(From Wired Magazine) If you talk to me about the future of technology for five minutes, I’ll mention the word “transparent”. In other words it’ll be all around us and we won’t notice it. Forget those outdated technologies known as computer “screens” and “keyboards”– this invention from those brilliant kids at MIT lets you use any surface as the display and input device. It also reads anything with the right code printed on it, and provides relevant information. For example, the wearer scans a book and gets a relevant review. So, what’s the first application people thought of for this amazing (if overdue) invention? Well I would have said “porn” but for some reason they went with commerce.

Somewhere between childhood and adulthood things went wrong. I thought things would just fall into place. I thought I was “gifted” and I thought it would all come to me as promised. Never thought I would be this fucked up. Never looked at myself and thought I would be this weak. Never thought I would need a “crutch”. Never thought I would need something just to get through a day. Never thought I would need this just to get out of bed in the morning. Never thought I would be addicted to something. Never thought I would be this crazy. Never thought I would need to do this without the structure I imagined in my dreams when I was a child. Never thought I would be able to. Never thought I could manage any of this alone. Never knew I could be so strong.

(It was) dark like night with occasional blue lights. Somewhat festive like a party. A bunch of us, standing in a line. all different characters really, everyone having one defining personality trait, like the seven dwarves. Really we are all me, or I am all of them, although we are apart. We are waiting for something, worried.

Then I fell out out time and space.

I realized the universe has a limited life span, maybe it’s only 15 billion years (or about twice that is what they estimate, right?) and then when I reach the end of time, I get to go back and start from the beginning. infinitely. so, armed with this knowledge, I transcend time and space, and more importantly, my worries about it.

I fall back in to time, in the same place. In the time of my choosing, which is just a little bit in the future. like 50 or 100 years or so ahead of where I dropped out. I am no longer worried, as if a burden has been lifted.

It’s an exciting time because “an alien” is about to visit us (earth people) for the first time. (I know this because I know all of history.) The different characters react appropriately, but I am just a little excited, anticipating its arrival. It arrives, and the shock, the surprise is less than I thought it would be, especially after the first few moments. Which is when I realize that the alien is essentially just like us. although it is has very thin limbs, is somewhat tall, and is a pale blue color, I can see that it takes on essentially the same humanoid form that we people from Earth take on.

I welcome it, we all do. I try to greet it, as though it might even understand a greeting or even the concept of a greeting. I wonder if it will feel threatened by a handshake or even a gentle wave of the hand. I do this, though, and it doesn’t seem bothered by it. We begin the process of communicating, of interacting, of teaching each other.

FUCK MYSPACE. FUCK HIPSTERS. FUCK EXTREMISTS. FUCK CONSERVATIVES WHO CAN’T EVEN EXPLAIN THEIR POSITION WITH A LUCID ARGUMENT. FUCK REACTIONARIES. FUCK CENSORSHIP, STILL. FUCK OPPRESSION. FUCK THE HYPOCRISIES LARGE AND SMALL THAT INUNDATE THIS WORLD. FUCK NOT FOLLOWING THROUGH. FUCK POVERTY. FUCK MATERIALISM. FUCK 99% OF WORLD LEADERS. FUCK IGNORANCE. FUCK LYING FOR PROFIT. FUCK THE POPE. FUCK DUMB PEOPLE WHO HAVE TIME TO DO THIS. FUCK POLITICS. FUCK MARKETING. FUCK JOURNALISM. FUCK THE RICH. FUCK BEING POOR. FUCK PARENTS. FUCK THEIR ANNOYING KIDS. FUCK PEDOPHILES. FUCK DEPENDENCY. FUCK BUZZWORDS. FUCK SELF-RIGHTEOUS PEOPLE POSING AS PEOPLE WHO CARE. FUCK DOGMA. FUCK ORGANIZED RELIGIONS. FUCK A LACK OF SLEEP. FUCK A DUCK. FUCK THE OVERALL LACK OF TRULY FUNNY THINGS LATELY. FUCK THE DISCONNECT. FUCK INDECISION. FUCK THIS CONFUSION. FUCK FUCKING. FUCK ME. Otherwise, I AM TRULY FUCKED.

Pro·spi·cience
n.
[L. prospicientia, fr. prospiciens, p. pr. of prospicere. See Prospect.]
The act of looking forward.

Per·spi·cience
n.
[L. perspicientia, fr. perspiciens, p. p. of perspicere. See Perspective.]
The act of looking sharply. [Obs.] Bailey.

I returned to the same spot daily for three days, or was it once annually for three years? … with a few of my artist-compatriots, to dig up the bones of Marcel Duchamp, who was laying which were lying in a shallow grave made only of dirt, next to the driveway in front of my Grandmother’s house. The first time, I dug him up, displayed the bones properly, and solemnly read a passage from an impressively-bound volume of what I must assume were writings of Mr. Duchamp. I then re-buried him, simply putting the bones back and shoveling the same dirt over them. After the third time, my colleagues seemed rather put out and bored by the whole process, which had sort of a religious overtone, rather than the humor I can only assume Mr. Duchamp had intended when originally requesting this post-mortem procedure. At which point I conceded, “O.K., it’s time to let this go.”

“… So all of these emotions are just basically a mixture of chemicals and electrical impulses? Neurons firing, like circuits turning on and off?”

“Yes …”

“That means we’re all really just robots … but that doesn’t make us any less human.”

Walking through the house, towards the front door. You are with me. We have done this same sequence before. But this time the people following us are closing in, and I don’t want to wait till the correct moment: A deer is pissing on the front walk. It has to finish what it’s doing. (Was it piss, turn around, and die? I can’t remember for sure.) So I open the front door too soon. So we can get away. And I open the front door, and I stop, stunned, terrified, simply by the deer pissing, the unfinished sequence, and the late hour of the dark night. I turn to you and say, “The thing about these simulations is, if they’re not perfect, they don’t work.”

Pied had the Brooklyn Bridge in a small glass box. The box, four feet long by eight inches high by eight inches wide, stood on an ancient metal pedestal in the center of the southeast quadrant of the room. It wasn’t a “model” of the Brooklyn Bridge. It was the entire structure, and a portion of the edges of Manhattan on one end and Brooklyn Heights on the other, and some of the water and air and ice that hovered in and around it. It contained the entire history of the bridge, from the time John Roebling began surveying the East River in 1870 until the destruction of the bridge during the Great!!!AesthetixWarzNow in 2360, when, in the battle of Eh, What For If Not For Nothing?, New York version 3.4 was largely decimated by something resembling the color purple. During this battle, a giant metallic replica of a certain twentieth century cartoon cat effortlessly and un-ironically squashed it with its giant, metallic unpainted robot paw.

Pied had acquired the bridge many centuries later through a certain antiquities collector. Pied was also an “antiquities collector”, although unlike the aforementioned collector, Pied didn’t particularly subscribe to such ego-labels, especially those specific enough to represent such ancient concepts as “businesses” or “careers” or “vocations”. But the aforementioned collector had a penchant, not only for the antiquities themselves, but the antiquated lifestyle and moods and brain patterns that he assumed were typical of a person from this era. Therefore the collector would sit inside his shop, perform monetary transactions for the customers he had animated to walk in, browse, and occasionally buy something, then would close the shop when the hypothetical sun went down, tidy up the store, and then simulate locking up and walking home to a one-room fifth floor walkup downtown.

There was little else in Pied’s room, a dimly lit room with Japanese-style paper walls and an oak-colored parquet floor with a pattern that shifted back and forth slowly to slightly faster, depending on its mood.

Pied stared wistfully at the bridge, a tear forming in the corner of his bottom right eye. Time stopped, and slowly started up again. Pied looked to his left. A small teakwood table materialized out of the floor and lifted up to his waist level. Pied opened the front drawer of the table and pulled out an oddly shaped twin barreled blue pistol, the muzzles of which were precisely fit to both of his mouths. He whimpered, sniffled, and unceremoniously pulled the weapon’s triggers. A thunderous bang, quite showy even for a weapon of this size, rang out, and what was previously Pied’s head, (or heads depending on who you asked) splattered all over the far wall and floor in a delightful and intricate pattern which contained many variations of blue and red.

Moments later the maid walked in, grumbling something about the “big, fat, fucking baby” and began to scrub the floor, having to repeat this process now for the eighth time this week. The Brooklyn Bridge continued it’s endless cycle of creation, existence, and destruction inside the glass box at the other end of the room.

* * *

Suicides never seem to help anymore, thought Pied, as he re-materialized eight hours later in the next room, a room which didn’t have any furniture, or any dimensions per se. The room did have something resembling giant flowers, one of which he laid on as his arms and legs formed. He had decided, already, to have a rubbery skin and a yellow-orange complexion. Death had lost its childhood romance for him. He grew a pair of phalli which then twisted around each other symmetrically like the serpents on Hermes’ caduceus.

copyright (c) 2007 by Atom Piken

From the desk of: Giles Fuquard, Language Usuage Investigator

I have noticed as of late a disturbing trend: the use of the phrase, “Quick Question for you.”

At the office, when a person approaches another person with a query, this oft-heard phrase seems likely to preface it:

“Quick question for you.” [Pause for a response, hopefully.] “Do you know where last week’s data accounting system merger backup files are located?”

First, I take issue with anyone who not only wants information from me, but attempts to limit my answer before I have even assessed the nature of their question. If you indeed wish to consult me for my expertise, you will have the courtesy to listen to my full reply. Otherwise, you must seek elsewhere for your “quick answer”.

Second: By using “Quick Question,” are you hereby implying that you are such a rush that you must abbreviate your question, or is it that you really just do not want to spend much time talking to me? And you are kindly informing me of this aversion to my presence with the polite “fuck you” synonym known as “Quick Question”?

This is a disturbing trend. The linguistic meme that spreads like a plague— until it inundates every corner of the culture, uses up our valuable intellectual resources and then disappears into the netherworld prefabricated nostalgia. It goes back to viral phrases such as “no doubt” … or the dreaded, “not for nothing” (a phrase that is truly “for nothing”.)

more…

I hereby, formally request that upon hearing the phrase “quick question” uttered, all parties should respond appropriately with e.g., “long answer”, “too late, not quick enough!”, or “dumb person” or, simply with a swift but firm smack to the side of the mouth of said inquisitor with a standard office stapler or similar implement.