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Virtual reality! Does it exist? If you had sex with, say, Claudia Schiffer using a Virtual Boy, would you have actually gotten the entire Claudia Schiffer experience, or would you just be some sad nerd who so desperately wanted to sex Claudia Schiffer that you couldn’t go to the gym, get a better job and then take her out on a nice date before slipping a rohypnol** into her gin rickey (she’s old*** now so it’s socially acceptable for her to drink gin) and instead had to resort to nerdier means to get your rocks off? Does it matter? Is this the future?
Will we all be having sex with Claudia Schiffer and only having real sex (and who would want real sex after having virtual sex with Claudia Schiffer, right?) for procreation once a year like in that one Ayn Rand novel? Or will we merely just be using invitro fertilization to propagate the species? Will all the eggs come from Claudia Schiffer? Can we get those cheekbones? Does having virtual sex cause more or less headaches than having real sex because while we’re certain that having sex while looking at a screen through a pair of goggles is certain to have you sending your mother to the store for more Advil, having sex with a real person causes a number of social headaches? Which is worse!? Is this the future?
Will we even have Advil or will we have fantastically barbaric, yet effective, methods for curing headaches and/or hangovers? Methods that Peggy Olsen and/or Daniel Radcliffe could only dream of? We’re sure of one thing though, and that’s this: Even if we could have virtual sex with Claudia Schiffer, we wouldn’t, because we’d be bettering ourselves so that we could have real sex with Life, Death and Violence Crush Object™ Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Social headaches, we choose you! Is JGL our future? We can only hope so.
In the meantime, it’s currently the present. Oh wait, that sentence is now in the recent past and the discussions about sexing up Claudia Schiffer in the slightly less recent past, so what’s a Life, Death and Violence columnist supposed to do? Talk about the past? Or talk about the present? Or, should we theorize the future as seen through the past since we can’t really predict the future (and even if we could, it could be changed)? Does time exist? Or is it, as Dogbert once noted, just an illusion? Is time just a social construct in order to better our understanding of specific events that we pick and choose like men on Grindr? Is history too small? Or is it too big? People are always saying that they wish there were more hours in the day. If we cut an hour in half and decide to only have thirty minute hours, then we’d have 48 hour days. Is that enough to satiate demand?
Is this the future? Welcome to Life, Death and Violence, America’s favorite column about the past and how it relates to The French™ and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. In case you haven’t noticed, today’s theme is The Future™. Did futuristic things happen today? Did we repeat history’s mistakes and herstory’s errors and genderneutralstory’s follies to send us back into the dark ages? Who knows? Maybe we’ll find out; or, maybe, just maybe, you’ll go on an unsatisfying journey with an extremely satisfying end, by which we mean sex with Claudia Schiffer.
LIFE!
(or, the triple point of time)
- 1713: Jacques Germain Soufflot: Some people just hate the future! God! When all the cool kids were going off on their Romantic excursions (ex: Having non-virtual sex with Lord Byron in a meadow while a storm brewed somewhat off in the distance), this old fuddy-duddy was dabbling in neo-classicism. Ugh, so like The French™. They just like what’s prettiest and what will stand the test of time. FINE. BE THAT WAY. Most troubling is that he went to The French Academy in Rome. Rome? Rome!? The French™ can’t even be decent enough to have one of their premier art schools in France? That’s like stashing MICA in NOVA! NOVA! However, his one major achievement (only one! What a disappointment!), the Panthéon, is kinda pretty though we hear that if you make a loud noise on Bastille Day at precisely the right time, it’ll just collapse. Get it? Because his name sounds like souffle! Your columnist is so funny, isn’t he!? Moving on.
1889: James Whale: Have you heard? There’s this great new technology! It’s, like, well, you know photographs? Well, these are pictures that move! Can you believe it! (Thirty Years Later) Have you heard? There’s this great new technology! It’s, like, well, you know movies? Well, they’re talking in them now and there’s this guy! There’s this guy James! And, well, you know what he’s doing? He’s made a movie about the past where they try to do something we’d like to do in the future! He’s made this movie about bringing people back to life! And it’s scary! Because that’s a scary concept, isn’t it? It is! But ohmagad, then he made this movie in which this girl married the guy that got brought back to life and her hair! Her hair! It went cray like fish! Is this the future? Will we all have bad haircuts? Will we all become invisible? At least we won’t have to stay in the closet, or will we? Will our only sex option be virtual sex with Claudia Schiffer? Have we lost all hope for JGL forever?
1889: James Whale: Have you heard? There’s this great new technology! It’s, like, well, you know photographs? Well, these are pictures that move! Can you believe it! (Thirty Years Later) Have you heard? There’s this great new technology! It’s, like, well, you know movies? Well, they’re talking in them now and there’s this guy! There’s this guy James! And, well, you know what he’s doing? He’s made a movie about the past where they try to do something we’d like to do in the future! He’s made this movie about bringing people back to life! And it’s scary! Because that’s a scary concept, isn’t it? It is! But ohmagad, then he made this movie in which this girl married the guy that got brought back to life and her hair! Her hair! It went cray like fish! Is this the future? Will we all have bad haircuts? Will we all become invisible? At least we won’t have to stay in the closet, or will we? Will our only sex option be virtual sex with Claudia Schiffer? Have we lost all hope for JGL forever?- 1940: Alex Trebek: This drunken Canadian would like you to know that your question must equal the producer’s intent.
DEATH!
(So you’re not coming to our Mad Men viewing party?)
- 1832: The Boring Napoleon
- 1903: The Boring Cassius Clay
- 2003: The Lesser, But More Exciting, Hussein
- 2008: One of the Most Important People Who Ever Lived
VIOLENCE!
(Definitely not for spineless milquetoasts)
- 1298: Mel Gibson loses a battle.
- 1456: The Kitchen beats The Parlor
- 1484: Carnival games go terribly wrong at the Lochmaben Fair
- 1812: The French™, shockingly, lose a battle
- 1864: T.I. teams up with Elephant 6 to fight Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac. It doesn’t end well for Team ElephanT.I.
- 1934: Shoot em up! Bang! Bang! Bang! Pow! John Dillinger is shot dead outside the Biograph Theater.
OTHER NEAT STUFF THAT HAPPENED!
(or, where we make throwaway jokes)
- 1793: Some guy crosses Canada. Big deal.
- 1796: The Cleave is named. Is this our future, Liz Lemon?
- 1894: Future buggies without horses go vroom vroom in circle. This is a big deal!
- 1937: Nine is enough! Justice expansion shot down, though not as quickly as Dillinger.
- 1942: Need gas? Too bad. We need it says US Government.
- 1951: Space dogs! Is this the future?! Will man ever go up!? We doubt it.
- 1983: How many Poles does it take to revoke Martial Law? Several.
We’ll never succumb to virtual reality! We will stay forever locked in our precious past! Back! Back you fools! You’ll never take us alive! The end!****
*Actually, you have to press the “more” button.
**Clearly, you’re still not attractive enough to bang Claudia Schiffer through legitimate means.
***Yes, we just called 40 old. Get over it. You’re old. We’re getting older too. Like, we experienced heartburn after eating only two slices of pizza! That’s something that only happens to old people! Aging sucks! We’re going to fight it though. Tooth and nail.
****What the what? A semi-short, semi-accessible LDV? Weirdsville.
