Dear 2008,

I've a bone to pick with you, young man. You are the future, and I think it's time you start acting like it. Don't look at me like that! Don't say you're not the future! Even if 1984 wasn't supposed to be the future after all, 2001 sure the hell was. If you expect me to wait around until 2010 you got another thing (or is it think?) comin'. So listen up. Here's a list of grievances. Oh, come on future, don't cry. Maybe I was too harsh. I guess you've done allright, what with ipods and laptops and innovations in automated meat processing facilities. But this year you gotta do better. You have 361 days (tough on you, being a leap year, isn't it) to address the following areas of distinct and painful lack, and if you cannot, you will be replaced by someone who can (current leading candidate: 2009).


-Hoverboards
-Flying cars
-Teleportation, at least of small inanimate objects
-Vertical lanes in which flying cars can move in addition to the usual horizontal ones
-Alien contact (with either a benevolent species or one bent on destroying us)
-Various new traffic regulations concerning flying cars
-An elevator to the moon
-A George Foreman grill that presses not just from the top and bottom, but also from an as-yet undiscovered fifth dimension
-Driver and passenger side airbags in flying cars
-Nanotechnology implanted directly in the cornea that allows the viewer to distinguish between Amish and Menonites
-New energy-saving fuel cell technology for flying cars
-A kind of new pop music that a.) doesn't suck and b.) sounds all weird and futuristic-like
-An island nation of intelligent, clothes-wearing bears, equipped with a viable, state-of-the-art armed forces as well as a world-renowned, largely seafood-based culinary culture
-A way to jump-start flying cars without all the hastle
-The return of prehensile tails in the higher primates
-Advances in personal fashion including something known as the "third eyebrow"
-The immediate cancellation of Everybody Loves Ray (in the future, nobody loves Ray)
-Back-seat Blu-ray players standard in selected high-end flying car models
-A new type of jar opener that appeals to old people and young people alike
-A new shape of New York-style pizza whose slices can be folded along some as-yet undiscovered fifth dimension
-In the future, it seems like there shouldn't have be any shitty food anymore. All food should be good now.
-Self-zipping pants
-A telekinetic device you can install in your lamps that allows them to turn on and off when you just think about clapping.
-A great peace-making between Glad and Ziplock brand resealable sandwich bags.
-A Number 3 pencil
-No less than seven noteable new peanut-derived inventions (this area has really slowed down since George Washington Carver, and I personally believe 2008 is the year of the peanut once again)
-A convenient medicine which settles the uneasy stomach some experience as a result of flying car travel
-A new method of melting cheese without all the muss and fuss
-A portable closet or pantry whose contents reside in an as-yet undiscovered fifth dimension without losing any of the utility or freshness we've come to expect from our three-dimensional closets and pantries
-A new tool to spread condiments with more efficiancy and more panache

hoverboards

Hoverboads, like this one from Back to the Future II, are fucking awesome. Don't try to deny this. You know deep down in your heart that it's true. Everybody thinks so. Just this week I've had four or five discussions about hoverboards, and everyone who talks about them gets this far-away, glazed-over look in their eyes. You know that look-- that look that's probably fueled by the now lost but once near-universal belief that hoverboards really existed when the movie came out. That look that probably looks just like the look you might have when you wake up from an incredible dream-- the look of remembering something wonderful, once close at hand and firmly in your possession, now just beyond the realm of the actual. It's a bittersweet look: though the idea that hoverboards existed is destroyed, the joy that this idea once brought you remains, forever accessible as a source of dreamy comfort on rainy and sunny mornings and afternoons.

Then again, if those happy thoughts aren't enough, and you have $9000 lying around, you can just go and fuckin' buy one, dude.