tellhimfred.com

We’re in the home stretch, Fredders. February. The last real harsh month of winter, and spring is actually a dot on the horizon at this point.  I know I’m freakin’ stoked. This ice storm crap is for the bir…well, no…maybe it’s for the walruses. Or perhaps the elephant seals. Yeah. This ice storm crap is for the elephant seals.

Anyway, February is the shortest month, which means we have the best chance of hitting every day in NaBloPoMo (a word I pronounce the same way I pronounce “Blagojevich” - as a sort of surprise-vomit sound) and thus proving that we’re not lazy bitches, but dedicated writers who live to entertain their reader(s).

This month’s theme is “WANT”, and as soon as I say that, my selfish ass starts thinking of flat-screen tvs, self-replenishing mini-bars, and that beer-hucking robot fridge. But you know what I want more than anything? What I’ve wanted since I was old enough to read the ads in the back of Boys’ Life magazine and watch the Jetsons?

The future.

That’s right. I want my flying car. I want my robot butler. I want my sub-orbital residence on a geosynchronous flight path over Fiji. I want malls with clinics where I can have my eye replaced with a series of cool optics. I want to be able to plug my computer into a slot on my wrist.

The future has been a commodity promised to us since, like the 50s. Back then we were thinking in terms of disc-shaped spacecraft and jerky metal dudes with monotone voices. Isaac Asimov helped us refine that vision, and start us down the inevitable path of ROBOT SEX. Who doesn’t want some hot, positronic lovin’?

Household atomics. There’s something else we were promised, which they have not delivered on. We don’t need the energy grid anymore. Forget high-tension powerlines and kids getting weird tumors.  Every household appliance should be powered by cheap, plentiful atomic energy cells. Or cold-fusion generators. Or zero-emission solar collectors. Or any one of a HUNDRED DIFFERENT sources other than our outdated distribution grid of generators and wires.

The future is sitting in vaults somewhere. It’s in the neglected R&D departments of companies that have no interest in cheap renewable energy sources. It’s in the think tanks full of supra-geniuses who get paid to sit on revolutionary ideas instead of releasing them.

Hell, Keanu Reeves can build a cold fusion device. Why can’t we do any better?

See you in February, Fredders.