Signals

Congratulations! You are one of the first humans to walk on Mars! That is so awesome! But then you suffer an unfortunate wardrobe malfunction – your helmet comes off and there you are – completely exposed to the Martian atmosphere. As you lose consciousness, you hear the sound of a piano.

Whenever I board a train, airplane, or boat, I always ask if I can drive. Except for the time when that cruise ship capsized and sank off the French coast, the engineer/pilot/captain has never handed over the keys. Still, it never hurts to ask. But when I get in a car, I almost always get to drive. Which brings us to the question of “driving” a car and the future of mobile entertainment.

Alert readers will recall that I recently heaped praises on TeslaMic, an in-car karaoke technology that gives Tesla owners the opportunity to unleash their inner Mick Jagger. Now, unfortunately, it's time for some Tesla scorn, courtesy of our Federal overlords.

I have bad news for you. Really bad news. The TeslaMic is sold out. I know – it is soul crushing. Your dreams of karaoke world domination have been shattered.

The year is 1969. I am sitting in front of my family’s TV watching live black-and-white video from the moon. High-definition TV is still science fiction, but in the blurry picture I can see Neil Armstrong descend the ladder and step onto the lunar surface. In the middle of the transmission, I walk outside and look up at the moon, waxing crescent, thoroughly amazed that for the first time people are up there looking back at me. Now, almost a lifetime later, we are preparing to go back to the moon. Just writing that sentence gives me goosebumps.

Girlfriend, I feel for you, I really do. Why can't people just accept the fact that you are a music genius? You know why they hate you? It's because they can't be you. If you win the case, they'll say you are banal, uncreative, and unoriginal. And if you lose the case, you will have plagiarized and have to pay tons of $$$ damages. It's just not fair.

I usually don’t talk to myself, but the other day I was sitting down to my favorite breakfast, a stack of delicious Eggo buttermilk waffles, and I exclaimed out loud, “Man, I need to buy some more syrup!” Later that day, browsing on my PC, I got a pop-up ad for Vermont maple syrup. I exclaimed, “Wow! What a coincidence!” And then my life spiraled out of control.