J.: What’s that.

G.: Singlehood.

J.: Well, for one, don’t call it singlehood.

G.: Bachelorhood?

J.: Don’t name it. It’s your life, not a condition.

G.: Well, what I don’t understand is why the FUCK nobody will sleep with me.

J.: That, on the other hand, is a condition.

G.: Ass.

J.: You’re presuming you’re worth sleeping with, and that — at least I assume — women recognize that in the very short periods of time you are actually with them before you destroy their perceptions of you as a nice guy.

G.: Seriously. Ass.

J.: What’s the problem.

G.: The other night I take out this chick. Starletta.

J.: Problem number one has just revealed itself. But go on.

G.: Ass. But anyway she comes over and we have a drink, okay.

J.: Like a drink drink?

G.: Like an alcoholic beverage.

J.: Wine?

G.: Captain.

J.: Probably problem number two.

G.: What’s wrong with Captain?

J.: Problem number three. Continue.

G.: We go to a movie.

J.: Movie?

G.: The Strangers.

J.: Problem four.

G.: I’m tallying these. You’re going to have to explain them afterward.

J.: Nah, I’m not going to do that.

G.: Because you’re an ass?

J.: Because I am.

G.: We have dinner.

J.: Time?

G.: Uh. Nine-thirty or something.

J.: Uh huh. That’s another one.

G.: Nothing wrong with a late dinner.

J.: Except girls like to complain about bloat and stuff. And that’s problem six. Improper digestive time is a dealbreaker.

G.: Shit.

J.: Go on.

G.: We have drinks.

J.: Wine this time?

G.: Captain.

J.: You’re at a bar.

G.: Yeah.

J.: Where they have classier beverages than you keep around your casa.

G.: Yeah. You know, ‘casa’ always makes me think of Cassavetes. Mi Cassavetes, su Cassavetes.

J.: Try not to tell Starletta that joke, okay.

G.: Why, it’s a good one.

J.: It isn’t, for one. But Starletta won’t get that one.

G.: Mi Casablan–

J.: Stop it. Now continue.

G.: I drive her back to her place.

J.: Her car is at your place, though. At least, I’m assuming you didn’t pick her up at her place, go back to your place, and then go out.

G.: Her car is at my place.

J.: So your plan is what, exactly.

G.: Sleep over, go home.

J.: And her car?

G.: Shit.

J.: I think we’re up to like problem sixteen or something.

G.: But I’m reasonably good looking. And a conversationalist whose topicalities are boundless.

J.: Except when you’re constructing poor sentences that Starletta wouldn’t understand even if you built them soundly.

G.: Dude. She had tits.

J.: More than two?

G.: I –

J.: Step one: Wine. Step two: Your couch.

G.: Sounding good…

J.: Step three: Spend the night playing Xbox Live.

G.: I don’t get it.

J.: You’re about as likely to be the first man to get laid via online gaming as you are to get some after your date.

G.: You’re saying I know nothing about women, and I should improve, and think about them with each minor event I plan.

J.: Sure, that’s a start.

G.: Can you really get laid on Xbox Live?

J.: Yes.

G.: You’re lying to me right now.

J.: I really am.

G.:

J.: You can call me an ass again if you want.

G.: That’s okay.

J.: Well, that’s progre–

G.: Ass.

J.: I would study it.

G.: Like if you knew you were going to have a car accident on Tuesday, June 3rd, 2023.

J.: Oh, that kind of future.

G.: What did you think I meant?

J.: I thought maybe you meant, like, man’s expansion into the stars. In the year 2544 or whenever.

G.: Man, it’s gonna take til at least 2610 for that.

J.: If I were going to have a car accident in fifteen years. Is it serious?

G.: The accident is very serious.

J.: Do I die?

G.: What if you do? Would you want to know?

J.: Of course I’d want to know.

G.: Why?

J.: Knowing when something ends totally lets you maximize your time. I’d stop worrying about what doesn’t matter — like how much money I owe to how many bastards — and throw my money at doing all the things I really want to do.

G.: Like what?

J.: Like…

G.:

J.:

G.:

J.: Like read books all day.

G.: You’re one boring man, you know.

J.: I’m okay with that.

G.: Seriously, what would you do?

J.: I would probably –

G.: You know what I’d do? I’d go mountain climbing. If you know when you’re gonna die, then you know you’re not gonna die in the meantime, so I’d go climb some steep fucking rock and I’d be awesome.

J.: Is the future malleable?

G.: No. Completely set in absolute granite.

J.: Heh. Absolut Granite.

G.:

J.: I wonder what that would taste like.

G.: It would taste like Abraham Lincoln’s big-ass nose.

J.: What?

G.: Rushmore, bitch.

J.: I hate that movie.

G.: Not the movie. The mountain. The freaking mountain.

J.: I went there when I was a kid.

G.: And?

J.: I totally don’t remember more than that. Just that I was there.

G.: That could be an implanted memory.

J.: I suppose.

G.: You aren’t disturbed by that? By implanted memories?

J.: How do I know they’re implanted?

G.: You can’t remember any of the details. That’s how you know.

J.: Do you have any implanted memories?

G.: First time I smoked weed.

J.: I don’t think that counts.

G.: Sure it does.

J.: No, that one’s probably got memory dilution built in.

G.: Oh. Yeah, I see that.

J.: If you could see the future would you be okay with dying today?

G.:

J.:

G.: Whoa. Shit.

J.:

G.: That, man. That’s the fucking question.

J.: Bit of a doozy, ain’t it.

G.: I mean, like, shit. That is a damn question. Capital Q and everything.

J.: If you could see everything that would happen to you if you were going to live til you were eighty, would you be okay with dying today and never actually living those memories?

G.: That’s like the opposite of implanted memory.

J.: It’s like carrot memories.

G.: Carrots?

J.: Dangling carrots. You can see it –

G.: — but you won’t ever have it.

J.: Yep.

G.: I guess if I could know what was going to happen there wouldn’t be much point in living it.

J.: Well, I can tell you what’s going to happen in the future.

G.: If you could, you could kill me right now and I’d be okay with it.

J.: If you don’t slow down, we’re going to hit that train.

G.: What tr–

J.:

G.:

J.:

G.:

J.:

G.:

J.: Do you always do that?

G.: What.

J.: Truncate your dialogue in real-time. To make it seem as if something terrible has happened.

G.: No, I’ve never done that before. Just kinda came to me.

J.: Nice touch.

Did you see this?

We have set up a system to send documents by the email, to the addresses you provide, 6 days after the “Rapture” of the Church. This occurs when 3 of our 5 team members scattered around the U.S fail to log in over a 3 day period. Another 3 days are given to fail safe any false triggering of the system.

Allow me to first point out that the quote marks around the word Rapture are theirs. I didn’t add them.

The gist of the site is simple: For an annual fee you can store messages to the ‘lost’ with YBLB. After the ‘rapture’ of the faithful, YBLB will automatically disburse your messages to those lost souls left behind. Your lost friends will read your words, realize their predicament, and convert on the spot, thereby saving their immortal souls.

Let’s forget, for a moment, that Revelations is one of the most wildly interpreted books of the Bible, and that believers of different faiths — even of the same faiths — disagree with just what any of it means. The lion represents Russia! No, it represents China! No, it represents aliens! Et cetera. Forget, if you will, that for every five people who interpret the definition of the Tribulation period to mean one thing, there will be twenty who believe it’s something completely different. Person A believes that if you miss the Rapture, you can still be saved, perhaps if you refuse the ‘mark of the beast’. Person B believes that if you miss the Rapture, you’re done for.

Forget all of that. Let’s focus instead on this basic truth: the existence of god has not been proven. Individuals may choose to believe whatever they like, interpreting the Bible and personal experiences to mean that there is or isn’t a god. But if you’re looking for clear, incontrovertible evidence of a higher power, then you’re going to keep on looking, because nobody can offer that sort of proof.

This site is a con game, exploiting people of faith for its own profit. For forty bucks a year — and maybe less, if enough gullible people sign up — they’ll take your personal messages and slap them on a server. The messages will be sent if three of the five YBLB team members fail to login — not much of a failsafe, given all the potential scenarios. Vacations? Sudden deaths? Internet outages? OH SHIT, THE RAPTURE!

Which is just flat-out exploitative.

I was raised to believe that one day — very, very, very soon — like any second now — God was going to return and take all the true believers back up to Heaven, where you would get all kinds of very cool things. Maybe even wings. I was just a kid the first time I heard about this, so naturally it sounded good to me. The flipside, however, is that if you blow it and you aren’t the purest of pure, et cetera, blah blah blah, you probably won’t make the cut. And this isn’t like failing to make the recess kickball team. You don’t just sit down and watch everyone else have a good time. You won’t be able to sit down, because your butt (along with every other part of you) will be forever on fire. Yess.

Cue irrational childhood fears that take twenty years to begin to deal with.

As a kid the concept of missing the rapture was so very much on my mind that if something real-world didn’t make sense to me, I immediately explained it by convincing myself that the rapture had happened, and I was screwed. (It didn’t help that kids like me were beset from all sides with fear-inspiring Christian propaganda, everything from Frank Peretti novels to ‘innocent’ Bible-story-based Nintendo titles — particularly a low-quality novel by Ernest Angley called Raptured, which was all about a girl who missed the rapture but still made it to Heaven by resisting the Antichrist and martyring herself by way of decapitation — this after she watched her family boiled in oil and their limbs hacked off.) I remember a summer day when I woke from a nap, all of nine or ten years old, and couldn’t find anybody in the house. Mom wasn’t anywhere to be found, Dad was AWOL, my sister had vanished. I looked everywhere — the neighbors on either side hadn’t seen anybody, and our friends down the street weren’t home — and ultimately panicked myself into thinking that God came back and took them all, and left me here alone.

That’s the kind of thing that this web site preys on: irrational fear. I was a kid, and I grew up and started rethinking things, but a lot of people don’t. The same people who will donate a thousand dollars to Benny Hinn so that he can buy a new jet are the sort of people who will spend their money and time to email their family after God picks them up and takes them home.

Beyond this, the site — which is pretty light on content — raises all sorts of questions, such as: What happens if you, Mr. Lost, receive one of these emails, and you click Reply? Will the raptured person have an autoresponder? An out-of-office reply? What would it say?

Autoreply: Out of this world, sorry

Autoreply: I’m totally in Heaven right now, probably won’t ever get back to you

Autoreply: Sorry, learning to fly

I pointed my friend to the site, and his only response was: “So basically even in the middle of the apocalypse I’m going to get spammed.”

There’s plenty to take issue with on this web site, but here’s the most egregious:

The unsaved will be ‘left behind’ on earth to go through the “tribulation period” after the “Rapture”. You remember how, for a short time, after (9/11/01) people were open to spiritual things and answers. (We are still singing “God Bless America” at baseballs’ seventh inning stretch.) Imagine how taken back they will be by the millions of missing Christians and devastation at the rapture.

Here in the real world we sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh-inning stretch. Terrorists.

I’m not at risk of becoming obsolete because of any of the things I’m about to talk about, and I’m certainly not about to put my bayonet to someone’s neck over them. Mostly I just want to grumble, and grumbling to yourself is only interesting for so long.

I tried Twitter. Really did. I lasted for about a month, from November 1st of last year until December 10th, and I just never got it. It was like instant messaging over a loudspeaker in a crowded room of people who weren’t listening and didn’t care. I also couldn’t keep up with it. I forgot to check it every day, and when I did, there would be this insane avalance of micromessages from all of the different people I know — mostly coworkers — who were typing things I didn’t understand about the code they were writing.

Maybe I am officially getting too old for social media innovation. I don’t really like admitting this, since what I do for a living hinges on taking advantage of the innovative spirit, but I can’t avoid it. It’s true. I have a hard time faking interest in every new plugin or hack for apps that are already useless to me.

I don’t MySpace. I don’t Facebook. I don’t Twitter. I don’t blog from my phone (except for once when I was bored in a waiting room, but that doesn’t count because I would never do it again, it being one of the most frustrating experiences I have ever had with a mobile phone, which I’m not all that wild about to begin with). I don’t Flickr. I don’t Digg or Reddit. I’m a one-off YouTube user — I posted a video and then I was done. I don’t use Del.icio.us, and not even just because I forget where the dots go. I don’t use StumbleUpon. I have a LinkedIn account but I don’t know why.

It turns out that I’m a very slow adopter of emerging technologies. I only have a BlackBerry because my company gave me one. I bought an Xbox three or four years after they were popular. I don’t download games on Xbox Live. I don’t download movies. I don’t pirate music. I use iTunes, and that’s about the extent of that. I didn’t pay attention to RSS feeds until late last year. Look at the code behind this web site: I still write everything in tables.

A few months ago my employer sent me to SXSW. I left my laptop in my hotel room. Nobody else did. Seemingly every attendee of the conference considered it their personal responsibility to inform the entire world of every single thing that happened at the conference. They blogged, they Twittered, they live-chatted, they YouTubed, they Facebooked, they turned every noun into a verb in the name of disseminating information. In the hallways between events, sitting cross-legged on the floor with laptops perched on their knees, they continued to blog and Twitter and blah blah yeah.

More than anything, this blog is something I write for my own entertainment. It’s a record of sorts, one that I will someday be able to show my children so they’ll understand who I was before they existed. (Even if it makes them cringe.) Barely anybody reads this site, so I don’t find myself blogging for the masses, which keeps me nice and content with my small place here.

The whole Twitter thing failed for me because I could never imagine why anybody would care about what I was doing at any given moment of any given day. If my actions interested me enough to write about, then I would do so, in traditional long format, on this site. The actions that did not warrant a full blog post did not therefore warrant a Twitter update. (I can’t bring myself to call it a Tweet.) Nothing I had to say over the course of that month was worth even the minor effort of reading it. And I would venture to say that, barring any extremely creative uses of the technology, nothing you or anybody else had to say was worth that effort either.

Memes and LOLcats and streaming radio stations are all beyond me. I don’t like listening to the radio at all, unless it’s the AM band and it’s two a.m. and I’m on the road in the middle of Kansas or somewhere. Television is the most egregious waste of a truly innovative technology ever committed to production. All of these things, from television to automobiles to radio to instant messaging, were ostensibly created to make our life better, to make productivity smoother. Maybe for some people they do, but for the rest of us, I postulate that they are only distractions. And if they aren’t for you, then they are for me, so stop asking me to follow your Twittishness.

Loudon Wainwright’s gotten a lot of play over the past couple of years for his involvement with the Judd Apatow crew — he was in “Undeclared”, he soundtracked Knocked Up, etc. — but he put out a terrific album in 2001 entitled Last Man on Earth. I’ve written about this album, and him, once before.) The titular song is a folksy-defiant rant — or maybe an apology — in which he sings about his inability to cope with the march of technology:

Everybody’s got a web site
but that’s all Greek to me
I don’t own a computer
I hate that letter e
I don’t pack a cell phone
or drive an SUV
I’m the last man on Earth
That’s what the matter is with me

I make my living on the web, and I suppose you could consider my Jeep an SUV, and I do reluctantly own a cell phone, one that they even call ’smart’. So my own particular brand of aversion, here, skews pretty much within the boundaries of my generation. Communication is important. I just wonder if there’s a ceiling, a red line, that marks too much communication. I know people who own phones but won’t call people on them, who prefer in any circumstance to write emails, send instant messages, update blogs, post comments, broadcast Twitters, text-message or whatever. I suppose the real problem is that all of this was intended to be supplemental to the great communication method: speech.

Then again, the last batch of speech-based communication that I heard was while playing Halo 3 on Xbox Live, and the conversation, if you could call it that, used taunts and threats as its brick, and insensitivity as its mortar. My arguments don’t hold up against content, I guess.

(And yep, I realize that the last paragraph, in which I reference playing a modern video game in a modern, wireless, collaborative setting probably undermines my whole argument. I’m pretty good at this sort of thing. Shooting myself in the foot, I mean.)

And no, I’m not just grumpy today.