The 21st Century: Topsy-Turvy

During the beginning of the 20th century, a little mobster-in-training who just arrived here from a distant land while waiting at Ellis Island might’ve tried to imagine what the then future (21st century would be like). He would’ve thought along the lines of Uzi’s, flying cars and housekeeping robots. Although the Uzi part has come true, the future is for from what the Jetsons make it out to be.

In the beginning of the 20th century, I’m sure that one would’ve imagined that a cure to rid mankind of all dreadful diseases would be found. Although many remarkable cures have been made in the fields of Medicine and health care, other ailments still run rampant. Where ever I turn, I see Schizophrenics. It is an epidemic. Wherever I turn, people are holding their heads and talking to an invisible partner. Is it the UV rays? The roaches found in the food of neighborhood restaurants? Whatever it is, it’s known as Cellular Phonopsychosis and the only known cure is to slowly stop talking. Withdrawal symptoms include: holding your hand on the side of your head while talking, the inability to find people within the crowd because of the lack of ability to use your Nextel, Sprint, Nokia or Cingular homing device. The inability to find a suitable mate may also stem from this treatment. This is due to the subsequent confiscation of the evolutionary organ that causes the distinct sound of the male mating cry to be heard by suitable mates. Ironically this organ is artificially produced by Nextel, Sprint, Nokia, Cingular and other mate-finding appliance makers.

Man has become lazy since the turn of the century; he has substituted quality with compact and cheap oriental technology. People have become spoiled with all the money they have, they say who needs pen and notebook when I can have a digital palm held typewriter. Anyway, the ghost of the Egyptian guy who invented papyrus (the forerunner of not-so-modern paper) is getting his laugh of these non-paper worshippers. Just one slip, misstep or fall and all your terms notes go the way of Alchemy and the Horse and Buggy. If you heathens return to the proper method of writing then you can all but burn your notes and no evil curse of the future can erase it.

As the old Millennium and finally the 20th century progressed, mankind believed it had dumped it’s barbaric self back in Yugoslavia (last major war of the 20th century). In fact we believed that we could advance humankind by developing cloning. How wrong were we? When we want to copy things now we burn them! Now as Jan hus, the late Joan of Ark (Noah’s wife?) and most cattle can attest, being burnt as a steak is hardly humane. Why Nero B. ROM is no better than his musician, ancestor, emperor Nero of Rome. He fiddled while Rome was copying, er burning. Now you know why you shouldn’t play with fire.

Throughout the late 19th and throughout the 20th century liberal Western civilization tried to curb warfare and enhance the quality of human life on this planet. At the end of World War I, President Wilson tried to end all wars and make the world safe for democracy by establishing fourteen points for peace. I don’t know what Wilson was thinking, but the other victors must have thought that he meant the fourteen points as a punishment. The other victorious allies decided to impale the Krauts on these fourteen points, ouch!! After another bloody war, they realized that impalement on fourteen points was not a good way to end all wars and make the world safe for democracy. President Truman’s secretary of state, George Marshall, decided to help rebuild the losing countries and thus end all the hostility. We then did just that with raving success and we even put our backsides out, protecting the Germans from the then powerful Reds. Luckily the hand never came down at least not in that way, and we managed to survive a long and frigid war thanks to all the rice and Agent Orange Juice supplied to us from Vietnam.

And so as the Iron Mehitza came down and the caves in Afghanistan went up, we thought that mankind might survive without annihilating itself. However, a spaceship from another planet landed and out stepped the Abominable Sandmen: “Uncle Sam’s evil international clone” Osama Ben Laden and Bush family arch-nemesis Saddam “who let the dogs er my boys out” Hussein. We thought we left the crusades in Acre, the last time we left, how wrong we are as usual. Welcome to the world of Anthrax, rat-poison soaked nails and color coded warning signals. Hmm, I wonder what colors the hippies would’ve thought of. This is the Crusades part two – “the war to end all wars, the war to make the world free of Abominable Sandmen”.

So as you sit in your sealed room waiting for the all clear siren, try to think about how to make the 22nd century a success. If you don’t care, try to think about the mobster-in-training’s great-great-grandson in fallout filled New York. Or you can look at it this way, if the streets can’t be made of gold; glowing green is also a cool color. After all, the future is solely in the cell phones, palm pilots and other so-called time saving devices that of the billionaire Jewish directors and producers who make the future on the silver screen.