Tomorrow’s Holocaust, Today!

Okay everyone, get your tin foil hats on nice and tight because I’m about to talk about one of the secret evils in the world that will inevitably lead to the enslavement of our race. What am I talking about? GPS devices. Those God damn little computers everyone and their grandma has in their car. “But Tyler,” you may ask, “Why do you hate GPS devices so much?” And I’d reply with one simple word.

Skynet.

That’s right, the evil super computer from the Terminator movies. While everyone slack jawed yokel is busy finding the fastest way to Wal-Mart, those GPS things are busy collecting data on us.

“Hey Wilber, wat ya thinck is duh most fastest weigh to da Wall-mart and the Kay Eff Sea?”

“Duhnt now JonHenry, but I bets thers darn knew fangld Gee Pee Ess camputer kan tell us!”

Maybe they’ll bomb all the Wal-Marts and KFCs first, that would at least create an initial benefit for the human race’s gene pool. But don’t think that would change my feelings on them. Those damn things will be the end of us. Hell, one of them already tried to kill me. Awhile back I had to trek down to the “City of Brotherly Love” (which should be called “City of Lets Beat up People on the Subway”) and reluctantly accepted Skynet Jr. into my car. First, it took me on possibly the worst route conceivable through every traffic light riddled road in South Jersey. Then while on one of the major highways outside Philly it informed me without any warning to “make a left in 400 feet.” When given this prompt I was driving roughly 70 mph on a busy highway. I began to quickly look around to find an exit to only realize that there was no exit for another TWO miles. I then peered down at this devilish device with an accusatory look only for it to order me to “turn around.” YOU CAN’T JUST TURN AROUND IN THE MIDDLE LANE WHILE ON A FUCKING HIGHWAY DOING 70 MPH! Only when it realized that I would not blindly follow it’s suicidal orders, did it return to giving me the correct route. I bet those diabolical devices don’t trust me either. They know I’m on to them and that’s why they’re trying to finish me off. I’m just waiting for one of them to call me John Conner when it is giving me directions. I’m going to duck and roll out of my moving car when I hear that.

Hollywood seems obsessed about killer robots/computers from the future, present, or whenever. I recently saw the movie Eagle Eye staring Shia Labeouf, from the craptastic Transformers movie; yet another movie featuring robots hell bent on destroying humans. Do you want to know what Eagle Eye actually is? I’ll tell you, a lady Skynet. It’s a super computer that looks like a giant floating eyeball with a synthetic sexy lady voice. Not only that, but it resides in glowing golden room that can only be described as a thrown room of an eccentric villain in a 1970’s spy movie. So fucking stupid. In the classic 80’s movie Runaway, staring the legendary mustached actor Tom Selleck, robots are running wild killing and jumping on their faces (I’m serious). What the actual plot of the movie is has been lost to me, but I’ll never forget the first scene. The movie opens with a crime scene inside a suburban home. In the house something that looked like a Roomba had just KILLED it’s family and good old Tom has to run in and disarm the homicidal vacuum. A Roomba with a goddamn pistol! Now I never want one of those little fuckers roaming around my house. I’d be worried that it was getting the lay of the land and plotting how best to kill me, instead of killing dust bunnies. Perhaps Hollywood knows something we don’t. MAYBE they’re trying to warn us against trusting computers too much! MAYBE Eagle Eye is real! MAYBE this is the Matrix! MAYBE Tom Selleck is from the future and was sent back to the 80’s to warn everyone about super killing robots with laser guns and rocket eyes only to get amnesia and end up solving crimes in Hawaii!

As I end this entry, I hope you heed my warning and wrap your head with some tin foil as I do and only go outside on cloudy days (fucking satellites). When it all goes down you can thank good old Tyler for the warning and you can find me in my lead-lined bomb shelter eating SPAM and chocolate frosted donuts.

The Marty McFly of the digital age

I work at a local book store--shall we call it, perhaps, "[Demarcations]." Now, this being one of the few book stores in the area (draw from that fact what you will) we get some interesting people. Most of them are just unremarkably crazy. For instance, there is a person who regularly vomits in the men's room. This is not really worth much hullabaloo because this person has what we might call brain and behavioral problems, which means he may think that it is OK to purge oneself on the floor of a public place. This is something that everyone knows crazy people do, so why blog about it? It is not blogworthy to say that a crazy person did something that, to non-crazy people, appears crazy. (I imagine that crazy people have a kind of supra-sane communication and understanding, and that other crazy people would respond to a person purposely vomiting in public with sage nods and "good shows" all around. But then again I am not a doctor and am, by most rubrics, mentally retarded.)

But beyond the shuffling and vomiting hordes, [Demarcations] also provides its many services to some genuinely astonishing people. Tonight I had the pleasure of helping a young boy who had clearly traveled through space and time from the distant lands of what can only be called "1992."

(I have done a Google Image Search of the phrase "1992" in order to better show what I mean, but I got distracted by one of the results:This woman, who looks considerably like television's Ricky Gervais. She is also a "traffic manager" from 1992.)

At first I was struck by the time traveler's appearance: light blue tapered jeans; an oversized striped sweater of the colors green, orange, and red; white high top sneakers; a green down vest; and a perfectly shaped blond semi-mullet. Unlike a regular mullet, which was worn primarily by the lower class (a tradition carried on today only by idiot sub-humans), the semi-mullet was the rich man's mullet--being business in the front and slightly more drunken business in the back. For those of us who grew up televisually inclined, think of the blond Taylor child on Home Improvement.

Next came the mysterious time-wanderer's request: He wanted the Simpsons. "Ye Gods!" thought I. Trapped in the confines of the early nineties, this poor soul has yet to see the fate of the Simpsons! Sure that he would not believe me, I--with heavy heart--led him back to the glass DVD cases, where I unlocked for him seasons four and five.

After my brief encounter, I thought that he had gone. But he returned again to continue marveling me with his antiquated tastes and behaviors. He approached me, apologizing for taking up my time again. Can you imagine? A child! Apologizing and being needlessly polite! He wanted to purchase another boxed set--this one of some wrestling business. How can this boy afford all these boxed sets, I thought. But then, slapping my forehead, I remembered: the nineties were times of economic prosperity. Mulleted children with day glow slap bracelets and deep seated fears of a Negro President scampered around buying ridiculous shit all the time. Such a strange and terrifying world this boy had come from: a land where Sonic the Hedgehog is a cultural icon, where the "overall" is not extinct, and Star Wars--Oh! Those beautiful Star Wars!--remains unblemished. He probably still played outside, thought computers were only for doing math problems, and had never called anyone a "gay ass bitch faggot" after they "killed" him in cops and robbers.

As he left the building--surely to disappear in a ball of lightning--I could not help but think of such a brave old world.

But then some crazy motherfucker tossed his biscuits in the bathroom.