No. 9~ Midnight in the Garden of Everything Being the Worst Thing Ever
Look me in the eyes. Okay, if you can't find me, find a picture of me and look at that picture deeply in the eyeballs area. Actually, if we don’t know each other, don’t look at me deeply because dude seriously stop staring at me, or I am going to have to punch you. LISTEN, just METAPHORICALLY look me in the eyes, and tell me that you’ve never once wondered what you would do if you had yourself a nifty little time machine.
Bzzzzt, sorry, I have bad news for you. Time travel is not an exciting topic anymore. The idea of traveling through time is blasé, so much so that the mere thought of it causes me to use douchebag words like “blasé.” Every film in the past 20 years that’s used time travel as a plot device has done so out of what seems to be sheer, pathetic desperation for an unpredictable-yet-underwhelming plot twist. Anything is possible if you just GO BACK and DO IT AGAIN. The audience is too distracted by the agonizing threat of another plot twist and they lose sight of what’s truly important in the any half-decent science fiction film: contorted, overacted facial expressions.
But there is also good news, everyone! You, as taxpayers (I am assuming you pay your taxes) (Hey! Pay your taxes, deadbeats!) are probably funding someone’s career in STILL taking time travel seriously. It’s not a widely-publicized position, and in fact, I’m willing to bet you’ll never notice. If that guy died, you would not see a noticeable change in your tax withholdings. But nevertheless, someone out there has dedicated his life to proving that Ashton Kutcher could have gotten that girl to love him without going back in time a bunch and eventually losing his limbs and drowning or whatever. And the sad part is, even with that awesome career, he probably still has a water cooler in the office where he complains about something.
You take life seriously. Your plight is a terrifically difficult one; it is a struggle and it’s most important that you are not the only one who knows about it. Everything is a goddamn dilemma and let’s all frown about it until nothing is done and we all feel worse. I know that everyone really just wants to feel specifically important and so that is why I’m about to tell you this awesome point.
You are without a doubt, the only person with your specific set of problems. No one else on earth has the same things to complain about. Isn’t that neat? Sure, a lot of people are [understandably] infuriated that their phone loses signal across the same half-mile on their commute home. And all kinds of people are also angry about their neighbor dropping acid and watching Happy Days reruns at 3:30am. Surely, someone out there is annoyed that her kid laughs like Fran Drescher. And without a doubt, someone ordered a sweater in blue and they sent a navy one instead and God dammit I already have a navy sweater, is someone seriously out to ruin my life?
Your problems are Your Problems. Each one is probably not specific to you, but if you write out a list of things that piss you off right now, that list is going to be really, really unique. And that’s pretty cool, if you ask me. Next time you are angry about your job or spouse or girlfriend or Warcraft guild or dog or dog’s tail or the President, and wouldn’t it be so much more relieving if I just updated my Facebook status with how tough life is it is, I want you to really think about how unique you are and how everyone probably already knows that, AND/OR, doesn’t care.
Let’s face it. It is still completely a lost cause for you to ever become a real princess or a real astronaut. Sweetheart, princesses are born into royalty or are super hot, and it’s likely that you are not Kate Middleton material. True facts o’ life. And the US canceled its manned space program, so calm down, young Joaquin Phoenix. Start putting your eggs in the “Virgin Galactic isn’t a huge goddamn publicity stunt” basket, and maybe you’ll get into low orbit one day.
But when you end up dying one day and no one ever made a Wikipedia page about you, try to understand that that is not tantamount to leaving this earth having accomplished nothing. Remember! You were unique! People probably didn’t get you mixed up with other people that often! Who knows, maybe by the time you’re on your death bed, Dr. TimeTravel McPipeDream will have put the finishing touches on his shiny DeLorean, and you can go all the way back to the beginning and start fresh, creating a whole new set of terrible problems by which to define your existence. To infinity, and beyond!