Ticked Off by Time-Capsule Mania
Pandora’s Time Capsule: Scientists are warning that weird weather patterns in the next century could turn California into a freakish urban wasteland populated by mutant humans with microscopic brains, plastic body parts and an inability to communicate except by cell phone.
No, wait. That already happened.
Actually, the scientists predict that global warming will cause devastating changes to California’s ecology, including coastal flooding, droughts, crop destruction and warm-water animal species (such as the cast of “Baywatch”) migrating north to Monterey Bay.
Also, the Clippers might have a winning season.
Here at Off-Kilter, we can’t stand suspense, so we outfitted our time-traveling journalist in Bermuda shorts, revved up Caltech’s experimental time machine and transported him 100 years ahead to see how hot the weather will get.
As it turns out, global warming pales in comparison to another pollution crisis: time capsules. Our reporter returned with this article from the future’s only surviving newspaper, the Weekly World News:
“What seemed like a harmless little fad in the 1990s--burying artifacts to be uncovered by future generations--has become an environmental disaster. A new study by the federal government estimates that 7 billion time capsules have been found in the past decade alone and that landfills around the world will soon be overwhelmed by junk from the past.
“ ‘It’s a nightmare,’ said one alarmed official. ‘At first it was kind of fun digging up the capsules and examining trinkets from previous decades. But after the millionth copy of a Backstreet Boys CD turned up, people realized we had a serious disposal problem.’
“Experts trace the problem to the 1990s, when department stores began selling millions of home time-capsule kits. By 2025, the fad was completely out of control, especially after England decided to bury an entire city--complete with factories, roads and people--to preserve an accurate record of 21st century life for the future.
“Soon, other countries were competing to see who could design the biggest, most elaborate time capsules.
“Among the artifacts sealed for posterity were Mt. Rushmore, the Indian Ocean and opera singer Pavarotti.”
Weird Polls Bureau: The No. 1 song that people would like to see banned from weddings is Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On,” according to a survey by TheKnot.com, a wedding Web site.
Other songs listed as intolerable were Bette Midler’s “Wind Beneath My Wings,” Chicago’s “You’re the Inspiration” and Elton John’s “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?”
The least popular dance tunes were “The Macarena” at No. 1, followed by “The Chicken Dance,” “Celebration” and “The Electric Slide.”
Great Moments in History: Inventor William Frost patented the bug zapper 89 years ago this week. He called the device an “insect electrocutor.”
Best Supermarket Tabloid Headline: It’s time to break the stranglehold that the Weekly World News has on this category. So we combed the competition and found this headline in the National Enquirer: “Al Gore’s Diet Is Making Him Stupid.”
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Unpaid Informants: Hartford Courant, https://www.oglethorpe.edu/itcs/crypt.htm, Wireless Flash News Service. Off-Kilter’s e-mail address is roy.rivenburg@latimes.com. Off-Kilter runs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, we store radioactive waste in time capsules.
