This Blog is my Silver Alert System

Today I decided to borrow 2001: a Space Odyssey from the Open Library.

Why did I do it? Something akin to morbid curiosity. I wanted to see if the book was as bad as the movie.

You’re not supposed to say 2001 or any other Kubrick movie is bad, but it was. It was extremely boring, and the uninteresting theme could be summarized on a postage stamp. A kid in elementary school (or, more likely, in his freshman year of college and high on weed) could have come up with it, and I’m sure many, many have.

Kubrick made other bad movies. The Shining was awful. I can’t understand how The Killing ever made it past the script stage. I threw out my Paths of Glory DVD. Full Metal Jacket was entertaining until Pyle died, but overall, it was a clumsy slander of the United States and our military.

Dr. Strangelove was a brilliant comedy with a trite, nonilluminating premise, but the credit should probably go to the screenwriter. A Clockwork Orange was very entertaining. Not the healthiest fare, however. Kubrick made beatings, murder, and rape funny. They’re actually not.

I haven’t seen any other Kubrick films. Maybe they’re fantastic and I missed out. I may have seen Spartacus, but I can’t recall. I know I’ve seen bits of it. It appears that it didn’t rock my world.

Kubrick is like Robert Altman. People fawn over him, but when you watch his films, it makes you wonder if they were paid off.

If you’re not familiar with 2001, let me ruin it for you. I’m doing you a favor.

A big box appears to filthy monkeys who will later evolve into us. It magically enables them to use tools, so they learn to use bones as clubs. Then the movie skips a little bit of our history, and we find another box on the moon, where we have a base. The box sends radio waves to Jupiter. How we figure out they were aimed specifically at Jupiter, I do not know. We send a huge spacecraft to Jupiter. The spacecraft’s paranoid computer kills all but one crew member. That crew member ends up alone in a badly decorated hotel room in space, where he spends about 60 years getting old and dying. He expires as another box looks on from the foot of his bed. Then he turns into a giant space embryo.

That’s really all there is to it.

If it doesn’t sound profound or even clever to you, I can relate. If Interstellar is a Shakespeare play, 2001 is a Dick and Jane book.

See the box. See the monkeys. “Dick, do you see the bone?,” said Jane.

One reason I felt like looking at the book (a project I may well abandon) is that I feel somewhat like Dave, the crew member trapped in the hotel room. I am in a luxurious environment, secluded from humanity, while a greater being improves me and prepares me for the next phase of my existence.

My computers have not tried to kill me yet, however.

Or maybe they have, but they’re being really sneaky about it.

I think my ice cream machine will get me first.

In other news, my Christian Mingle situation continues to deteriorate. I complained because I was running into only two types of women: numerous African men, with gorgeous stolen photos, pretending to be women, and a trickle of ugly women who were all too real. Since then, I have learned that some of the ugly women are also scammers.

What does it say about you when African con artists think you’re so desperate you’ll abandon all the rules of Internet safety in order to talk to a woman who looks like Roger Ebert? It’s definitely not a compliment.

If I were that desperate, I wouldn’t be single, now would I?

Desperate people marry young.

It reminds me of one of life’s strange truths: many successful prostitutes are ugly. There are beautiful women all over the world who can’t get a date, yet extremely unattractive women do a brisk trade, charging men for sex. I guess there must be Minglers who jump at the chance to converse with women I would cross the street in order to avoid making eye contact with.

Or maybe African scammers are even worse at their jobs than I thought.

I have noticed that women do something I have done. Sometimes the site sends me matches, and I’ll “like” women who look like possibles, just so they’ll be saved in case I decide to go back to them. When I look for them later, their profiles are gone. It means they looked at my profile, shrieked in horror, and blocked me. Maybe some of them have changed their names and moved to foreign countries.

I can’t complain. I’ve done it, too. I quit, though. Now when someone who could never, ever work out contacts me, I send them a very gentle rejection message. I don’t know if it helps, but it seems like the stand-up thing to do. It has to be better than hiding and treating them as though they’re not important enough to receive a response. I also pray for people I reject.

It won’t be long until my subscription runs out, and then I’ll be free again. Right now, I can’t quit looking. I am driven by curiosity. The desire to check the site is strong, but it’s not as strong as my desire to avoid giving the company more money.

The considerable unpleasantness of being involved in a ripoff dating site full of scammers is greater than the mild unpleasantness of living alone. Reaching out has actually made my life worse.

Am I going to be alone for the rest of my life? Could be. I know I’m not going to hitch myself to a woman in whom I have no interest. Maybe I should try to figure out what kind of preparation a man has to make when he expects to die single. Should I get an alert bracelet in case I fall off a ladder? Should I get disability insurance so I’ll end up in a relatively nice facility if I become demented?

Maybe old single men should form networks and keep an eye on each other. “I’m getting in the shower. If I don’t text again in half an hour, send help.”

I wonder if I could buy one of those 2001 boxes. I don’t know if it would work out. They like standing at the food of the bed, so I would constantly be telling it to get out from in front of the TV.

God will take care of my problems. I won’t worry about the future. Worst-case scenario: I don’t get everything I want here on earth, but in a few short years, I die and go where I really want to be.