Saturday, March 25, 2017

preparedness

Considering the compelling problem of the fate of your facebook account after death, I suggest these options based on how you die and your disposal arrangements:

Ordinary death and standard burial: Considering your body remains intact and is shunted away underground, a camera can be installed to monitor your progress and post (mortem) regular updates to your still living “friends” who will likely make an annual Haloween ritual of it. This sort of thing would have been all the rage with goofballs like Beethoven and Tchaikovsky.

Premature burial: you can be planted with wi-fi that you may alert your “friends” to the situation and hope they haven't already become unfriends.

Egyptian: Burial with computer. This will present a seamless transition into the afterlife. Unfortunately you will not be able to update your living “friends” about your trip. Or will you?

If you lose the car industry lottery and are chosen for ritual highway mutilation, you may wish just one photo posted daily with your parts arranged “just so”, by a friend with a really strong stomach or great sense of humor subtitled “How do you like me now?” Or “Check this out.”

Facebook is perhaps the most powerful argument against cremation. I mean, like who cares? That could be anybody. Probably is. It is safe to say that little urn of ashes is not going to hold anybody's attention very long. “I can't keep doing this,” your friends will be saying after a couple days. “I know. Nothing ever happens.” And tragically “Why did she have to die? This is so boring.” If you get them spread out somewhere, the technology isn't there yet to keep up with that.

Cryogenic: “Really? That's all you've got? Hello. Get over yourself.” When and if they remember to bring you back, facebook may not exist, making that a total waste of good refrigerant.

If you had been presenting a facebook charade about your life, forget continuing that. In the end dead is dead and nobody is going to envy you.

Any way you look at it, facebook has added another layer of tedium to dying. Maybe the thickest layer yet.

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Man claims many distinctions from the beasts, chief among these the ability to read.  Without it he could not have advanced to where he is today.

Damn reading.

...from Bass Fishing in Outer Space

Tuesday, March 07, 2017

Good times is a comin'

“Ya know,” Ben Carson's great x 15 grandaddy says to his pals in their steerage berth on the way over, after a friendly game of checkers, “I used to wield a knife purty good. Skinnin out a zebra, pokin a bug, even carvin some monkey's brain out and eatin it if I was a mind. When we gets to this here land uv milk and money we's a headin to, I hopes some day about (he scratches the top of his head) say four hunnerd years fum now that my great x 15 grandson can make a livin wif a knife too. And run for president. What a great land we're a goin to where just four hunnerd years fum now of sex wif the white man, give or take a few, some genetically diluted offspring uv mine will once again be as free as I was a couple hours ago. Praise the Lord.”
“Amen.”

on modern times

“It's not that there is more stupidity in the world. It just has more intrusive ways of presenting itself. Time was, you could be near an idiot without knowing it. With today's advances, that's less likely.”

...Paradise Interrupted 

Thursday, March 02, 2017

On the Utility of Optimism

“Optimism is a deadly vice of gigantic proportions lodged into the human psyche by Satan. It is the enemy of reality. We see a bad situation and optimism prevents us from extrapolating that. Instead we think, "Oh, it's bound to get better." So we plunge into the thicket, sure that it will thin, denied the aerial view that would show us the true, unacceptable horror of our lot. Perhaps optimism is good for prison escapees, who have no choice but to plod on. The rest of us are not well served. It poisons our judgment.”

... from Paradise Interrupted