TIME TO GO (AWAY)

Food for thought.

The British newspaper Daily Mail is a strange combination of real news, showbiz gossip, endless stories of domestic abuse, fashion advice, and Piers Morgan. On one hand, they've recently broken story after story about White House pugilist Rob Porter (combining real news and domestic abuse), which U.S. news outlets initially missed. 

And then, there's this week's stop-the-presses headline:

'Time-traveller' claiming to be from 2030 tells a shocked Australian radio show that a 21-year-old woman will be U.S. President and anti-ageing pills have STOPPED him from growing old

Whoo! That's a lot of breaking news there! Which one interests you most -- time-traveling, 21 year-old woman as president, or anti-ageing pills? Don't lie!

His face was pixilated and voice distorted during the
interview to keep from being laughed out of town.

This time-traveler, who calls himself Noah (apparently, there are no last names in 2030), took a lie detector test to prove he visited from 12 years hence. My first question would have been, "How much for an EZ Pass to travel all that way?"

To prove it was all on the up and up, the word TRUE was flashed on the video every time he answered a question correctly. No time to see the machine itself, or have an outsider confirm its veracity -- Noah has a lot to get off his chest.

For instance, he was 50, until taking the aforementioned anti-aging pills. Now he's 25 -- which isn't anti-aging so much as reverse aging, but why quibble when history is being made? For instance, you might have thought it was necessary to be 35 years old to be elected president -- but, conveniently, it will be dropped to 21 by 2030. Or, from Noah's point of view, was dropped. Writing about time-traveling is confusing us for anal-retentive grammarians.

"Yeah, I'm going to be president. You got a problem
with that?"

That future president, by the way, is (will be?) Ilana Remikee, who, Noah informs us, is Martin Luther King, Jr.'s granddaughter. Take that, wife of former president Bill Clinton!

There really is a King granddaughter, who will be 21 in 2030, and whose name -- Yolana Renee King -- sounds like Ilana Remikee after you try to say it after nine or 10 Jell-O shots. Come to think of it, it  sounds more like the name of former Scientologist and star of King of Queens Leah Remini. Remikee, Remini, Renee King -- whatever happened to easy-to-distinguish presidents names like Polk?

Putin certainly got around.

Most of Noah's other predictions are rather boilerplate. Flying to Mars by 2028! Bitcoin! Google goggles! And if a flashing TRUE signal isn't enough for you, that's your fault. As the Daily Mail explains, "Noah then claims he has 'hard evidence' to back up his predictions but isn't sure that he can reveal it because it might cause a paradox."

You know what else is a paradox? That a newspaper which has broken legitimate stories is taking this jamoke seriously.

The thing that bugs me about alleged time travelers (yes, there are have been plenty) is that they never bring back information that would come in handy. If I met Noah, there are things other than the name of future presidents I'd like to be privy to.

• A list of future Oscar winners (just to spoil their fun).
• Winning lotto numbers.
• Stock tips.
• Win, place, and show horses in the Kentucky Derby.
• The date that the supervolcano in Yellowstone blows, so I can make sure I'm not vacationing there at the time.
• Ditto the "big one" in California -- I'd like to give a heads-up to my friends out there so they clear out first.
• The date when Congress finally decides it isn't too soon to discuss background checks for buying guns. Oh wait, I already know the answer to that.
  

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