MONDAY RAMBLE PART 5 “MY COMBO LIFE”

All this talk about the decade ending really makes me think about Busta Rhymes yelling that we only had 3 years left in 1997. Back then I was reading that Pale Horse book, chatting with Israelites, analyzing the back of dollar bills, but the world didn’t end. In fact, everything just came together and merged, exposing our human thirst to become the laziest species ever.

I went into a Pizza Hut the other day that used to be a sit-down restaurant 10 years ago. Now, not only is it mainly a carryout spot, but it has KFC and Taco Bell as well. I don’t know what genius decided customers may want pizza…then maybe some fried chicken and a taco too…and then they decided to make ‘em all name brand, but now our world has become a reflection of these fast-food conjunctions.

There used to be hardware stores that specialized in hardware, electronics stores where the employees knew a thing or 2 about the products, record stores that…well you get the idea…now we have supercenters where you get everything in one building.

The 1st time I went into a Wal-Mart was in Iowa in 1996, I was writing physical letters to my kinfolk about this magical land as if it wasn’t real: furniture, groceries, clothing, medicine, it was like a village within a city. And this is not complaining, this is contemplation, I didn’t know, we as mankind wanted this sort of combo-life.

I didn’t see this coming when I was thumbing thru encyclopedias as a child, or using a payphone to return a page on my beeper as I flipped the tape in my walkman, or when I used my disposable camera to take pictures and waited weeks to go to a store that would develop them.

I couldn’t foresee my phone being able to get online, take pictures, store mp3s, shoot videos, have TV, a speakerphone, GPS, be able to talk to me and dial without me knowing. My phone is smarter than a 5^th grader. My 1st cellular didn’t even have call-waiting, or caller ID…then it roamed when I left my neighborhood, and that was this decade.
Internet, phone service and cable are all together, pretty soon they’ll throw in electricity, heating and cooling, then it’ll be one bill for everything.

I know you’ve read rants about technological advancement before but think about what this says about us as people. Are we lazy? Are we intelligent because we want everything together? Our lives have become universal remote controls.

I’m not afraid of the future, I’m just noticing how many products are advertised as 3-in-1 nowadays, toothpaste is a whitener and a mouthwash…shampoos have conditioners and moisturizers. Hotels have restaurants so you can sleep and eat, pretty soon, eateries will have beds so you can eat and sleep. Where will it end? If you can get anything online delivered to you, wouldn’t it make sense to merge appliances as well? One day we might have a washer/dryer/oven/microwave/refrigerator/television/DVD player/stereo/computer thingy.

Which isn’t bad, but it is interesting.

There’s a reason I call this a ramble but if you’re searching for a point: all this oneness, all this unifying, and you have to take a second to think if the threats of a one world government are real, and this could be just preparation.

And how is it that we embrace the concept of a power strip to plug in 5 things at once; and a printer that faxes, scans and copies but when it comes to people we still enjoy separating each other by race, religion, nationality, gang, block, skin color and whatever else we can find?

Jerry Seinfeld pointed out that movies that have alien life form from the future or Mars or something, always seem to look very similar to each other (Avatar, The Smurfs, etc.). All of them wear uniforms and look the same…green or blue skin…silver shiny suits. I’m sure Martians are just Martians while New Yorkers can’t even find unity once they claim a borough. But maybe the writers of these sci-fi flicks are planting togetherness images in our brains. Or maybe we secretly want to be unified, and in a thousand years, with all the race mixing, it will happen…or not.

You made it this far, might as well leave a comment, it makes a difference…