HELLO PEOPLE OF THE FUTURE! (WAVE HELLO TO THE NICE FUTURE PEOPLE, SWEETIE): What will people centuries hence want to know from your blog? What will frustrate them–“Why couldn’t she have written more about ‘Metrobuses’?” What will delight them–“Oh, so that’s what a Fudgsicle is!”

What was the flu like?

Fiction lives in the details. So too does history. Thus I’m super-intrigued by the “Pepys Now Project” (link via Tepper), which gives suggestions for bloggers wondering what future-folk might want to know.

I’m going to do a kind of quickie version of their suggestions, since this sort of thing seriously fascinates me.

First, what are some of the things I do or know that might be lost in years to come? The pregnancy center immediately comes to mind. It’s an intensely feminine atmosphere–cozy, full of brightly-colored toys and playsets, lots of American Baby-type magazines, with bright displays showing photos from our parenting class. Christian mags with names I forget. A basket of stuff we’re trying to give away, which we got through an evangelical warehouse (for real): pens, lipstick that looks silver but goes on pink, nail polish, rattles, Christian romance novels, I don’t know what all. One girl polished each nail a different color while waiting for her appointment. We also do a brisk trade in PowerPuff Girls coloring books, and a weird “hip” version of the New Testament, a “study Bible,” which I suspect I’d dislike if I ever had time to read it. We have a good “Bible selections for women in crisis” purse-sized book, though, which I like a lot. The general atmosphere of the center is somewhere between grandma’s house and, well, chaos.

I own three kinds of musical recordings: tapes, CDs, and records. My strong impression is that records have a more summery or autumnal sound, full-bodied, rich, chocolatey, whereas CDs are wintry, precise, both crisper and a little colder. (This is especially true of older CDs.) Tapes are the worst of every world–cracklier than vinyl, short-lived and very easily destroyed (the brown tape ravels and tears at every opportunity), neither crisp nor full. But they’re cheap as all get out, especially before the MP3 Age.

I live on 16th Street, downtown. It’s never dark in my apartment, and it’s never quiet. The orange street light spills in through the venetian blinds in a very film-noir way. There are cars at all hours. Occasionally prostitutes. Very, very often, there are sirens; but during the day, that may mean a motorcade, not an emergency. It’s very safe precisely because 16th Street is so well-lit and well-traveled.

I have some wacky birth defects; maybe future-people won’t know as much about those. I have a large scar on my throat from a tracheotomy when I was an infant. It’s sort of star-shaped (if stars have shapes!) and puckered and not especially pleasant to look at. I used to be really self-conscious about that. Now I basically don’t care. I was a bit miffed when it was airbrushed out of a picture I needed for journalism-publicity reasons. Yes, this did influence my view of abortion a little bit, but only once I’d already become pro-life. When I supported legal abortion I just didn’t think about the whole “Oh, I could never bring a child with life-threatening birth defects into the world, it would be better if those children were never born” thing.

I can’t wear contacts. I’ve tried. But I just. can’t. deal. with putting my fingers in my eyes. Even applying mascara has a hint of “Un Chien Andalou” for me–I do it, but it took me a while to get used to it, and I still can’t use eyeliner. Eyes are no-fly zones as far as I’m concerned. So I wear small glasses and have no peripheral vision and took a self-defense class in which I would generally end up fighting a big menacing blur.

Now for some of the New Pepys Project’s questions.

Place: What do I see when I look straight ahead? Computer, obviously, with a St. Joseph holy card taped to the side, a bunch of business cards I need to deal with stuck into the keyboard so I won’t lose them, and a bottle of CVS brand ibuprofen. A mess of papers and a ballpoint. (I totally agree with David Gelernter’s idea that we naturally think in piles, not in file folders.) A blue squeezy ball, the kind executives use to relieve stress, which I’m hoping will build my hand strength in preparation for more pistol shooting with the Oligarch. A day-by-day “365 Stupidest Things Ever Said” calendar. Several cardboard cups of elderly coffee–ugh. Spiral notebooks. A book I’m reviewing. A silver-colored folding chair.

When I look behind me, I see a book of photos of New York, underneath a dictionary of saints; two boxes of unused checks; two matching cat figurines; a kind of mini-tambourine The Rat got me in, I think, Mexico. Next to it is my small shrine-y corner: several prayers; the palm from the most recent Palm Sunday; my baptismal candle in its long cardboard box; a somewhat saccharine devotional picture of St. Therese looking a lot like my actual patron saint, St. Elizabeth of Hungary; two St. Edith Stein holy cards; a crucifix; a missal; another candle from I-forget-where, probably last Easter; and holy cards with a reparation prayer to Jesus and a prayer to the Holy Spirit.

What am I wearing? Polyester, of course! A brightly-colored polyester shirt, with huge, very ’70s lapels and wide cuffs–mostly tan, with big blue and red flowers and random white geometric designs. I love this shirt. Gray pants that are supposed to look like wool, but don’t really. Most of my clothes are polyester. So easy to wash!

What makes a joke funny? I will try to be both illuminating to future-folk, and not soporific to present-folk. Let me tell you my favorite joke and then briefly sketch the stuff it’s playing on.

An Englishman, a Frenchman, and an American are sojourning in some remote part of the world, when they’re captured by cannibals. The cannibal scouts drag the captives to their cannibal chief, who looks them over and pronounces them tasty morsels indeed–and their skins will make excellent canoes! But the cannibal chief is a man of honor, and he says he will allow them to choose the method of their demise and speak a few last words before they’re skinned and popped into the stew.

The Englishman chooses a pistol. He shoots himself, proclaiming, “God save the Queen!” They eat him and make his skin into a canoe.

The Frenchman chooses a dagger. He stabs himself, crying, “Vive la France!” They eat him and make his skin into a canoe.

The American chooses a fork. The cannibals are consternated, but they give in; he gets the fork. He proceeds to stab himself all over his body, shouting, “So much for your $#@!ing canoe!”

….So, why do I love this joke? It gets at the essential pigheadedness of the American character–the violent, inventive, rebellious, individualist, crass, young streak. It may not have the forbidding eloquence of “Don’t tread on me,” but “So much for your $#@!ing canoe!” wouldn’t’ve made a bad Revolutionary War slogan, no?

What surprised me most recently? Tough question. I was surprised today when a woman in counseling used the word “sin” to describe something she’d done. We don’t hear that a lot.

I was very surprised at how quiet my parents’ house seemed after the noise of my apartment–I remembered their house as fairly noisy, due to the combination of shrieking insects, barking dogs, old-house creaking, and muffled traffic on 16th Street. Surprised, and I must say frightened, at how dark the streets were, after the constant ghostly orange night-light of my neighborhood.

I was surprised when an Iraqi man tried to pick me up by telling me about his acting career, showing me his SAG card, describing the various Iraqi-themed movies in which he’d had bit parts (including “Three Kings”), and writing me a slightly histrionic snatch of dialogue in Arabic on a page of my City Paper.

I was surprised, I can tell you!, when I was locked into my own apartment by the humidity.

I was surprised to find that Benning Road is really easy to get to if you, like, know where you’re going. It totally wasn’t where I expected. This shows how little I really know of D.C. outside the few neighborhoods I frequent: Silver Spring, Shepherd Park, bits of Takoma, Adams Morgan, bits of the U St. area, pretty much anything along 16th St., Friendship Heights, CUA, really most of the Red Line, and Capitol Hill/Eastern Market. On a similar note, I was surprised to learn that there are lots of empty storefronts in Georgetown nowadays, according to a recent visitor.