1.21 Gigawatts?

Hey everybody. I’ve been away for a couple of weeks. You know I was moving, and that was part of it. But another interesting thing happened during that time off. You know how when you’re packing up your place, a place in which you’ve lived for, let’s say six years, and you find all these things you thought you lost? A cool sweater or that book you thought your ex-girlfriend stole. I ran across my old time machine. How did I ever lose track of that anyway? So I thought I’d take it for a spin to the year 2087.

Bad news, folks. It ain’t pretty. In fact, I would describe it more like a war-torn hellscape. Our great-grandchildren are running what’s left of the place, and boy, are they pissed. Naturally, I found myself a nice woody Irish tavern for some post-time-travel whiskies (some things never change) and chatted with the locals about their experiences and mine. When I told them how we’re running things in our time, they were aghast. They were both in awe of how little we cared about them personally, and also how cheap some of their most highly prized commodities are in our time. Our everyday waste just seemed so foreign to them, as if we were living in the time of Roman emperors with entire wings of our palaces filled with piles of treasure.

In no particular order, (writing on cocktail napkins is not the best way to organize one’s thoughts. A tip – when you go to the future, bring a pad), here’s a short list of the things they can’t believe we did:

Drove our massive gas-guzzling cars. (duh)

Buried our nuclear waste all over the place.

Hosed down sidewalks instead of sweeping them.

Changed nothing after we learned about global warming.

Pumped poisonous chemicals into the plants and animals we eat.

Filled their water and air with our toxins.

Ran up their national debt that they were unable to pay off when the bill came due.

Chopped down all their trees.

Had so many babies.

Built thousands of nuclear weapons.

Created a special anti-terrorist presidential military battalion to protect the president. (that one’s aimed more at the teenagers out there)

Allowed the A-TPMB to monitor elections to prevent “terrorists” from voting. (seriously kids, it’s important you listen up here)

Used air conditioning at all, let alone with the window open or when we aren’t home.

Ate things that had been "super-sized."

Strangely, the Iraq war didn’t really register on their radar. I guess after the devastation resulting from the fresh water running dry, it put the worry of high gas prices in proper perspective.

Well, that’s word from the future. I don’t even have kids, so fuck ‘em. But I bet some of you do. Whatever. You’ll be dead.