I was in the car just now, on my way back to the office after a long but not undeserved lunch at home, and I was baking in the sun, and I was thinking about a number of things both related and unrelated to the music piping through my factory-installed Japanese sound system. The music was Nellyville by Nelly and the thoughts wormed out of the soft earthy mush up in my noggin and wormed all over the place.

 

What did they say, you say? What did they do, you say?

 

Too bad I can’t say “do, you do?” but I can’t. It just wouldn’t make sense.

 

The worms on the other hand made perfect sense, and what they told me was this:

 

Similar worms will be worming through my body when I’m dead, if I’m buried in the ground or, heaven forbid, sprawled naked on the floor of a virgin rainforest. Next to a virgin! Or not.

 

Before those similar worms are worming through my body though, my body will be alive, yes? And if all goes well, very old, yes? Maybe even 150 years old due to modern advancements like computers and smart people that figure stuff out with the help of computers. I’m talking about an old motherfucker, here. Old as dirt, you might say ...

 

And what kind of music would that old motherfucker – me – to what kind of music would I listen? At least a tiny portion of the music I listen to now, yes? Why not? I now occasionally listen to the same music I did almost 20 years ago. Duran Duran, Van Halen, dare I say Huey Lewis and the News and the like ...

 

Who’s like Huey Lewis and the News?

 

But anyway, let’s assume a couple of things:

 

1)     At the age of 150 I still have the capacity to drive a car, flying or otherwise.

2)      I still like Nellyville by Nelly.

 

What I’m saying is, I could be driving down the highway (or skyway) and goose-necking my scrawny, bald, old-as-dirt head around in the car listening to a song called Pimp Juice. And the question is this: would that seem unusual to people? Today of course that would be highly unusual – even if you took the old man’s age down to 75.

 

75 is about the average age at which men croak these days, I believe, according to the latest studies.

 

“They” who conduct these studies write down the results and pass them to journalists, who tell you that children born now may live to 150, due to all the aforementioned newfanglements. That’s a long fucking time. What are those poor bastards going to do, work until they’re 120?

 

I’m making up all these numbers you realize. They’re real numbers but I’m making them up.

 

I don’t remember how to make up imaginary numbers. Square root of negative one? Now why would you need to find out a crazy number like that?

 

Anyway, back to the car. Not the old motherfucker flying in the car but me sitting in the car, on the ground, baking in the sun, listening to Nellyville by Nelly. I looked in my rearview mirror at one point and noticed a black man about my age in the car behind me. The car was a newish white Saturn sedan but he was driving it like a hoop-dee ’88 Cadillac De Ville, all slouched down in the seat with one hand up on the wheel and all. I wondered, though, if he might be listening to some “whitebread” or “cracker” music like Hanson or Backstreet Boys or John Mayer or something.

 

Just to balance things out. But why things would need to be balanced I don’t know.

 

You dig?