In the Year 2000...

Michele finds an article (ostensibly) from 1961 telling you what life will be like in 2000 AD.

The family car will be soundless, vibrationless and self-propelled thermostatically. The engine will be smaller than a typewriter. Cars will travel overland on an 18 inch air cushion.

[Michele snarks:] See, this is where they always got me. 18 inches, 18 miles, whatever. A flying car is a flying car and these fearless predictions of autos that hovered above the ground have amounted to a thirty year foreplay session with no orgasm in sight.

Yeah, this is what bugs the stuffings out of me, too. I never cared about domed cities, or about lunar colonies, or even about robots so much. Yeah, as a kid, it's always cool to imagine your parents getting you robot who becomes your best friend and beats the shit out of your enemies, but realistically, some of your your enemies are probably richer than you and will have better robots.

So, practically speaking, your best-friend robot would probably be a K-Mart special that the other kids laugh at, with his unfashionably crude bubble-plastic sensor dome and clumsy three-fingered manipulation claws. Meanwhile, Johnny Parkerson has the new state-of-the-art Toshiba Ultrabot which can mix margaritas in his chest-cavity and do all of his history-project diaoramas for him.

I was always about the flyin' cars. Always, always, always.

I think it's time to give up the dream. We will not have flyin' cars in our lifetimes. We'll just have to content ourselves with almost unlimited access to free, dirtier porn.

Now, I don't mind the free, dirtier on-demand porn. But honestly, I would give it all up for a flyin' car.

At least for a month.

posted by Ace at 01:35 PM

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