Dystopia Can Be Fun

At left, Mr. Blair. You'd know him as George Orwell. Died a young man of 46. Tuberculosis.

You'll have to excuse me of late. I'm working on a piece about two people in a technologically sophisticated setting which has become a type of dystopia. The story is about a crime and two people, but I set it in the near future because I've had enough of the recent past.

I'm a little sensitive to dystopia as shown in yesterday's post because I've re-read 1984 as part of the prep. I've read it many times so can cover the book in a couple days. It does make me sensitive however.

I know more than a little about toppling regimes, fomenting dissent, dirty tricks. I've read extensively of the course work behind such things. It is upsetting to see how the pieces fit and how they can be manipulated in my own back yard.

Anyway, working up this setting of dysfunction. Using an approach more akin to the movie Brazil for the setting though. The absurd little bits of illogic that we all encounter every day can become quite amusing with the proper handling.

Say for example, the carbon tax and its offsets.

Pollute, pay a tax. Or, sequester carbon and earn a credit which can be sold on the open market.

Apply that to McDonald's and a fat/sugar tax. They might ought to charge more for the food as a tax on the health costs their loyal customers will most likely inflict upon the rest of the risk group in their health insurance pools.

What if McDonald's dispensed insulin and Lipitor in little blue and yellow packets right along with ketchup and salt? See the conversation at the drive-though. "Ketchup, salt, insulin or Lipator?"

It's a little funny. In combination with fifty other bits, it makes the world funny. (like recording a busy signal for your message for your cell phone. People call and get two minutes of the busy signal before the "beep." It's the sort of thing a special type of person might do.)

Anyway, the absurdity of modern life twenty minutes into the future can be quite amusing.

"Do you like cats?"

"Only in bar-b-que flavor. I don't like the honey-mustard cat at all."

Please, don't eat cat. I tell that to my foxhound now. I'm not sure he's quite getting it. Neither do Cheeto and Chester, the resident mouse-eaters.

Off to write something of a future that seems a little bent. You'd expect otherwise?