Technology and Father's Day

Dear Old Man, 



 Our new RV has a top-of -the-line satellite system (circa 2005). It's useless and giant. In 2005 it was 30k. It did poorly what a new phone does well. Why the fuck do you care? Because you never had a phone or a satellite receiver and you traveled widely. And it makes me think of how useless and futile the global communication network is... truly what an unprecedented global ejaculation of trash.  And I think you told me this was happening back in 1995.  We didn't have a VCR, we were some of the last people on the planet who rented a VCR.  This seemed absurd  to me as a kid.  A VCR seemed absurd to you as a middle aged man.  It could be time and tide, but I get it.  

If we had the VCR you couldn't have escaped twice a week down town to smoke cigarettes outside a bar, Heineken in hand and see a movie in person.  Instead you'd be bound to your bed, staring at the screen like a mental hospital inmate.  I remember I traded for a SEGA game system once.  You watched with the irritated attention of a cat as figures loped around the screen.  

"How do you know you are controlling them?"

"Watch, I push this button and he'll jump,"  I said.

Laughing now with an air of confusion and disgust, you said "how high will the poor bastard jump?"  

These sadistic devices we all constantly buy adorn our prison homes.  Make idle time more distracted.  When you were forsaken dying and alone in downtown Portland, you still went to movies, you still smoked outside bars, Heineken in hand.  You didn't shuffle between gadgets in your morgue apartment. 

Tomorrow is Father's day.  No I haven't heard anything about Lex, yes I have nightmares about him still.  There are roughly 2 million men in jail in the US.  Two million more homeless men.  And we commit suicide at a higher rate.  Happy fucking father's day.  

The plan is to leave next week.  I'll write more when I know more or when I am standing outside of a bar, smoking cigarettes with a Heineken in my hand wishing there was a decent movie to go see.


Love, D&P    


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