In the Year 2027

What will life be like twenty years from now? If there is one thing we know it’s that we can’t predict the future. There is no anti gravity potion. We aren’t planting colonies on other planets. We haven’t exceeded the speed of light. Twenty years ago scientists could talk about the “strings” theory of matter that had recently been mathematically proven with a scientific formula. But what has come of it? I’d like to have as a goal in my life to study sub atomic particles such as leptons, pions, and mesons. Back in the seventies they were constantly discovering new subatomic particles. But what has become of them. I think I’d like to study genetics more completely. I know the genes are in a double helix and that there are four connecting letters between the strands standing for four compounds labeled A T C G - - I think and these four letters appear in different combinations along the two helix strands and that’s how we get our “genetic code”. I kind of think I’d like to study foreign languages. Thomas Jefferson was fluent in French and I think other languages. A lot of the famous men of that era were multi lingual. I’d like to study calculus after watching Nick and Chelsea yesterday. I know very little about calculus. I never took it. Two members of my family have taken probability and statistics. I’d done some “study” on my own and even done computer programming on the subject but I’d like to get into it officially. Someday I’ll probably become a computer chat room junkey, but it hasn’t happened yet. I just don’t have that much confidence in myself. As far as Match.com and all of those- - I guess if it’s in the stars it will happen but at this point I don’t see anything on the horizon.

Thirty years ago Anita Bryant brought up the topic of homosexuality for debate, and we are still debating it. We aren’t sure whether or not we accept it. Eugenics is not yet dead and when it comes to guessing which bad traits will be elected to be bred out, don't speak too soon, for the roulette wheel is still in spin and there's no telling who that it's naming. Twenty years ago we had never elected a Black president or a woman president or a Jewish or Athiest, or for that matter, Gay president. Guess what? We still haven’t. Those adept at scientific trends will say “If something has never happened, it’s unlikely that it’s going to happen tomorrow or any time soon. " Twenty years ago – it was Christmas 1986 Parents made announcements about their Will when they die that I was not pleased with. When I'm old and gray and want to call someone for the latest anti aging therapy- simple, I'll just call my parents. Their deaths could be a long ways off. Twenty years ago we thought Billy Graham was getting to be old. We’re still talking about Billy Graham crusades as the quintessential crusades. They used to say that computer speed would double every year and a half. When this computer came out in 2003 the going speed was about 2.4 gigahertz. Given the projected doubling rates the average computer should be operating at twelve or thirteen gigahertz by now. But it isn’t. Thirty years ago we were talking about improved gas mileage for cars. We’re still “talking” about it. Gas mileage has not improved. People back then talked about high speed bullet trains that would go two hundred miles per hour. We still don’t have them. Back then there was the Concord supersonic jet that had entered commercial use. Guess what? Not only don’t we have a lot more of them even the ones there were are taken out of circulation. Back in early 1987 when Iran-congragate broke and then Oliver North was held as a near hero for stabbing President Reagan in the back and saying “I was only following orders” there dress before congress in his military uniform, we hailed him as a hero. Even at that time it was clear to the perception that Ronald Reagan was already going senile. He had Nancy make all the important decisions for him such as schedule a press conference when the stars were auspitious. Of course now we have a one govt. branch dictatorship so it doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks. That’s how far we’ve progressed. I don’t think the US congress has the balls to tell the President that we are not a fascist military state. Back then I looked at the lives of other Born Again Christians. They all seemed to be prospering and mine was not. It’s still that way. The “Faith of our Fathers” is still pretty much alive and well, and there are still an awful lot of Red states out there.

So what will life be like in the year 2027? You know something? The way things have changed were not the ways people would have predicted they’d change. Of course our phones are vastly different now and our kids are tethered to their parents by cell phones and survailed in their driving by the latest spy equipment. We are much more afraid now in general. George Bush gets an A plus at fostering a climate of fear. I find that the way things the most quickly are the immediate people we surround ourselves with in our personal lives. I know it’s that way with me. Look at the vast turnover of people in this place in just the five & a half years I have lived here. You could almost guess which year it was at my old apartment by looking at a roster of the residents. The idea of a twenty year relation in a neighborhood or a job or a marriage seems pretty far fetched to me at this point. Of course in soap land they can do anything. They brought back Frankie and Jennifer and Jack and Austin and Carrie and Patch and Kayla and Benji. All from twenty years ago. I wonder if they’re going to bring them all back again twenty years from now. Eileen that therapist said something I guess she thought would be encouraging to me but was anything but. She said “When you’re seventy you just might get into a discussion group that you really find fulfilling and stimulating”. If that’s all I have to look forward to I just better off myself right now. There are possible good things. Medical discoveries are being made all the time. Perhaps I could get my eyes rewired to see with superior vision to even a normal person now. I have a feeling this “Baby Boom generation” is going out the way they came in, as a real pain in the ass to all concerned. They will probably be headlined as “The generation that refuses to die” as government goes bankrupt trying to support them. And the thing is 75 is not all that old now. Even then our generation won’t be close to the end of our lives. We’ll probably live to be a hundred. What will we be able to say in the year 2027? Will we have had our first woman president or Black president? Will the Catholic Pope in that era be talking about the same tired topics they’re talking about today? What will the music be like then? Will be still be listening to “Satisfaction” as I am right now on KRTH at 4:02 in the afternoon? Is Leo Le Port right. Will all our playback and storage devices of today we just invented be laughingly out of date in the year 2027? My guess is that our generation won’t regard 75 is all that old and will still be quite active. Back when I was a kid 75 was pretty much considered having one foot in the grave already. Will we solve our medical crisis? Will be solve this whole Al Qaida crisis that seems so important to us right now? One thing we know is that in politics things that seem important right now seem to fade away in time. But no matter what we’ll have the same two crusty democratic and republican parties and traditions in congress will probably be virtually identical to what they are today and all this talk about “reform” will be barely a blip in the radar screen twenty years from now. And we know this about tomorrow. It won’t feel like “The future”. In fact were you to take a camera there there would be just as much squallar and poverty and pot holes in the road and pealing paint as there is today. Nobody will be “flying around” then either, as John and Yoco talked about in their 1969 Christmas Message. It will be pretty much the same old same old it has always been.

Epilog: Just between you and me and the grand piano I'm predicting Vice President Dick Chaney will be impeached by congress. This snowball still has a lot more downhill course to roll. In Berok Obama's words I am daring to Hope. When the stars are auspitious one should act. Other quales still remain to be flushed from the bush. All the rates have not yet emerged from their hiding place upon news of the sinking ship. The fuse to the dynamite has not yet been quenched. Karma is less a hurricane than it is an earthquake- - and a resulting Tidal Wave.

And behold the New Messiah stood on the grassy mount and opened his mouth and told this parable against certain asshole Born Again pastors he’d known in his youth. “once there was a town where there were but two barber shops. One shop was emaculately neat with every bottle of hair spray lined up perfectly and not a speck of loose hair on the floor. That barber had an emaculate haircut. The other barber shop was in constant disarray and there was hair and dust and dirt on the floor and that barber looked as if his hair had been cut by a pair of hedge clippers. Now which one would you go to?” “Yes you in the front row. Your name please.” “Bart Simpson. I’d go to the barber with the messy shop”. “Why?” “Well- - - who do you think gave that barber his emaculately neat haircut?” “Thou hast spoken wisely my son”