening to music, Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah actually, which is a pretty majorly scene band, but is a guilty pleasure of mine.
Driving along I wasn't thinking about something the mechanic said when he looked at the hood and gave me the estimate. What he said was, "Be careful, that hood isn't held down by anything". So as I was driving about 80 km/h across a divided 4 lane bridge, which goes through the nice river valley of my city I also wasn't thinking about something else. I didn't think about something that I always notice in the summer, when I ride my motorcycle, which is something you can't notice in a car. When you drive your motorcycle across a bridge through a river valley, you notice it gets more windy. In a car you can't tell, but on a bike you really notice it.
What the mechanic had said, and the thing I noticed on my own, were two pieces of valuable information that came rushing back to me right around the millisecond that the hood of my car came loose and flew up onto my windshield. This was a bit shocking. The force of it had bent the hood concave, and it was covering the entire front of my windshield. As cars and trucks were zooming along beside, behind, and in front(probably, I couldn't see forward anymore) of me, I let out a little scream.
I also took my foot off the gas while checking in the rear view mirror to make sure that no big truck was about to smash me from behind. I couldn't see the road in front of me of course, because the hood of my car was in the way. I put on my signal light and changed lanes into the curb lane, I put on my hazard lights and rolled to a stop. I didn't like looking out the back window, because I kept seeing trucks or cars coming up at me fast, and they didn't see me or notice that my hazard blinkers were on until they were almost on me. Then they would come screeching to a halt.
So when I looked a little safer I got out of my car and looked at my hood. One of the hinges had snapped when it flipped up, and now the hood was kind of sliding around on the front of the car like an air hockey puck. If I had been any less lucky, when the hood flew up it could have smashed the windshield, and that would have really upped the ante on the risky factor for that little moment.
What did I learn from this event? I am so unsafe! I take insane risks and do super dangerous things without thinking about them.
That doesn't by any stretch mean that I am not still a huge coward. In fact I will do anything to avoid pain, or even minor embarrassment, but I am still super unsafe anyway. Unsafe driving, I stand by my record of injuries, property damage, car write offs, etc. I cause an enormous amount of property damage, usually mine, but I also damage other peoples property in the process. Unsafe sex, is often the only way I do it, but luckily it hasn't caught up with me yet. Unsafe investments, well I don't have many investments opportunities, unless you count playing blackjack, but that is not called an investment in the usual sense of the word, but its as close as I get to investment.
So I think that I don't have any of the necessary qualities and attributes a person would need in order to live long enough to see the distant future. Its a bitter pill for sure, but that's the way it is, and there's pretty much nothing anyone can do about it. Quel dommage.