Wake Us Up When It's Awesome

We Need Sleep

We’re in the middle of spring semester, and our procrastination is killing us. We’ve got piles of papers to grade, submissions to sort through, and some stories to edit and send away.

Our lives are the equivalent of Rip Van Winkle’s farm: weedy and barren. We want to carry our guns out into the Catskills. We want to sip gin from the Dutchman’s flagon and toss nine pens with the personages.

But, alas, there are things to do. 

Dam Van Winkle was a henpecker, and Rip Van Winkle was loved by all — not including the Dam. Rip was a silly, lazy lout who got to roam the town playing with children and tending to his dog, Wolf. He had things he was supposed to do, sure, but he put all that aside to hunt and hob-gobble.

We have tread his track. We’ve let our chores grow burgeoned by neglect. We are envious of Rip Van Winkle. We wish heartily for his easy outcome.

Rip squirreled off into the mountains, got drunk, watched some old-school bowling, and then fell asleep for twenty years. When he woke up his worries were forgotten. His wife had died, and his daughter had married-up a meal ticket. He spent the rest of his days frolicking. He’s a lucky son of a bitch.

So, we got to thinking. What would the world be like twenty years from today?

Luckily, our good friend Wikipedia had the answer for us.

Here are some  future highlights, as told by the collaborative encyclopedia:

The European Space Agency hopes to land humans on Mars between 2030 and 2035.

April 6, 2030: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which will have over 50 million members by then, will be celebrating its Bicentennial with dances and balls and other festivities.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency will construct a manned lunar base.

All New Zealand cars will be hybrid, bio-fuel, or electric.

By 2030, “advanced countries will be competing for immigrants,” because of declining birthrates, according to George Friedman.

“More robots than people in developed countries” is also predicted for 2030.

The entire infrastructure of the California High-Speed Rail system will be completed.

I/We/All Robot

Sweet. Did you see it? By 2030 we’ll all have robots.

Robots for the yard work. Robots for the paper grading. Robots to wipe our crappers with. Robots for fighting the wars that we assume countries will wage over the possession of immigrants.

This war will be fought in New Zealand using hybrid tanks and planes. There will be high-speed rail in California, but only robots will ride it.

All the people? The people will be on Mars. They will have gone there to escape the fifty million members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, who will be choking the globe with their continuous anniversary worships.

That would be what we’d wake up to. And then we’d have to shoot ourselves. Thanks, Wikipedia, for the future of our dreams. — Brian Allen Carr

Video: We’re All On Mars