Odometer Rollover

Wait, what?! 2023, did you say? I hope I didn't write the year wrong in the date at the top of the post! You know, because nobody writes checks anymore...

That's actually not entirely accurate, I do still write two to three checks per month, by hand, on one of those little paper slips issued by a bank. It's antiquated and twee, but the lady who cleans my house on a biweekly basis is a little bit older than me and doesn't fuck with Venmo or Paypal or any of its cousins. I haven't had the temerity to ask her if her reticence is based in security concerns or luddite-ism or maybe she just has some really good friends at the scrappy little multinational financial services institution she is bonded to and is just trying to make sure they have something to keep them busy. Like the same way I insist on going to the Starbucks down the street, bypassing one or two locally owned mom-and-pop coffee places because my son works there. I guess I'd feel more conflicted about it if I actually liked coffee.

The point is that we have, all of us,* made it into 2023, a year well beyond the farthest imaginings of science fiction writers of my youth, but which still somehow looks largely indistinguishable from 1980. Sure the cars are a bit more streamlined and we're all being voluntarily tracked by satellite-connected microwave-radiation-transmitting computers we carry around right next to our reproductive organs,** but the cars are still all gravity-bound and the only real robots or jetpacks that exist on any level are being used exclusively to deliver military payloads to more and more specific targets. Hell, even dolphin shorts are starting to make a comeback. We're about two years away from men with feathered hair and weirdly unimpressive mustaches. The only saving grace is maybe we'll get another explosion of super dorky pop music once all those people who bought guitars during the pandemic figure out a four-chord progression. But I don't think any of them are making sourdough anymore these days either, so I'm not holding my breath.

If my last post was about looking back, this first-of-the-year post should likely be, for thematic resolution, about looking forward. As I pointed out last week, I'm on an extended holiday leave, at home not bothering anyone except the cat, so I've had time to think about this. Pondering 2023, considering where we've been, more than half way through my 49th year, my best conclusion has to be: like, who fucking even knows, man?

Right now we've only had five days to settle in and already we're stuck looking at shit that hasn't happened in a hundred years as our House of Representatives turns briefly into the British House of Commons. Is it entertaining to watch the presumptive speaker concede and concede and concede on literally every point of ransom 20 right-wing dipshits are demanding, only to have to eat shit every single time it comes up for yet another vote? You're a liar if you said "no." But after the last six or seven years, this is about the best we can expect: mild bemusement in the occasional burst of schadenfreude, congealing eventually into cold terror when we realize that the things that are passingly funny are all occurring in places and in ways that have serious real-world consequences for people in this country and around the world.

The joke is an ever-present one and it is always, always on us. For those among us old enough to remember the period after the fall of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc was supposed to be "the end of history," here we are now, basically since 9/11, where every fucking day is Real Living History. The consequences are always disaster and the cost is always everything.

Wow. That came out way darker than what I was intending when I sat down to write today. And this is me relaxed and in a fairly decent (you can read that as "adequately caffeinated" if you want) frame of mind after two weeks on leave. In light of this, I think my safest prediction for 2023: maybe this is the year I finally consider a mood stabilizer. 

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*Unless you are reading this and you are dead, in which case, please speak up and I will send condolences to your family.

**I just mean in our pockets, don't make it weird. It's not like I've gotten some kind of custom thong/sling made to transport my iPhone right up against my undercarriage. At least not until I find exactly the right etsy page.