…Of Mice & Men

50 Years ago this Friday, the city of Tulsa Oklahoma buried a time capsule of life in the middle of the great American century, including a glorious Plymouth Belvedere, tail fins & all.  The purpose was to give people in the future a glimpse at what life in the 50s was all about. 

The vault was built sturdy enough to survive a nuclear attack (which should give you an idea of what life in the late 50s was all about right there), but unfortunately it was not built water tight.  Over two feet of standing water had seeped in during the intervening decades, and the Plymouth and the Time Capsule materials were sitting in the middle of it, potentially rusting away (although city officials claim the car may still be salvageable due to a protective wrapping, possibly they used the ClearCote(tm) sealant from Fargo).

Regardless, the whole fiasco made me wonder what of my life I would collect today to give the people of the future a snapshot of what turn of the century life was all about.  I narrowed it down to the following five things:

1) A photo of the sexiest naked people I can find.  Here’s my thinking – with the rise of the internet, and pornography & niche fetishes & all sorts of desensitization, super hot naked people will be as sexy to the citizens of 2057 as photos of Betty Grable in a one piece bathing suit are to people today.  We’ll vaguely recognize that the images have an intended purpose, some sort of arousal, but no one will really actually be turned on by looking at just plain old naked people any more.  Based on my research, at least one of the participants in all future erotica will have to be dressed as a bear, or a clown, or some sort of bear-clown hybrid.

2) An ipod shuffle, one of the new super tiny ones that are smaller than a money clip & hold 100 songs.  In the future, music, and really all digital data will not be stored on a physical medium, but rather wiped directly on to your skin with a series of wet-knaps, like the kind you get at KFC when you are done with your chicken.  In fact, KFC will likely be the world’s largest data distribution company.  People will be hard pressed to remember a time when KFC sold chicken. This situation is already becoming commonplace.

3) A Hydrogen Bomb, the most powerful one I can get my hands on.  This is not to illustrate our war-mongering ways, or to show the people of the future what barbarians we were.  Rather, this will be a live bomb, with a countdown initiated by the first rays of sunlight hitting the weapon.  The bomb will have a large note taped to it reading “Press this button to stop your annihilation.”  If the people of the future can’t read English, fuck ’em, is what I’m going for here.

4) The dead body of Ann Coulter, or possibly Sean Hannity.  Or both.  I’m not particular.  No identifcation need accompany the remains, nor should any steps be taken to preserve the corpses.

5) A box of things confiscated by the TSA, collected randomly at the end of one travel day from a major metropolitan airport.  The people of the future will be completely fucking stumped as to why we left them half bottles of shampoo & tubes of toothpaste & mouthwash.  If only they knew that this box contained what passed for a legitimate threat in 2007, they would have a good laugh before they went back to defending themselves from the never-ending ferocious onslaught of zombies.