Still Figurin' Out Who I Think I Am

This one's about the future, art, and television.

What's up everyone? I am, and I haven't done this in a few days so I guess I should...I haven't really been in a mood to be productive lately and I feel like the longer I put off trying to come up with an entry the less likely I'll actually finish one. Let's get started.

All you really need to know about this picture is what's happening in the upper left corner...but before I distract you with that allow me to set the overall scene.

This is the next logical evolutionary step from Google Glass (remember that?  ). Our future will be permeated by computers that pretty much exist right in front of us 24/7, translucent and three-dimensional. We could be waiting at a bus stop, or chillin' in the church lobby, or standing in the burrito line, and a computer will appear in thin air. Maybe it'll be a function of the next iPhone...projection technology. We'll push a mouse or cursor with our eyeballs, and blink or poke at our selections with retina scans and fingerprint verifications and a note from our spiritual guides. Don't laugh motherfuckers...the future is coming harder than you think, and it's gonna be every sci-fi nerd's wet dream.

But at our core, we're still human beings...and our priorities are still the worst in the entire universe. The grand wizards of gadgetry are well aware of this. They know we're a self-absorbed society that cares more about what the Kardashians are (or are not) wearing than any impending global nuclear disaster. We want to know what's trending on Netflix so we can better fit in, and we demand a constant flowing stock ticker so we know exactly how rich we are. The least of our concern happens to be World News, because if it doesn't have our names on it, attached to it, or languishing as a cosigner, it's worthless. Every section of the virtual screen is smudged, but the most wholly informative icon station for knowledge remains virginal like new-fallen snow.

If you think people spend too much time now, in 2015, tethered to their devices...just wait until this reality becomes commonplace. Why bother with the worthless interaction between yourself and a pithy human being when the all-knowing, omnipotent super-mega-internet is a mere wish away? Imagine...a world where all you need to do is twitch your nose and blink like I Dream Of Jeannie   and in seconds an Amazon drone is dropping a new sex toy at your feet in a conspicuous brown smiley box, and no one else knows you ordered it out in the open! Where do I sign up for this condiment my life's sandwich has been missing for so long?

Nope. As I once said while living vicariously through a superhero movie I may not have seen in its entirety (Google it...the internet is a real, awesome thing), "With great power comes great responsibility." And with more cool technologies comes bigger dangers, more threats to personal and national security, and a fuck-all of indecencies we haven't been able to bring ourselves to fathom yet...stuff they dunked women in lakes over; threw rocks at otherwise knowledgeable and saintly men for until they bled out of their skulls; set fire to innocent children to cleanse them in Jesus' name of their demon-colored souls. All of this, in real time and back before the black-and-white era of television temporarily delayed our descent into a cultural madness.

Don't do it. If you see something that looks as if it's directly in front of you, untethered and longing for the touch of your lonely fingertip, you must abstain. You shan't let this new modernism in. You have to remain in control, lest you become the new zombie of the oncoming Technological Ice Age. Only you can prevent yourself from...yourself, or something.

"What is your favorite work of art?"

I'm almost ashamed to say this, but if we're just talking about art museum paintings and whatnot, I don't have a favorite. I've only been to maybe one major art gallery that I can remember, maybe more, I'm not sure, to be honest (and wow, what a crappy sentence that turned out to be...I'm not even gonna try to fix it, it's so bad). I'm just not that interested or fascinated by it, which is fine in my opinion because how many painters who've won their equivalent of the "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"  three times have said to themselves "You know what? Fuck blogging, and fuck bloggers too. They're too smart for their own good and I don't have the patience to try and understand them, even though their meanings are directly in front of my beady li'l precious eyes." All of 'em, I assume.

And what's worse is, as society further deteriorates (and as much as even I'd like to admit it isn't, I'm not blind) and strays from classicism and the raw beauty of <pick your favorite, long begotten time frame>, future generations will have no idea who the Rembrandts and Picassos were. Hell, I couldn't name a contemporary painter or famous artist in that respect without the internet if you offered me a million dollars or free tacos, because that's how much the arts have been minimized by the average population. How sad, really! I would love to say I'm cultured beyond a half-year 9th grade art class (where I did an enlarged drawing of a baseball card that I probably threw out a month later), but I'd obviously be lying. There's just no time in my boring life for it, sorta like some hippie-ish snot with a beret is too busy trying to visualize his hipster-chic girlfriend naked so he can reproduce it in oil paint on a canvas to read my loud opinion of not giving a damn about his hobby. That's how the world works nowadays. That's the artist's cycle of mutual non-admiration. We're not friends. We're not even frenemies. We don't even exist beyond an easel or a notebook.

There will come a day when youths will go on museum field trips, and instead of boring-ass classic paintings of dudes in wigs we were forced to interpret, they'll be studying our stupid internet memes. "On your left are the Rotten E-Cards everyone found hiii-lar-eee-us and posted repeatedly on Facebook...and over here you'll find the famous dogs and cats that were popular in the early 2010's. After lunch we'll look at Bad Luck Brian, that guy from Futurama who's not sure of anything, and the drunken babies who either fell asleep on a pair of giant titties or somehow managed to become mafia heroes and are sick of your shit."

Yup, that's what we have to look forward to, connoisseurs of the finer arts. May as well put all that training scrolling through Facebook to use somehow.

"Have you ever been on TV for anything? If not, how do you think you would do?"

To the best of my knowledge, I have never been intentionally shown on television before (outside of someone's home movie footage, and even then it was probably accidental and unflattering). Check that...one time in high school I went along with some group or club I probably only joined for the purpose of this one moment where we all got on a bus and went downtown to a Buffalo tv station so we could be on their weather broadcast. I don't remember anything else about it, other than it was Channel 7 and there were mostly girls involved. It's more likely I did it because I had a crush on someone else that was going than I actually cared about whatever it was we were trying to promote. My apathy for most things started young.

The closest I came recently to being on tv was last summer. I'd just gotten off a bus- not sure where from, but probably a supermarket- and was trying to get home before the rain when a reporter with a camera accosted approached me. He identified himself as a someone who probably thought he was important over at channel whatever, and if he could ask me a few questions. In a rare moment of public captivity I agreed, and he proceeded to ask me about the SUNY Cortland riot   that happened the previous fall. I was actually out of town when it occurred, so I didn't know much and kinda didn't care, but I basically told the guy I wanted the meddlin' kids to stay off my lawn (I didn't even have a lawn...or a television, or a real opinion on the topic, for that matter). And that evening I stalked the station's website, wondering if I'd be the next "man on the street" celebrity some genius makes YouTube remixes of (like this guy   or this lady  ). Sadly, it wasn't to be.

Why? Because as much as I'd like to think I'm interesting or calm under fire, I'm probably a terrible interview. If I'm not entirely familiar with what you could ask me, I can't necessarily trust how I'm gonna respond in a timely, socially acceptable manner. Even in situations where I might be put on tv, or when a cute girl is cashing me out at CVS and there's an issue with my coupons and while we're sorting that out, she's making small talk with me and all I can think about is how embarrassed I am that I misjudged a coupon and now have to pay a leftover balance of 54 cents between the nickel and quarter I have in my pocket, and put the rest on my debit card, and my golly she's adorable and has a beautiful ass (yes, I'm that guy, and I don't care). Just like I babbled that last sentence...that's how I ramble when I'm put on the spot. If I'm not really sure what to say and don't want "dead air", I might talk until I don't even know what's coming out or if I'm actually still having a conversation...I just sorta drift above it like a soul would for comedic effect in a tv show. "Not good copy", as a producer might say. I imagine my eyeballs also roll toward the back of my head, yet I manage to remain upright and breathing while my mouth is on autopilot. And when it's over and I come to, I wonder what the fuck just happened, while hoping I didn't sound too much like an idiot.

It's not that I'm a bad person to talk to...it's just that my mind is thinking about the next five steps ahead and the exponential amount of things that could happen, and I've already predetermined how the situation in front of me should end, so when it doesn't quite go as planned I turn into a big ol' ball of WTF. I don't know where my improvisational skills went, but somewhere in the last five to ten years I may have inadvertently flushed them and gotten some money back for the empties.

And somehow I still don't consider myself a control freak. It's not that I have to hold serve over everything like it's the main or first step in a process, but I have to feel like I know what's going on and where everything stands in relation to the matter at hand...if that makes sense. I know what I'm trying to say but I don't know if it's coming across the way I want it to.

"Remote control, to change the station
but that won't change your situation."
Lyrics.  

Y'all probably know most of this stuff anyway, and I might've shared similar links with this information before, but maybe it's time for a refresher given that I led myself into some sort of dystopian hell earlier in this entry...here are some tips to help you get the most out of your Google searches  .

Very few of you might know this, but I'm a closet Beverly Hills, 90210   nerd. I got hooked on the reruns years ago when I was the co-manager of a small local electronics store, which had a wall of televisions. The other manager turned it on one day, and I asked him why (expecting him to say something about it being colorful, which was more visually appealing than movies because a lot of movies came across darker for some reason). All he said was, "Dude, the chicks." Anyway, Lifetime is apparently filming a 90210 biopic   (which I'm surprised they hadn't done already, because the world clearly has a serious need for this and I ain't even playin' about it). I really hope they don't screw it up too much, but this is Lifetime we're talkin' 'bout, so I should probably keep a box of tissues handy and expect someone to get kidnapped just in case I ever happen to watch it. (And for what it's worth, I was considered the Brandon of our store, which was just fine with me .)

And finally, maybe like many of you I'm often wondering how I might ever regain the near-girlish figure I once had in my youth (which was a very young youth, or that late-20's period that consisted of one shitty microwave meal a day followed by long nights of intoxication). But I'm too lazy and physically incapable of just exercising like a normal human being, so like so many of my fellow slovenly Americans maybe I wanna be like everyone else says they're being like...which means maybe I should do a cleanse. After all, if everyone says they're doing it, it must work, right? Every decade another fad dieting trend comes along that makes people swear they look and feel better without actually losing any weight or- pshaw!!- even attempting a jumping jack or a sit-up, and I think I might've found something that will actually work for me. It's The Seven-Day Chili Dog Cleanse  , and I found it just in time for National Hot Dog Day (which, amazingly, is a thing...a glorious, smack-the-fat-kid-in-me-awake glorious thing). I can't wait to see the results...hopefully maybe I'll be able to kick this (not one, but have one anyway and not just 'cuz it's the cool thing for men to have right now) dad-bod to the curb once and for all! Hey, I'm gonna be 40 soon, and I may as well try to feel fabulous about it, ya heard? Pass the feta cheese and the horseradish mustard, and don't be stingy with the onions...I gotta purify my mind, body, and soul!

Alright, well, now that I've admitted some fears and deep secrets about myself, it's time I go off alone someplace and have a good cry while wondering exactly what this world has come to. Or not. I'll probably just eat some kind of snack food like it's a meal and then hope I remember to turn the volume all the way down on my tablet and phone before I fall asleep, 'cuz I kinda don't care about a whole lot else today. Peace, the little gnome that's in your dreams, and GOODNIGHT NOW!!