It’s finally Hallowe’en! I unboxed my birthday present this morning — thank you, Donna and Gregory — a new Seiko GMT automatic watch.
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There are now two GMT watches in the collection. One has a quartz movement, but this one’s mechanical and that makes it extra special, plus it’s a Seiko (I have a thing for Seikos). I wound and set it to Arizona time (we have our own special time zone, distinct from Mountain Standard because we don’t observe daylight savings time), with the secondary hour hand on Zulu, aka Greenwich Mean Time. Just look at that hellzapoppin’ orange dial!
I understand the new speaker of the house, second in line for the presidency should Joe Biden kick it, shares the widespread evangelical belief that today’s the Devil’s birthday. I’ll have to tell Satan we share a birthday when I see him (as surely I will), and maybe I’ll get special treatment.
I’m off to see the barber soon, and tonight our friend Mary Anne is coming over, bringing dinner with her. Polly’s working a day shift at Safeway, so she’ll be home to man the door for trick-or-treaters.
Today’s my favorite holiday of the year (and no wonder). Happy birthday to all you Hallowe’en babies!
Surely I’m not the only person who as a kid loved science fiction and time travel stories, who sometimes tries to imagine the reaction of my young 1950s or 60s self looking out on today’s world through the eyes of a much older me. Not so much my reaction to the cars and electronic gizmos, but to popular entertainment. The songs we listen to, the shows we watch. And not just my younger self but typical people of the time, using me as a full-sensory conduit — a peripheral, if you will, à la William Gibson — to briefly inhabit the future.
What would we see on TV, for example, and what would we make of it? Black, Hispanic, Asian, and indigenous characters, not in subservient but leading roles. Women and girls kicking ass, running corporations, leading missions to space. Gay and lesbian couples. Sex and nudity. Language. My god, the ads, and the things they openly push, like pills for erectile dysfunction and pads for male and female urinary incontinence!
I think about this a lot. And I wonder if my grandson, fifty years from now, will have the same sort of thoughts about the holographically-projected examples of pop culture surrounding him in the family room sensory pod in 2073.