Of all the abandoned, obsolete technologies we've discarded over the years, the one most deserving of a second chance is the noble telegraph. Think about it -- when we're at our computers everyday, visiting our favorite wicker porn sites, what are we already doing? That's right: clicking. Clicking away on our mice, slowly tapping out messages to the Ether. I guarantee you, somewhere out there is a vast, diffuse machine intelligence that's listening in, slowly deciphering our subconscious dots-and-dashes message, transmitted quite without our knowledge through our everyday Internet usage. And at some point, it will have collected enough clicks to make sense of that message, and respond with a disgusted 'That's nasty', and shut itself down forever.
Do you see how powerful the telegraph is? If it can cause a barely-cognizant hardware-constrained cloud of virtual neurons to kill itself in horrified, existential anomie, surely it can revitalize our modern way of life! How, you say? I'm glad you asked, you mouth-breathing mendicant!
Imagine the following scenario: it's late. You're lonely. You have no lover that doesn't run on batteries, and those Flipper reruns don't come on until 3 AM. You crave a direct connection with another human being, someone with whom you can share your innermost goulash recipes. Someone with whom you can be truly intimate. Looking around your cell, your fevered gaze alights upon your telegraph device, coiled and smug within its mahogany-and-cheese berth.
Trembling, your hand reaches toward it, fingers already pre-tapping, anxiously awaiting that tactile, subdermal feedback. You don your headphones, heartrate jumping at the mere hiss of the static issuing forth. You begin to code your message: dot-dash... dot-dot-dot... dot-dash-dot-dot... dot-dot-dash-dash-dot-dot.
Suddenly, you're in the thick of it! Messages crowd in, staccato sweet nothings filling your headspace like the drilling of overly-amorous woodpeckers! Drum roll missives of lust peppering your eardrums with the emotional force of a thousand tiny jackhammers of love! Engorged with excitement... EWW... you hurriedly attach and activate the Press-Your-Sensitive™ Teledildonics NubbinNotch ("Now with telegraph support!") and continue your perversely promiscuous pressings.
With each dot and dash of your partner's message delivered as a jolt of current to your sex toy, and calibrated to be sensitive enough to register pressure, the harder you tap, the stronger the impulses. As you race closer to the eventual conclusion, your frenzied pounding begins to set up a powerful feedback loop, like shouting into a series of megaphones, both of you crying out for release, hands feverishly slamming into the receiver until finally the final spasm hits, both hands clenched tightly around the telegraph machine, blissed and mindless...
...until you electrocute yourself on an exposed wire. But UNTIL then! Transformative! Revolutionary! Apocalyptic! Superfluous! Yes, gentle sentients, the telegraph must return! If not for yourselves, then think of the children! Do you really want them to grow up in a society where debased adult sexmongers aren't regularly destroyed by their own fiendish devices? Look deep into your hearts; you already know the answer: dash-dot... dash-dash-dash.
I wanna be free... just me... oh baby...
EWW
-- "Easy", Faith No More
Here's where we separate the strong-stomached from the squeamish. I give you: Bohemian Rhapsody, a capella. One of the lyrics is wrong, but damned if I was going to re-record that.
History will judge me.
It’s been a long December, and there’s reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last. But how much better? What has kept it from being better before this? Have you been unable to do everything you wanted to, due to scheduling restraints, personality conflicts, or plain old fear? I don’t know you, and you don’t know me, but I can tell you that a lot of people fail to accomplish their goals because they’re afraid. Not just of failure, but also of success.
Neil Gaiman once published a Sandman short story called ‘Fear of Falling’ for a collection of DC Vertigo preview comics. The story concerned itself with one man’s recurring nightmares, linked to his pulling out of a stage play he had written and was producing. He had become cripplingly afraid of being unable to perform to the expectations of the audience, even though the show had yet to begin. He likened it to nightmares in which he would climb to a great height, fall, and try to wake up before he hit the ground, which he was certain would kill him. This fear is common. Stage fright, just like Writer’s block, can take many forms. It’s natural and normal to worry over reactions to anything you create, but the most important thing to remember is just to get your creation out there in the world, without regard to how it may be received.
How often has worry over not having something worthwhile to say kept you from writing? How many times have you shrunk from trying something new because you were frightened of looking foolish? How much time do you spend regretting that which you’ve not done? And here I’m not just talking about creation – I’m talking about taking that trip you’ve been meaning to take, asking for that raise, or telling someone how you really feel. At the end of your life, will you be able to total up your successes and your failures and find that you’ve got more to regret than to be proud of?
At the end of ‘Fear of Falling’, our protagonist, having returned to helm the show, tells a friend what he’s come to realize: “Sometimes you fall. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.” This is my New Year’s reminder to you. Take everything you’re afraid will happen, and throw it all away. Don’t even give it a second thought. Put into the world what you want to experience. If you don’t, it will never happen. If you don’t release what’s inside you, what’s inside you will kill you. If you release what’s inside you, what’s inside you will save you. Sometimes, when you fall, you fly.
Come on and we'll sing, like we were free
Push the pedal down watch the world around fly by us
Come on and we'll try, one last time
I'm off the floor one more time to find you
And here we go there's nothing left to choose
And here we go there's nothing left to lose
-- "Nothing Left to Lose", Mat Kearney
