The Singularity

The day when we can download our consciousnesses onto chips is nearing and the Complete and Total Loser is all for it, even though he won't benefit from it. He's sure not to have enough money to do this when he's in his 80s, and by that time there will be a negligible amount of his mind left to convert to binary code anyway.

This matters not to him. Time Magazine, which put the singularity and it's byproducts on its cover this month, says that when it occurs it will give humans an immortality of sorts, yet that's not true; we would no longer be human. Granted, when this happens we'll be able to construct a reality around us that makes us think we're human, but surely we'd tweak things or, more likely, overhaul them entirely. The Loser would erase from his mind the memories of his thousands of humiliations, rejections and failures, add five inches to his height, subtract many years, give himself an ocean of hair, mend his crippled limb. He would throw in charm, good looks, a 500 I.Q., the best sense of humor ever, the ability to play all sports perfectly, the talent to write well, act, and compose music and all the elusive qualities that would make loved by women and admired by men.

The Loser expects that all others would do this. If we do, how much ourselves are we? If we chose to throw a switch and interact with others, we'd live in worlds populated by only movie stars, athletes, presidents, deep sea divers, astronauts and fighter pilots. It would get silly and tiresome fairly soon. There would be no complete and total losers to compare yourself to.

Still, it would be good to be able to live as you wish until it bored you and to then painlessly switch yourself off, with the option of turning yourself on every few decades or centuries just to have a look around at what the world's like.
This, incidentally, is my 100th post.

The Loser, the kid, and walking

The Complete and Total Loser is a gimp, of course, but he tries to keep in some kind of shape. He's 5'9" and keeps his weight around 160, though it has gone up from that at times. He lifts weights, bicycles, does abdominal exercises, eschews sugar and red meat. And, being a loser and unable to get a real job, he works on his feet all day. 

So he's surprised how much faster young people walk than he does. Last week, as the Loser walked from a train station to his elderly parents' house it was a boy, a teenager probably, who was over six feet tall but didn't look like a jock. He was half a football field ahead of the Loser within a minute of leaving the station. 

Today it was a girl. As the Loser headed toward the door of the slowing train he nodded to the girl to cut in front of him as she got out of her seat. Pretty, perfect skin, tight jeans and a U.S. Polo Association jacket. She went in the same direction as the Loser, which most pedestrians don't from this train station. The Loser, technically old enough to be her grandfather, resolved not to follow too closely as her feminine attributes from behind were fetching. 

He needn't have worried. The light, scissoring motions of her legs moved her much faster than the Loser, who tried to at least keep the same polite distance behind her without breaking a sweat on a cold late-winter day. She couldn't have been more than 5'3" and probably weighed around 110 pounds, but somehow she effortlessly kept well ahead of the Loser, who churned furiously behind her. 

He is getting old. And older.