Yo, Tech Answer Guy,
My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Izzy’s knees are going out. Again. Family legend has it that this is the 20th set, and, thanks to the laws of diminishing returns, it only took them three hours after surgery before they started creaking and oozing disgusting liquids.
Thanks, law of diminishing returns.
Meanwhile, my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother Sammie’s neural interface is getting glitchier by the second, making it harder and harder for her to access her memories in the cloud. She can remember playing MC5 records on something called a stereo as if it was yesterday, even though electricity has been strictly rationed for over 800 years. Interns at the Methuselah Rest Home and Soil Reclamation Factory say she’s going to Cloud Cuckoo Land, like I don’t know what they’re talking about, like it’s that hard to figure out what they mean, like I care what they think.
Everybody in the family says I should go to the Home every day and drain Izzy’s knees (eww!) and comfort Sammie (double eww with carob chocolate sauce!). I’m only 15! I was looking forward to downloading a degree in MacroWikinomics directly into my neural network and spending my life teaching advanced civilizations in Polynesia the economic advantages of macrame. Instead, I can look forward to a future of looking after my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents.
Like I like it.
Everybody else in my family seems to have an excuse to get out of great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparent duty. My parents, Fromp and Adena, lost everything in the Furian Chewing Gum bubble and are surviving on virtual food stamps. My grandparents, Harold, Maude and Voicebox1, are vacationing on Mars and are not answering their phones. My great-grandparents, Pat and Other Pat, are useless because they had shells grafted onto their bodies and no longer have opposable thumbs. It’s turtles and excuses all the way down.
This is unfair! Izzy and Sammie have 537 great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren; why can’t we all share looking after our great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents? If we did, we would each only have to see our great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents once every year and a half or so!
Can you think of a way I can stick my cousin, 23 times removed, RebeCCah with this onerous family duty?
Sincerely,
@n1ta from Argentina
Yo, Nita,
Intergenerational conflicts take on a whole new meaning when people can live to be 1,000, don’t they?
Like Xeno’s Retirement Age Paradox, with the average retirement being pushed further and further into people’s lives. Freedom 500 – it has a ring to it, don’t you think? Naah – me neither. Still, aside from forestalling the inevitable, it guarantees that people of the 3399FF Generation remain blue because they can’t find any jobs.
Of course, it gets worse. In order to make room on the planet for all these coddled codgers, these gentrified geriatrics, these obscene oldsters, most governments of advanced nations – and France – now have a quarter child policy, where only every fourth couple can have a baby. Solomon would have a seizure!
My suggestion to you would be to stow away on a cargo ship to the Oort Cloud and hope that when you get there they’ll take pity on you and let you work in the Virgin Helium Mines.
The Tech Answer Guy
Yo, Tech Answer Guy,
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchild!
You should not be encouraging @n1ta from Argentina to shirk her duty to look after her great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents! I’m 667 years old, and still a productive member of society. Every other Thursday and twice on Sundays. When my prosthetic spleen isn’t acting up (it does like its Beckett in the Park…ing Lot). When my neural network reminds me.
Well. My personal details are probably only of interest to rogue demographers and freelance daisy painters. My point is that @n1ta from Argentina’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents made this world what it is today. Without them, her great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents wouldn’t exist. Without them, her great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents would never have been born. Without them – well, I think you get my point.
Children like @n1ta from Argentina should respect their elders. After all, they haven’t been where we’ve been, but we’ve been where they’ve been. Even if we can’t quite put our fingers on the memory’s address in the cloud.
Sincerely,
T1na from La Isla Bonita
Yo, Teens,
You clearly don’t remember what it’s like to be young and carefree and have your own teeth. If you watched more coming of age holovids, you might not feel the way you do. Or, you might, but you’d be so busy watching coming of age holovids that you wouldn’t have the time to express those feelings. I’d be good with it either way.
The Tech Answer Guy
If you are a dude with a question about the latest technology, ask The Tech Answer Guy by sending it to questions@lespagesauxfolles.ca. Just remember: old people are icky. Thousand year-old people are icky to the power of yuck.