Happy New Year

It's 2010. Wow. When I was younger, I would marvel (does anyone ever marvel anymore?) at how futuristic that sounded. The Year Two Thousand Ten. Our not-too-distant future held the promise of great technological advancements for mankind, and many of those promises have been fulfilled. But some have not. I expected that by now we'd all be jetting around in flying cars and taking vacation trips to the Moon and Mars. Just like George Jetson did.

Another view of the vineyard sky.

I knew that I'd still be relatively young in 2010, if I survived my inherited bad genes and the fickle finger of fate. But it always seemed so far away, this futuristic year. And yet here it is and I'm still going strong at fifty.

But there are no flying cars. I wonder what happened. Whatever it was, I've concluded that flying cars were not a very good idea after all. I mean, with traffic these days, can you imagine? We did get flying buses, though, and even if the actual airline traffic above our heads can resemble a freeway at rush hour, at least the people driving those things are trained professionals.

Think about trying to merge your FUV (Flying Utility Vehicle, what did you think it stood for?) into traffic at fifteen thousand feet and none of those idiot drivers will let you in; it's a long way down. Not to mention that cops would likely be hiding behind every cloud to make sure you don't go faster than 365 miles per hour. As if you could in this traffic.

As for vacations on the Moon and Mars, I haven't even seen half of this planet yet. And frankly, I don't trust the airlines to make a space flight comfortable. You know how it would be: Oxygen is complimentary, but gravity is five dollars. Your luggage either gets accidentally routed to Pluto or you wait forever because it's on it's third spin around the Van Allen belt. And racing to make those tight connections on Uranus, well, we all know what a pain in the asteroids that would be.

Still, 2010 has arrived even if flying cars and civilian space flight have not. We did get Nespresso (what else?), iEverything, and Lady Gaga. And isn't that futuristic enough for now?