Phasers on KILL!

Many of you have probably figured out by now that I've got a soft spot in my heart for THE FUTURE. I've been obsessed with it ever since I was a baby. My mom says one of my first words was "spaceman." I could never get enough. Star Trek, Lost In Space, Battlestar Galactica, Space 1999, etc. If there were aliens or robots to befriend/defeat, I'm in.

This is why I'm currently so distressed. It's a solid decade after John Koenig and his pals got their moon base blasted out of orbit on a madcap'd romp around the galaxy and this happens.

HOW THE HELL ARE WE GOING TO GET TO THE FUTURE IF WE CAN'T EVEN UPGRADE OUR TV!? I've been hearing about the change from analog to digital broadcast for years now and I don't even have an antenna for my TV. How the hell can so many be unable to figure this simple thing out. More importantly: why do we care?

Broadcast TV is a pretty simple business model. You get it for free in exchange for being force fed commercials of how you can get your whites whiter and that the break you so rightfully deserve will involve meat from cows that spend their entire adult life in a 3 by 6 pen standing in their own shit. Easy! This is why I have a hard time believing that someone with the capability of using Tide and a McDonald's drive though can not figure out how to get a simple converter box for their TV set. I'll venture to say that the people who are unable to figure this out don't deserve to see network TV. Why? Because they are holding me back from living in the FUTURE. These are the same people who probably have rotary phones and cars that need leaded gas. They're voting against stem cell research and are probably angry that we've got a black guy in the white house. Scratch that... these people aren't voting at all. That requires effort.

Many say in jest, "Where is my flying car?" "Where is my jetpack?" Why no robots?" I'll tell you why. It's because every time we try and make an incremental change we've got ma and pa Kettle sitting on their porch yelling about the good old days. You know those days! The ones where your kids were crippled because they couldn't get enough vitamin D. Now we live in a world deprived of the cuteness of the rickets sufferer!

When I'm king there will be no pity for these people. They would have woken up on the analog TV cut off date with a TV screen full of snow. They may even have to deal with no TV for weeks until they can figure out how to go to Best Buy and get one. Many will call me cruel, but I think of it as tough love. If they don't learn that they're going to have to be on their toes about such developments they're going to have an awfully hard time the day the Machine show up to connect them to the Matrix.