| Last week, I googled, “what day of the week is it?”. I then walked into the other room and opened a bottle of champagne- a sort of retirement party for my mind. Its last functioning part has been shutdown. Google now tells me if I need to shower. |
| HOW I GOT TO THIS POINT: a history of my mind, in assorted time lines |
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With google, I no longer even absorb facts. Likewise, my memory –due to years of neglect– has actually atrophied to the point where I am publicly embarrassed when forced to use it- like a man standing on a leg that feel asleep. Last week, I estimated that the Pacific Ocean was ten million miles wide during a trivia game. I’m told (after ten minutes of straight laughter) that the Earth couldn’t fit in our solar system if that were true. I have turned-off my mind entirely with google, the same way lighthouses went dark after sonar was introduced.
How throughly have I refrigerated my mind with google?- I become enraged if some one asks me to cite a fact, from memory- like they are asking me to operate a textile loom, or help them move.
More infuriating are the people who try to slip facts into my mind: “Sean, let me just give you directions to my house” What- no! Don’t try and store that shit over here, man! It’s like asking me to hold on to your couch. Why should I waste space within my mind, on those directions, when google can do it for me? Google will tell me where to turn. Google tells me when I will get there. It even tells me who declined your invitation. My mind has become a summer cottage, used purely to vacation. Everything of importance is stored upstate, at google.
II Do you remember the Y-2K bug? We were worried that if computers went offline, planes would crash, or the electrical grid would fail. Loosing computers –back then– would have been like the entire city going on strike: no infrastructure Now, I couldn’t even tell you my wife’s birthday if computers failed. Hell, I couldn’t even call off work (assuming the phones lines functioned) because my office number is stored on my computer (I couldn’t, from memory, even tell you how many digits are in a phone number any more). I wouldn’t even know what movie to watch without computers. Bill Joy, one of the dozen or so men most responsible for the internet, believes that computers will eventually overtake humans, possibly making our race endangered or even extinct (for those not familiar with the history of computers, this assertion –coming from Joy– would be like Clinton saying the US government will destroy the world in his lifetime, in terms of gravity). Some leading researchers see computers attacking us by 2030, destroying the human race with alarming ease. They are wrong, of course: computers have already attacked. They have sent a small, covert, expeditionary force to lay the groundwork for a full invasion (I believe this is technically described as “lasing targets so they look good on CNN”, if I remember Ed Harris from “The Rock”, correctly). The first wave was imdb, which –in a single swoop– eliminated all free time:
Cell phones were next and prepped us for having computers manage our relationships. I have dozens of good friends who are as equal as dead to me if I loose my cell phone. Hell, I’ve become so numb to computers managing me, I now allow them to suggest friends. Google, however, was their final, ingenious wave (before the war). With google, we now refuse to think. Attacking us today –in 2008– would be easy enough, but imagine how stupid we are going to be after 20 years of google. In two decades, I won’t even be able to name a hobby of mine without a computer reminding me. A computer, at that point, can say “Neural Machine 1528 is your new president- you will be obey“, and I will accept that command like he was telling me to turn left at the next light. We envision a “Maxim Overdrive” moment when computers attack, with everything from blenders to tanks rising against us. In reality, computers will just triple every calculation and we will die from plain crashes, gas explosions, or just eating way too much salt. It will happen within 24 hours, and we won’t ask a single question.
The VLR’s podcast is finally back online after our radio station lost all its servers several weeks ago. Sorry for the delay. We have just begun the process of re-posting all our shows to the podcast so –right now– there are only a few episodes available, but that list will grow each day as we get caught up. Please bookmark the new link, or import it into iTunes, to get each episode as its available; and, more importantly, please share it with your friends if you enjoy the show.
visitorslockerroom.com/?feed=podcast
Updates in drunk political theories:
I saw it coming folks!* Of course, it was easy for me to forecast the “racially tinged“, Republican attacks on Barack Obama because, every day between 2 and 3 PM, I skip work and sleep in the Technology section of the Harold Washington Library. Harold Washington was Chicago’s first black mayor, winning office (by a thread) in the mid 80s. The (terrible) campaign slogan of his white, Republican opponent was, “Before Its Too Late”. That is NOT a joke- in the year of our Lord 1983, Harold Washington had to run against a crazy white man who kept screaming “before its too late!”** So, sensing all of this *, I took the liberty of submitting several campaign slogans to the McCain / Palin ticket last month. Please keep your eye out for:
NOTES: * no self-respecting blogger should be pointing out that he ‘predicted’ Republicans would have a problem with a black president ** Harold Washington’s Republican opponent, Bernard Epton, only lost by 4% of the vote with his ‘before its too late slogan’. To understand how impossibly-close that is: Chicago hasn’t elected a Republican mayor since 1931 and has only had 11 in its 170+ year history… ..by comparison, we have had 14 earthquakes. …Epton’s campaign still stands as the most successful, Republican campaign of all time for mayor of Chicago (in terms of absolute votes) QUESTION TO DISNEY: did The Superbowl Shuffle fix all these racial problems in Chicago? RESPONSE FROM DISNEY:
Multiple sources are reporting that the New England Patriots are “steamed” at NFL MVP Tom Brady for choosing a “family doctor” for a knee surgery, particularly since Brady’s knee is now facing complications.
The Patriots are acting like Brady choose an unqualified, family friend to operate on his super-caliber knee. It turns out, this ‘family doctor’ is “one of the premier orthopedic surgeons in the country, if not the world”. His last surgery before Brady, was on the heavy weight champion of the World.
The Visitors Locker Room, the sports comedy show I co-host, was mentioned in this week’s Chicago Magazine, which had a special on Chicago’s best comedians. CJ Sullivan, who hosts the show with me, was profiled extensively.
VLR’s website is being rebuilt right now, due to problems with our radio station, but it will soon be back online with the full podcast, blogs and audio/video highlights. In the mean time, you can continue to listen to us live between 3-4 PM (CST).
Phonenix, AZ: Joe Stalnaker was saved today when his dog, Buddy, called 911 after Stalnaker collapsed during a seizure (full story). I hear these stories about once a year- some lucky idiot makes it into News of the Weird because “Merlin did exactly what I trained him to do and dialed 911″. I always laugh at the stories because pet-calling 911 is probably like everything else in life, meaning it does not work 90% of the time. Thus, for every one of these successes, there must be ten people who died watching their dog dial the wrong number.
The dumbest I ever felt was after carrying a couch up two flights of stairs, only to learn there was an elevator after meeting my first neighbor. Dying on the kitchen floor while your dog scrambles to find the cordless might be the only experience more disapointing: 
This was just forwarded to me by good friend Dan Telfar, who was also named one of the Chicago’s best standup comedians:
full article: http://www.examiner.com/x-404-Chicago-Comedy-Examiner~y2008m9d29-The-Best-Chicago-Comics
I’m going to try a new blogging routine that focuses on regularly updating the site (at least daily I hope) with shorter pieces. Additionally, some of the posts might be pure opinion rather than comedy, but hopefully this new format will proof to be interesting and, more importantly, hopefully the funny stuff over-balances the other attempts.
I’d be EXTERMELY interested in hearing any feedback –positive or negative– that you have on the blogs and new format.
So, that said, here (”Purple Hearted Poindexters”) is my first stab at this new format:
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