Time Travel is Way Cooler in a DeLorean

This morning on the bus, the electric banner that scrolls the time and date for the passengers read February 21, 2026. For a minute I thought I might have woken up on the wrong side of the Twilight Zone. Then I realized my bus wasn't flying and my iPod was still a separate entity from my body, so I figured some drunken MBTA worker must have programed the bus this morning. That made me feel a whole lot better.

To get my mind off of drunken bus operators, I was pondering what the year 2026 might be like. I will be 44, which is the worst thing I've ever heard. And that's about all I can really say about the 2-6er (what I think we should call the years by then). So, I decided that if there's anything out there that I think could look into the future 19 years and bring me back a glimpse of the world it would have to be Google. Surely the omnipotent master of the cyber-universe would find me the answers.

Turns out Google is just the pimp and Wikipedia is its bitch. The first page on my Google search was for the Wiki, which already has a page solely for the year 2026. Talk about being on top of your shit. Here's what it tells us about the future (insert Wayne's World sound effects and motions here).

In the year 2026:

• New Year's Day will be on a Thursday. Yesssss! Thursdays rock!
• The Aurora Programme will send a mission to Mars. Really? Mars? That's original. Won't we be living on Mars by then? That's not going to be a very exciting mission.
• The U.S. will celebrate its 250th anniversary as an independent country. Par-tay!! Maybe by then we can clone the fore-fathers and get our groove on. I call dibbsies on John Adams!
• The southern section of the BART will connect the East Bay of California to Silicon Valley. It will make it a much easier commute for the AIs to come kill off the humans every morning. They will be very appreciative and might spare people who look like Will Smith or Tom Cruise.
• According to the TV section of 2026, if we were in an episode of SeaQuest DSV this would happen - "An economic summit takes place that places hundreds of thousands of undeveloped basins back on the market." I have no idea what the means, but if I can have a talking dolphin, I don't really care either.
• And according to Star Trek: Enterprise, World War III will begin in 2026. A date they must have gotten from Ms. Cleo, since all signs point to that shit storm starting much earlier.

Lastly, my favorite event of 2026 will be the actualization of Heinz von Foerster's "Doomsday Equation". In 1960, Foerster published an article in which he divulged a formula for future population growth. "The formula gave 2.7 billion as the 1960 world population and predicted that population growth would become infinite by Friday, November 13, 2026. " Happy Birthday to me! Awww, the end of the world! You shouldn't have!

So in pre-celebration of the apocalypse and my 45th birthday, which I will be spending on Mars with my talking pet dolphin Darwin, an AI ass-kicking Will Smith and my John Adams clone, here is a video of how I think the world will actually end. Enjoy.

A Giant Step Backward for Woman-Kind

And her name is Ms. Dewey.

She is the new interactive search engine from Microsoft that is part of their new Windows Live online service that is trying to compete with Google. She looks like Jessica Alba and acts like Dwight Schrute. So basically she is hot and FUCKING ANNOYING!

When you type something into her search box (I'm brewing a really dirty joke about this right now), she makes comments about the thing you're searching about. Honestly, it is pretty interesting and amazing. For like 5 minutes. Then you start to wonder what else this sleek interface is supposed to do. When you stop searching for stuff she starts to get impatient and will either tap on your monitor screen or start acting like a whore trying to entice you into using her (once again, another dirty joke in the making).

She's the hot librarian you'll never, ever have. And if you did get her, you'd only like her for a day because eventually you'd realize how annoying she is.

The only step-forward this program is making is in its technology. The searching is basically the same, but the interface has got bells, whistles and a bitchy chick with a low cut top. Thank you again computer nerds for:

1) making all your dreams come true, and

2) giving Ms. Dewey the feature that men wish every woman came with and one that I'm just happy this one specifically comes with: a Mute button.

Some Pre-Halloween Creepiness

Every Sunday, I like to go to the Post Secret blog to take a look at the new postcards that have been put up on the page. They are artistically and emotionally interesting, as well as shocking, sad and funny. If you've never been to the site it is worth a look.

Anyway, I went there today and at the end of this week's new card listings there is a postcard that I remembered from the week before that was just a brown piece of wrinkled paper with coordinates on it. Below it, the Post Secret webmaster has now posted an image he got through an email that seems to be a picture of what is at those coordinates (they must have been in the email as well). Posted above it are the coordinates and when you click on the link, it brings you to a Google Maps look up of that coordinate. It shows it to be somewhere near Germantown, Maryland. The closest things to it are farms and parkland. Frank from Post Secret said that he would post more as soon as he knew anything about the pictures.

So I don't know if he's thinking what my twisted brain is thinking, but my initial reaction was "Oh my god, someone buried a body there and sent in the coordinates as their secret!". Maybe being a criminal justice major and watching too much X-Files, CSI and Forensic Files has warped my mind and made me immediately jump to the worst possible conclusions, but did this cross anyone else's mind?

If what I'm thinking is right, we could have the new generation in creepy murderers on our hands. It would also be the most scandelous secret on that site to date. And maybe the worst part about my theory is that it wouldn't surprise me a bit if it were true. People are crazy and people do crazy things. If I've learned anything about life so far, it is not to underestimate the possible loonacy capable of the human race. I know. I've taken abnormal psychology and I ride public transportation every day, plus I've spent time in the south.