Out of Time #1, or, What Becomes a Semi-Extinction Most?

Introduction
Permit me a quick inventory of items on my computer desk:  Computers, natch (two, both remarkably obsolete and shaky, as is everything I own); books (about fifty, the necessary dictionaries, a copy of the U.S. Constitution, favorite volumes of Stegner, Joyce, McCarthy, a few Hardy Boys books, etc.); pencils and pens (more than I'll ever use); a few framed photos; a pot of ivy that, despite my pleas still flirts with ending it all; a Slinky©; tapes of old radio shows (thirty, which I still haven't gotten around to going through and putting on a CD) and dinosaurs (seven).

Let us pause briefly to contemplate these dinosaurs. Logically, you'd think that my herd (I think that seven constitutes a "herd," don't you? Do dinosaurs even travel in a herd?) of toy thunderlizards is just another extension of my Peter Pan complex (see preceding Slinky© and children's books) but you'll be wrong. I rarely play with them, fer Pete's sakes. I surround myself with these little guys for a simple reason—I can relate to them better than any other animal— being, myself, a dinosaur.

No, I do not mean that I am covered in feathers or leathery skin. I am not afraid of comets (well I am, but not irrationally) nor am I waiting for my young to hatch from eggs. The dino-characteristic that I relate to best is the one at the end. At the doorstep of The End of the World, I contemplate their dino-thoughts as the sun began to turn a permanent shade of sunset: "Wow, that's weird...pretty cool though, nice color," thought the soon-to-be-extinct dinosaur. "...wonder why everybody is coughing...it's getting a little cold...oh, crap did I just step on another little dinosaur?"  You know what I'm talking about—the moment when the last Ichthyosaur or whatever rose from where he had been hanging around somewhere down deep (insert Nessie joke here) and stuck his head out of the roiling water and said, "Hey! Where the f@#! is everybody? C'mon guys, this isn't funny anymore..."

I'm that dino-guy.

Now, hold on. I'm sure that some part of your brain balked at my upper-case reference to The End of the World, and understandably so, what with all the "moon-black-as-sackcloth" shit wafting in the airwaves these days. However, I'm not really talking about the actual "end." For the religious among you, no seals have been broken. For the secular, there is no reference here to climate change, bacterial/viral peril or the unknown dangers of the microwave oven. By "The End of the World," I am only referring to a cultural sea change currently in progress. Again, I think I know what you're thinking—Mike's going to fuss at us with another discussion about abortion, gay marriage, The War, blahblahblah, bugeebugeebugee. And again, that's not what I'm talking about at all, (if you want to read something about a few of these topics please consult some of the other rants on this weblog).

Beyond whatever moral threats there may or may not be in the world, I simply want to take a short minute to address our cultural bandwidth: i.e, the speed at which my particular machine of culture runs and how difficult it is for me to cope with it at large. To beat this metaphor further, American Culture now runs in a DSL sort of manner while I'm a 1978 dial up with the suction cups for the receiver on top.

So, I stand and watch the rest of the country move toward a new beginning culturally toward which I cannot accompany them. In no way am I critical of the Shape of Things to Come, I'm simply standing on the platform waving the rest of you goodbye. Sorry, can't make the trip with you.

*Brief demonstrations of personal devolution:

Example 1) Television.
I'm unable to defend this position. I'll admit that I watch plenty, too much in fact. With network fare, the cheap and fast decision to stick with tabloid news and reality programming as entertainment usually makes me tired. The increased loads of LOUD commercials leaves me feeling like I'm biting on tinfoil.

But all of this goes far beyond the obscenity of Wifeswap, and a screaming car commerical immediately followed by another. With a little reflection, The Great Glass Teat can be found to be at the core of all these examples of why American culture is passing me by. Television's very nature, that of speed, sonic volume and (necessary) commercialism has singularly rendered all the previous past times obsolete. Those of you that are reading this that know me at all know I've worked for television, thus I understand the imperatives of the business, that is, commerce and commerce alone (see Rule Number One on sidebar).

Obviously, I don't mind paying for entertainment. I simply find the unrelenting quality of this pursuit unbearable. There are a few minutes of the day that I don't want to feel, well like my sole existence is as "consumer." As our attention spans shorten and our cultural shorthands become more homogenized, it is not our fault, nor is it television's really. Television changed the world and therefore, we must change with it. I'm just not ready.

Example 2) Baseball.
It's my favorite sport. How passé (Equivocation #33—I don't enjoy the sport for some tweedy, romanticized, psuedo-intellectual Geo. Willian reason. I have no desire to wax poetic about the great Kinsellaesque paradise found in a ballpark. I simply enjoy the sport for its lack of speed, contemplation of strategy and love of the color green. I happen to think its fun to watch). I love it spite the fact that Major League Baseball became the Keith Richards (It's dead but just hasn't realized it yet) of professional sports somewhere around 1994. I love hockey, tennis, college football and basketball, too.
But knowing that my sport trails NASCAR, the NFL and NBA in popularity and market share proves to me that this culture sped by. I've never believed that anything that went in a circle was a "sport" (track is the exception because it was there first), that athleticism in pro football gave way to simple endurance and performance-enhancing drug use and pro basketball is nothing but professional wrestling for non-rednecks. However, I'll admit that all three play better on TV than baseball does. If you enjoy these diversions, fine. I'll be over here in Jurassic Park reading a box score.

...In the coming weeks, I'll offer a few more examples of my icoloclastic stagnation...