Time Travel Addendum

In the blog entry immediately prior to this one, I have written an eerily realistic alternative history of my life, if I could somehow transport my 36ish old brain to my 1983, 14-year old body. I have thought about the implications a bit more during my ride into work this morning. My important conclusions can be found below.

How one, using inflation, makes money on time travel.

I call it negative money laundering. In 2035, when it cost $75 to buy a cup of coffee, you take out, say, $200,000 in cash. You exchange NEW BILLS for OLD BILLS, and put ‘em in a laundry sack. (Note: this will cause suspicion. But I think legal problems can be avoided. To whit:

If the brand of time travel you’re rocking in the Slaughter House Five variety, that is you can skip back and forth along the time line of your own life, you can choose to avoid jail pretty easily by not showing up for that era of your life. Again, you are a time traveling motherfucker, and are above petty moral cause and effect. NICE!

Or:

You’re in a multiverse scenario, where whenever you drop out of a particular time continuum, the universe splinters to baby universes to allow the cause and effect of your actions to continue naturally. In this case, the not portable you, the one stuck in the flow of time is your pasty. And you know what? FUCK THAT DUDE. It’s not your fault he’s a sucker trapped on an inexorable hell ride to some punk ass omega point.

Again, day to day ethics and morality…out the window. No more: “Daddy ate the last pudding cup” HORSESHIT. (And daddy gets to eat the last pudding cup because the motherfucker paid for the last pudding cup, sweetie.)

Although, if you met your multiverse doppelganger, and had sex with him or her, would that be considered incest? Or masturbation? The mind reels!)

Take the laundry sack two years into the past, exchange the newer bills for older bills, go back two years, etc. Next thing you know, your 14, it’s 1984, and you are sitting on 200 grand of 80s money. You buy a condo in Malibu. Easy as pie.

Things I would buy
The Screaming Blue Messiah’s amazing first album, Gun Shy, is criminally out of print. A CD in good condition goes for something like $250.00. I pop into Tower Records, buy that shit for $9.00 and you can all kiss my ass in the present.


For the next item, I’d have to risk going back to 1981, when I was all of eleven. Being this physical age with a 36ish mind might drive one insane. I’d pick up a first edition paperback of Cameron Crowe’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High, the book the film was based on. Actually, I think you can pick it up for around $50. So I could get it in this domain of space time. It’ll just set me back a finski.