By William A. Smith

How many wake-up calls do we need? I ve seen the obscene sums. Show me the progress. Please, show me the error of my ways. Although I'll readily cop to being AWOL in the 70s, I didn t miss too many classes in the 50s and 60s; and looking back down the road, with JFK and Neil Armstrong in the rearview, I was taught that I'd be buzzing around Paris and Bangkok in a flying car that ran on grass and little more than a liter of water by now.

So of course I'm PO'ed. I despise 97 percent of what I see and hear. Life is pointless without a flying car, and every complacent jerk who thinks it's so Jim Dandy can easily shove his or her freakin Ipod nano where the sun doesn't charge a dollar for a song. Which reminds me of another sure thing from the olden days: They had me believing any ditty ever recorded--from ABBA to Zappa--might cost maybe a nickel or a dime at most if I wanted to play it forever inside my flying car. And that was before eight tracks, dadgummit!

Life is pointless when you see it all walking straight down the path plotted in The Handmaid s Tale to a grim town square where toxic religious crappola oozes out of every megaphone. I see Pat Robertson blithely passing the plate after espousing assassination. Miracles are revealed every other day in fried spuds and Ritz Crackers. A veritable township of angels farts lavender among us. And, Jesus, sweet Jesus, where does this procession of blue-balled Muslims lining up for a crack at all those virgins end?

And why, I ponder, hasn't Miles O'Brien soiled his khakis supplying us with more details about the George Jetson Bush Mission to Mars lately? What s up with that? Certainly, we haven t given up on Mars.

We have to spend every dollar we don t have to screw it up. Because, when enough soundings have been made and analyzed by the petrochemical poohbahs, I just know we re going to find out that the only life form that was is pooled two miles under the permafrost and primed to fuel the next set of Hummer models coming out in 2045. Plus, on the way to all of that, we ll discover Gold! So much gold, and rubies, and diamonds! Diamonds as big as groundhogs!!!!!

I'll be one dead codger by then. My son will be 61 and working diligently on his intelligently designed GED. Then his teachers won't have to submit their prayers to Gold much longer, it's everywhere and on its way back home from Mars (suckers), so they can now spend their summers leasing fleets of flying cars that run all over this old smog-bound world on that brand-new Martian unleaded that BP just started pumping last week.

I'm so glad I'm dead, I would think. That' s not a flying car. Not by a long shot. --posted September 17, 2005

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