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Nine
Pins
for release 03-04-05
Washington D.C.
If
Rip Van Winkle had stretched out for his twenty-year snooze in 1985
he would just now be rubbing the sleep from his eyes. What a new world
he would see. He would barely know about unleaded gasoline and I'm
sure he would be surprised to note that it costs upwards of two dollars
a gallon. He would still think that OJ Simpson was famous for playing
football and that Jesse Ventura was a wrestler and Arnold was a movie
star.
In 1985 there was still a Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union was The
Evil Empire. Apartheid reigned in South Africa. We still have an Evil
Empire but the bad guys have changed. We don't fight wars against
countries anymore, but against ideologies and religions and solo villains
and secret intangible organizations.
In 1985 almost nobody had heard of AIDS until Rock Hudson died of
it. Now oldRip wakes up to a world where 25 million have died of the
disease and 50 million more are infected with the virus, while in
the mean time the drug companies are devoting their attention to Viagra,
Cialis and Levitra. No, Rip, those aren't James Brown's back-up singers.
Somebody tell him what erectile dysfunction is and why it's more important
to fight than AIDS.
Rip would be startled to find that since the War on Drugs didn't work
out so well, the government has declared a new and equally absurd
War on Terror. Let's hope that the terror war doesn't do the same
thing for terrorists that the drug war did for drugs. The cocaine
is cheaper now and the pot is stronger.
Since 1985 cellular phones have gone from brick-sized lumps that needed
a briefcase sized battery, to something smaller than the size of a
pack of cigarettes. You know, cigarettes, those things that used to
cost a dollar and and now cost eight bucks a pack? Old Rip might as
well save his money anyway because now he can't smoke in any tavern
in NYC.
In 1985 Apple had just introduced the Macintosh, which was the first
personal computer with a mouse and a graphic user interface. Now almost
every office is populated by PC's and computers in general have gone
from odd and novel toys that you wondered, What is this thing good
for but playing solitaire?, to an appliance as ubiquitous as a television
or a telephone that millions of people use every day in thousands
of different ways in their lives and livelihoods. In a blink of the
historical eye, we have gone from not knowing what to do with these
machines to not knowing what we would do without them.
Rip wouldn't have a clue what an iPod was, or a Palm Pilot or a Powerbook.
When he went to sleep AOL hadn't been invented and the internet was
just something a few scientists and geeks knew about. Now, you are
nobody in this world unless you have a www in front of your name.
Someone will have to take Rip by the hand and explain to him what
a web site is.
In fact someone would have to explain a lot of things to him, things
like Chernobyl, Iran-Contra and The Human Genome Project. He might
ask what Nintendo was or why the World Trade Center was no longer
there, or why it takes two hours to board an airplane. But there is
an upside. Rip can now take upskirt shots with his new mini cellphone/camera
that plays MP3s and shows television and hooks to the internet wirelessly
and also makes a fine vibrating dildo. (ladies, you know how this
works, you set your cell on vibrate and slip it into your jeans and
then call yourself from a pay phone.)
The Poet's Eye can barely focus on our changing world because it moves
so fast. The Poet's Ear hears them playing nine-pins on his iPod.
It sounds like the thunder of change and technology. I think I'll
take a nap. Wake me in about twenty.
God
knows, exclaimed he, at his wits end; Im
not myselfIm somebody elsethats me yondernothats
somebody else, got into my shoesI was myself last night, but
I fell asleep on the mountain, and theyve changed my gun,
and everythings changed, and Im changed, and I cant
tell whats my name, or who I am!-- from Rip Van Winkle
by Washington Irving.
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