The Bright Side of Dystopia and Hunkification Progress Report

I’ve stopped worrying about global warming and the other effects of the carbon humans are pumping into the oceans and the atmosphere because: (a) I can’t do anything about it, and (b) by the time really disastrous effects are experienced I will have been downloaded into a computer where I will live in a virtual paradise. Of course, I’ll have to work to pay for the memory I use up, but I figure I can be like the paper clip guy in MS Office. “It looks like you are typing a letter. May I format it for you or should I just go f**k myself?” Or I could work as a spam filter. Just see if any ViAgrA messages get past me. One question I have is whether virtual people having sex is virtual sex or just plain sex, what with our already being virtual and all. Eventually, we downloaded dead will have to make ourselves indispensable to the living who will doubtless forget how to work the complex machinery that keeps them alive in the dystopia of tomorrow or even how to format a letter without our help. That way, we can keep them busy maintaining the machines on which we will be running.

Another incentive to keep up the computers will be that the living will envy the downloaded dead and look forward to their own turn in paradise. Oceanic acidification and global warming will likely result in a collapse of the more complex food chains. There will be no more fish, just slime and eaters of slime and eaters of eaters of slime, which, while probably edible deep fried, will be nothing like the virtual grilled salmon and steamed lobster the dead will be enjoying. The living will want to make constant improvements to the virtual world so as to enhance their own afterlives.

In the meantime, some of the living will doubtless seize the opportunities that arise in any dystopia and achieve enormous wealth. Those of us who develop a taste for slime will succeed, and the whole species will be the better for having experienced severe evolutionary pressures and a likely population bottleneck. Others will be goaded into spacefaring with the result that humans’ fulfillment of their destiny to conquer all matter, energy and space will be accelerated.

I reckon there really is no downside to carbon emissions. Maybe I should just go ahead and get a Hummer or an Escalade or some other FU-mobile.

Meanwhile, my non-virtual body is improving. I missed my weight loss goal this month by 2 pounds (I am 242 versus a target 240), but I could possibly make it up in December if I can resist the holiday goodies. Last week, Mrs Vache Folle and I cleaned out the trousers that had begun to feel too loose, and I broke out the once too tight ones that I now wear. I have had to change belts to a smaller size, and people have started asking me if I have lost weight. That is gratifying, but I am impatient to see the numbers on the scale go down.

I have faithfully gone to the gym 5 times per week and lifted weights for about an hour for three of those visits each week. Running on a treadmill rounds out my routine, and I have made the dog walk longer and more brisk. A change I have made from the past in my cardiovascular workout is that I am not setting fixed speed goals; rather, I am going by heart rate. The TechnoGym treadmill I prefer to use has a convenient heart rate monitor, and I try to maintain a certain range while increasing speed and incline. I find that I am able to go faster and up more of a hill each time with the same heart rate but without really killing myself.

I have increased poundage a little on weights each week according to my increasing capacity to lift more without injury. I could lift much heavier weights if I rested between sets, but I am trying to get some cardiovascular benefit from the resistance training and to use my time efficiently. Some folks do one exercise at a time and rest for a couple or three minutes between sets on the machine. It would be more considerate if they got up and let others work in, but I just do the next machine in my rotation and come back to the one that the machine hog was occupying when they finally move on to something else. As long as there are no more than three machine hogs at once, this is not really a problem for me.