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how the future turned out
Thursday, June 13 2002Decades ago, when I thought about years with numbers such as 2002, my mind's eye filled with cliché images of personal jet packs and hovering '57 Chevrolets, not video rental stores and massive personal MP3 collections. One thing I predicted correctly (with the help of books like Logan's Run) was living under conditions more oppressive than to those with which I was familiar. But I could never have predicted the series of events leading to the loss of American freedoms. I never imagined that the setup for the 21st Century would be a surrealistically-tied American Presidential election followed by an equally-surreal low-tech/high-casualty terrorist attack on New York (where I'd be living at the time). It's unsettling for our democracy that such a tight Presidential election actually drove the resulting administration away from the political center and deep into the brambles of its rightmost fringe. And it's unsettling for history that it has been allowed to do this almost entirely unchecked, partly because of widespread media-facilitated political apathy and partly because of an unexpected political windfall, the terrorist attack on America. Even in our Apathocracy, Enron and the dark machinations of Cheney's Energy Kremlin would be big news were it not for the cover afforded by the War on Terrorism. Still, it's turning out for the administration that, along with the political opportunity, there are aspects of liability in that ceaseless war.
One such liability came to light a month or so ago with revelations that, essentially, the administration's incompetence played as much of a role in the events of September 11th as Muhammad Atta himself did. Indeed, some families of September 11th victims had planned to come to Washington and demand hearings into the administration's pre-attack intelligence handling when suddenly John Ashcroft pulled Jose Padilla, a purported "Radiological Dirty Bomber," white-rabbit style out of the black hat of secret (yes, secret) confinement. But now it turns out that Padilla, who has a long history of bungled crimes and stints in prison, had merely been in the "planning stages" (whatever that is) of his purported future bombing. The more evidence that comes to light about this guy, the more it seems he's a conveniently unsympathetic straw man, yet another invention for the media to distract us from asking the questions that matter. Unfortunately for Padilla, it doesn't much matter that he's a real human being and an American citizen as well; he's already been summarily convicted in the court of public opinion and, in complete violation of his constitutional rights, is being denied even the most meager trappings of due process, all on the word of a demonstrably duplicitous administration. He constitutes yet another milepost on the road to the great American theological police state envisioned by the meat-faced John Ashcroft. I wouldn't put anything past that guy. If you think that only unsavory career criminals can be conveniently remarketed as "Dirty Bombers," think again. The phrase "planning stages" could mean just about anything, including a passing thought or a drunken musing. The next knock at the door might be for you. Count yourself lucky if your secret confinement doesn't last a lifetime.Let us go back, for a moment, to the topic of how people imagined the future would be back a few decades ago. I'm reminded of this topic every day when I go into the bathroom to brush my teeth. In our bathroom, you see, there is a toothbrush holder mounted for the ages to the wall. It's just as strong and sturdy as it was the day it was installed, but time has nonetheless been unkind and it's not nearly as useful as it once was. It contains holes for five toothbrushes arranged in a semi-circle around a stylized abalone shell design. Each of these holes is an oval with dimensions of 5/8ths by 3/8ths inches. These holes were more than big enough to accommodate the handles of the toothbrushes that existed back in the 1970s. But times have changed and people these days brush their teeth with stylistic, hyper-designed toothbrushes with lines and colors borrowed from the recreational aquatic vehicle industry. Gretchen buys us both Oral-B toothbrushes, and there's no hope of their handles fitting through those tiny holes. It's important to note, though, that the toothbrush holder isn't entirely useless even if its holes are. We do our best to have it serve its intended purpose and now it acts as a shelf for reclining toothbrushes. An attentive student of the present will recognize that it is comprised of layers of artifacts from all preceding eras, with people doing their best to get mismatched things to somehow function together harmoniously.Yesterday had been oppressively hot, but today it was suddenly sweater & jacket weather. Today Gretchen had begun a part-time gig as a copy editor at a major media company in Times Square. When she'd left for work this morning, she hadn't counted on the chill, so when I met her today after she got off work at the dog run in Union Square, I brought along a light jacket for her.
Gretchen told me that her new workplace continues to have all the trappings of a dotcom left over like a living fossil from the Golden Age of the New Economy Bubble. It had the laid-back office environment, the kitchen stocked with free goodies, and the usual technocopia of computers and bandwidth. Since it is but a small part of a much larger cable television network, it doesn't suffer from continuous waves of layoffs and quasi-suicidal employee morale. Best of all, it has a position available for a full-time web developer. Just the thought of possibly having a job again has me very excited. I miss the good old days of subway rides, morning coffee & bagels, water cooler gossip, interruption-free cubicle-based privacy, occasional after-hours Dionysian rites, and (best of all) nice fat paychecks. Though I know I complained a lot back when I lived it, my memories of dotcom life are almost entirely positive.
We had dinner at Chat & Chew, the deliberately-tacky diner-type-place near Union Square. Though her health is almost completely restored, Gretchen's appetite flagged not long into her dinner. Nonetheless, she stopped about two-thirds of the way through her veggie burger to save room for a big black wedge of unrelenting brownness called "Coca Cola Chocolate Cake."
After dinner, I was feeling kind of drunk from having had two Mary Tyler Moore bloody marys, and this made a romp through the Union Square Toys R Us that much more exciting. I actually rode up and down the aisles on a tiny bicycle equipped with training wheels, that's how crazy things got. We emerged from Toys R Us carrying the code-breaking game Mastermind. [REDACTED]
It's possible that playing Mastermind constitutes a felony under the DMCA, but that wasn't what kept us from playing it tonight in the Belmont Lounge. Instead it was the oppressive darkness of the place. The Belmont Lounge might be a good place for ugly people to find dates, but it's not the sort of place you go to play a game which requires the ability to distinguish between colors. As I drank my beer and Gretchen sipped her ginger ale, a large herd of nubile young women came in. Someone had brought a hoola-hoop, which several of the young women test drove. One chick even climbed up on the bar Coyote-Ugly-stylee to give it a whirl. Meanwhile the stereo played an entire CD by the band Southern Culture on the Skids. [REDACTED]
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