Letter to Grady From The Future

Dear Grady from the future,

Or should I call you Dr. Zeitgeist, because I'm certain you have changed your name by now?  You probably don't remember me, but I am you from the distant past.  That's right, you are receiving this letter through an advanced method of time-travel that I thought up after nearly suffocating in my pillow when I was sleeping off a night of binge drinking.  But I don't need to tell you... certainly you remember the moment when you devised this method.

So anyway, how is the future?  Is it as great as we always imagined?  Who am I kidding, of course it is.  Tell me, did manufacturers ever perfect the flying car?  And did Toyota ever recover from the mass-recall?  Yeah, I didn't think so. I bet flying cars are pretty awesome... unless they are obsolete after the perfection of molecular transport?  I'm sure your knowledge of physics, engineering, and biology had a hand in its creation.  Either that or you greedily developed the entire process in the basement of some tenement warehouse, later selling the devices for cash to the Department of Defense and then suing them for patent-infringement when they mass-developed them in laboratories.  Because that's what I would do- and you are me after all, though probably more distinguished looking and admittedly wealthier.  After thousands of man hours on Photoshop, myself and my crack team of Scott and Rick have devised an approximation of what you undoubtedly look like at the time of reading this, so far in the future.

Anyway, I'm writing this to congratulate you on your recent cover-story write-up in Times, Forbes, and Rolling Stone magazines.  And of course your recent receipt of the Nobel, Pulitzer, and Hip Hop Artist of the Year awards.  You certainly deserve it.  You probably don't look so far back in your past, but you came from an impoverished background and a clearly dysfunctional family.  Your school teachers all admitted that you were "incredibly bright", but they thought your education was hindered by the fact that you were a "smart-mouthed little shit."  You had some hard times until your late twenties; times which involved moving from couch to couch, working simultaneous and menial part-time jobs which worked you beyond the scope of minimum wage, without bothering to pay you beyond the scope of sweat shop salaries.  You had a formidable drinking problem and you smoked two packs of Pall Malls a day, fighting with your increasing weight and decreasing sex drive, but you clearly got over it.

By the way, how is the White House treating you?  Is the Oval Office as big as it looks in television sets made in its approximate image?  And do you make prank calls from the red World War Three phone?  I guess it's the WWIV phone now, after that 'little' incident with the Morlock revolution, but hey, it couldn't have hurt your image with the press.  Nuking New Zealand probably didn't even make a second-page story in any paper world-wide.  And I'll bet Australia paid handsomely.  Discreetly, of course.

Well, I suppose I should be going now.  The case of beer didn't last as long as it should have and I need to go to the liquor store for a few bottles of rum.  It's Pirate Night here and I'm going to dress up and wave the Calico Jack flag around, pushing people off the balcony of my apartment building when they walk by.  This is as close as anyone can get to walking the plank on Pirate Night.  Anyway, congratulations for overcoming all of your vices, poverty, self-destructive behavior, and lack of any true talent in any applicable field and becoming pretty much Emperor of Planet Earth.  You really have exceeded my expectations and I therefore salute you with extra booze tonight.

Cheers!

Grady Richards

P.S.  I'm putting this letter in the mailbox today, April 6th, 2010 and it should probably be delivered here in two or three days, unless some long-dead president had a birthday I don't know about.  So you've got three-to-five days to accomplish the list of things I've mentioned before Grady from the future checks the mail.