Did you know that there was an episode of Space:1999 called The Metamorph? Not to mention the whole “Moonbase Alpha” thing. Driving to work today, after the fog cleared, I saw a pedestrian, a woman in her late forties with a savage red dye-job and a hairdo just like the sort of fluffy page-boy do’s that the women on some television science fiction show had; I think it was Space 1999, but cannot find any images online. As a boy, that sort of defined the ideal woman for me. Dressed in silver, with a haircut like that, wow.

[Correction: As pointed out by Eeksy-Peeksy in the comments to this post, the show I was thinking of was UFO. So just forget all the stuff I say about Space:1999 except that Barbara Bain is pretty hot too. But really. The girls on UFO were something, weren't they? And look, their hair was purple!
I never knew that -- we had a b/w set.]

And now that we’re here in the future, look at it. What a ripoff. I mean really. Is this what you thought it would be like?

There was an article in the editorial pages of a newspaper I read. It was about robots and how they’re doing our work for us. And how we’ll have all this leisure. What it didn’t mention was that said leisure will be consumed in the form of unemployment, unless you happen to own a robot. When I was a kid, in the 1960s, we were told that increasing productivity would mean greater leisure, more time to educate ourselves and pursue hobbies. In fact, those of us with jobs, some of us at least, are working longer hours than before. If you don’t own the means of production, improved productivity does not help you.

Other than that, the future is pretty cool.

A good thing to do, try this, a good thing to do is lay on the floor. Lie there and listen to whatever. The traffic, the hum of electrical devices charging on your nightstand, your heartbeat.

It’s okay if it’s a wooden floor, you get used to it fast and it doesn’t hurt. Extra points if you have a walk-in closet. When designing your home or shopping for your rental, did you think of that? How nice a walk-in closet is? It is, because when everyone else is downstairs or in another room, you can get in there on the floor and scoot over underneath the rack where your suits hang and lie there. Looking up into the tubes of the suit sleeves and pantlegs, it’s like a delicious rest in a peaceful wool/polyester blend forest. Instead of moss it smells a little bit like you, and you’ll be happy to learn this turns out to be a nice thing. You always thought you had some nasty BO, because if you stick your head into your armpit after a bad day, of course it smells gamey. But just a little, like this, is pleasant. This is what people smell when they smell you; except for the relatively few who stick their heads into your armpits.

It is dark and it smells nice and it’s warm here under the suits. No wonder the cats are always back here. You can close your eyes and doze a little while everyone looks for you. Where is he? He has to put gas into the car. You would make a nice smelling, pleasant forest. What a relaxing discovery. You would like a forest like that. You could spend a lot of time there.

So we forgot why we swore two years ago no more Halloween parties and some idiot, me, didn’t pay attention and 45 kids got invited but luckily a couple didn’t come but I still spent a few days hanging black plastic tarps and fakey spiderwebs in the cellar and more webs in the kitchen and one little girl came early and told us “Gamma is the best reader in class!” and so we fell in love with her and let her put on one of Gamma’s Disney princess outfits, the pink one, what, Cinderella I suppose, but for trick-or-treating I think she changed into dark streetclothes, because here in Austria Halloween is relatively new, dating roughly to 1995 at most, and still entirely witch/vampire at this point; the costume party season here is the Carneval season in, what, February I guess, mardi gras and all that. So we had a lot of 6 year old and 14-15 year old vampires etc. And they had fun. And a few kids came trick-or-treating, fewer than last year, very polite, and a conservative Catholic bishop condemned the holiday celebrations as heathen so a good time was had by all except I got really tired because 8 hours is just too much for a Halloween party – we started early so the big kids could take care of the little kids, and then still have time for their own stuff later on; of course it just mushed into one long chaotic mess, but like I said, turned out well. Nothing broken, only one little boy pooped his pants because all bathrooms were occupied, a little glitter on one cat, that was it.

The next day was the big holiday here in Austria. All Souls. Radio traffic advisories warned people to take public transportation to the big cemeteries, because the parking lots were full. It began to rain.

Happy birthday, Shauna.