In the year 2025,
when it will be…similar
by
Robert LaFrance
Occasionally I find myself with not
enough to do – or, more likely, being too lazy to do what I should be doing –
and I imagine newspaper headlines in the future. This morning I was thinking
about reading a daily newspaper in the year 2025. Here’s an example:
“Saint John – The murder trial of
Dennis Oland is about to continue after a 6-month hiatus because the defendant
was not up to continuing due to age-related physical difficulties. Mr. Oland,
whose lawyers have requested and received 397 delays, is on trial for the
murder of his father, Richard Oland, in July, 2011.
Coincidentally, this week Philip Gandolf, charged with murder the
day after the Oland murder and sentenced the next week after a short trial that
relied on circumstantial evidence, yesterday returned home after serving 14 years in a federal
institution. Mr. Gandolf told me that he had been lucky to only serve that
much. “My family is neither prominent nor rich,” he commented in explanation.
Not that I agree with that. I'm not cynical that's for sure.
*****************************
Another news story, this one from
Victoria and Carleton Counties, referred to Route 105 from Tilley to Bath. The
headline called it ‘The Phantom Road”.
“A janitor in a local D.O.T.
office,” began the page E31 item, “found stuffed behind a filing cabinet an
official document creating Highway 105, a route that the department had
studiously ignored for years because the road did not officially exist.
Transportation Minister Red Green, replying to a reporter’s question during a
media scrum in the legislature, said things would change from now on.
“Now that we know this and other
lost roads exist in reality instead of legend, they will be fixed. We intend to
put a new surface on Highway 105 so that when tourists are directed to take
‘the scenic route’, they will not pass out from laughing and create traffic
hazards. Your calls have been important to us, but due to unexpected high
volumes of complaints about Route 105 we have also been unable to repair other
roads.”
The minister went on to say that the
upside to the whole situation is that tourists are ‘flocking’ (I believe that
was the word) to see The Pothole Capital of Eastern Canada.
********************************
As I continued to scan the
newspapers of the year 2025 (it was late at night) I moved to the automotive
pages where the editors and writers were all agog at the newest wonder devices.
Remember how about 2012 or so we were all so amazed at backup camera, automatic
backup technology, automatic this and automatic that?
On
November 2025 the Bricklin Automotive Corporation (Yes, Malcolm Bricklin Jr. is
now living in Minto) came out with the last word in this technology. It is
called the Zizzaz and it can come up to your bedroom and wake you up, cook your
breakfast, lift you down to your car in the garage, and drive you all the way
to Moncton where you may see an Ivan Hicks show. Then Zizzaz can bring you back
home in one piece. What an invention!
Of course there are a few minor
flaws in the technology. One day last week about 6:30, just when Flug and his
14th wife Zsa Zsa were getting reacquainted (as it were), Zizzaz
came into their bedroom, picked up Zsa Zsa, and took her to Austin, Texas. A
software glitch without peer so far.
I have often wondered in the past
decade as this junk has been laid on vehicles, where does it end? Would I
really want to rely on computer software to park my brand new Volvo? What do I
say to the insurance company people if there were a collision? “I was sitting
in Mary’s Bake Shop having a doughnut and relying on my car to park itself.”
***********************************
Usually the news about dogs and cats
isn’t on the front page, but in this 2025 paper I am perusing there was indeed
a story about house pets, which, in the old days would have lived everywhere
but in the house. The new law – they are official declared human (if that’s not
too insulting).
Any day now I expect to hear about a
new law that makes children sleep in little houses on the porches, and the dogs
and cats take over the bedrooms inside the house. It would be cruel to expect
little Fido or Ginger to go without their own bedrooms. Occasionally I hear
about someone spending $3000 on an operation on their 16-year-old cat while
their kids’ dental surgery waits until next year. IT’S A CAT!
Ah, well…in the French phrase: “Plus
ça change, plus c'est la même chose.” The more things change, the more they
stay the same. As I look around today at the multi-billion dollar pet food
industry and the money spent on pampering house pets, I realize that it ain’t
gonna change until the cost of a brain transplant comes down to $75. -end-
No comments:
Post a Comment