The New Book

Covering the history of a T-shirt. Maybe start with the Che Guevarra T-shirt.

I hate the word "new." It makes me sick to my stomach. It is meaningless. Everything is new; everything is old. Everything is now, and before, and meaningless. Does the word "tree" actually still refer to that thing in a forest? Or that thing on your wallpaper? What about the word "wall"? We don't have the linguistic tools necessary to deal with these new dimensions we are living in on a daily (define) basis. I can't remember what time-zone I'm in anymore.

So the new book, to go back to the title of this note (yet another outdated practice), will cover not history but the coverage of history. Not trees but the image of trees.

One word that has not lost meaning is "tired." Everyone in the streets in every city I have been in over the past year (a military base in New Brunswick, Canada; Montreal, Beijing, Vienna, and London) looks like they've just spent the past three years online, without a single day's break.

We used to celebrate "buy nothing" days, now what about "don't go online" days?

The problem is that even when we are not online, we are still online in our minds. There is so much information that is being processed in our heads while we are not directly plugged in that we could stare at a dark computer screen and still feel the "force" of the internet at work.

Oprah says that 60 is the new 40. But I would contend that 2008 is the new 2020. We have ACTUALLY traveled through time.

Time is only a factor of cultural change. What proves to Michael J. Fox that he is in the future in Back to the Future II? All the cool new stuff that suddenly appears before him. Has anyone noticed people on Segways in their streets? And all the major advances that have been made in every industrial and academic sector in the world?

We live in a time of anachronisms. Trees are no longer just planted things, but also figurative images digitized in ones and zeros and technicolor.

All I can say is: I miss Mickey Mouse and his theatre.