Thursday, July 30, 2015

Smile Please - A Poem

Greg, a twenty-eight year old accountant from Mount Gambier South Australia, read online that over the course of his life he was destined to spend the equivalent of two hundred full days brushing his teeth.

'If I focus really hard I could knock that off by the time I'm thirty and never have to worry about it again!' He immediately thought with an enlightened glee. 

By day three of near constant scrubbing his teeth were a bloody mess.
Something Greg was well aware of.
As the thought of his future getting-ready-for-work routine being flush with previously unheard of levels of lack of teeth worry freedom, left him with a near permanent, wide- mouthed, blood-ravaged, toothy smile.

Post Teleportation Society

It was now a post-teleportation society.
Things had changed.

Many of them for the better. 
People who'd climbed to the top of Everest, for example, could no longer be boasting bores who seemingly talked about nothing else.
As they'd now get shut down in ten seconds...
'Oh politics, if you ask me you really have to be dedicated if you want to get any revolutionary policies before the house these days, it reminds me of my Everest climb... wait, fuck, where am I... Oh very funny Steve, did you teleport me to the top of Everest you dick?' was now a commonly said sentence.

But there were down sides to this new society too, like sometimes your friends would think it was funny to teleport you places, like the top of Everest, and after two or three times you'd be forced to learn that it didn't matter if you were planning a trip or not, or that for some reason teleportation devices were awkwardly designed and were cumbersome and pointy in your pocket, but you better damn well carry one at all times, because climbing down Everest in shorts was chilly, and asking one of the thousands of people already up there to borrow theirs was a major social social faux-pas, almost to the magnitude of letting someone buy you a drink in a bar and then not offering to buy the next round. 

Still, there were other fun elements too. 
Like boys weekends in fun exotic locations like the new Himalayan themed casino in Vegas, or on top of Everest, first dates at romantic places like 'Ice Ice Ice' Paris's number one Everest inspired bistro, or perhaps the top of Everest, or even just having easy access to Hutty Hutty, the world's most happening Tiki Bar, located right there on the top of Everest. 

Yep it was a post-teleportation society. 
And almost everyone was well travelled, enveloped in romance and adventure, and dripping with happiness like a snow bank on Everest being decimated under the weight and heat of endless visitors. 

Everyone was happy, that is except Don Caruana. 
The inventor of the teleportation-device. 
He wasn't happy at all...
Because in all the years since his invention had taken off, not one person had teleported to his house for a visit. 
Because his previous greatest achievement, climbing Everest, now seemed pedestrian. 
And because he'd turned down the chance to buy shares in Hutty Hutty BEFORE it took off, and he now has to wait in line to get in just like every other shluby loser. 
But mostly because of the complaints. 
His cats would often hear him muttering...
'Oh it's cumbersome in your pocket is it? Oh Everest is too crowded now is it? Well I'm working on a fucking time machine and I'm going to go back and UNINVENT the teleportation device, and soon you'll never even remember it existed!'

And most of us don't.