I was promised a jetpack. I WAS PROMISED A JETPACK!

When I was a kid, I was told the future would be full of wonders, from moon bases to jetpacks to robots walking my dog for me. Somewhere along the way, that future was taken away from us and replaced with one where we must be politically and ecologically and verbally and sexually and bio-psycho-socially correct, one where your intentions matter more than your actions and sensitivity means 'do what we say'. The jetpack is to be replaced with the high-speed train that shall take us from where they put us to where they want us to go. America can't put an astronaut into space. The Japanese have any number of robots that can walk a dog but we have invisible fences and it's good exercise, anyway, so the future gets a pass on that one.

My parents taught me to read when I was three, took me to get my first library card when I was six and made sure I read all the dangerous things; Orwell and history and good science fiction and Dickens and Twain. Ever since I was a kid, I've had problems with insomnia so there was always the History Channel (back when they had history on it) and Discovery and A&E and Carlin on HBO. All of it taught me to look for patterns and connections, to look at things from an angle and not to trust authority. One of the reasons I think global warming is a hoax is because I remember going to planetariums in the 1970s and 80s (I loved Star Wars so my dad used it to get me interested in science) and hearing about 'global cooling'. I had a sixth-grade teacher that made us watch the news ever night and I noticed how the media would pick a story and push it from the same angle until a new story came along and that major stories (drugs/AIDS/acid rain/nuclear disarmament or freeze/some other 80s problem) were 'popular' for three months or so and would give way to the new major problem.

I grew up as politically correct and liberal as could be, was properly cynical and probably insufferable until life and experience ground down the sharp edges. Time passed and my politics changed from liberal to moderate to 9/11 Republican to conservative. Underneath, though, there was the kid who wanted his jetpack. This blog is going to be a combination of musing on the day's events and political rants and essays about whatever comes to mind. It's also going to be a reminder about that jetpack. I was promised a jetpack, after all. Where is it?