Drunk thoughts...

So, of course I headed to Swan's tonight, considering I haven't really seen Joe since the weekend. I got into a talk with Dale -- it's a Wednesday night and shitty weather, so the bar was practically dead. Only the regulars. So, anyways to Dale -- he's this really eccentric guy. He's in his late 40s/early 50s, lives by himself, doesn't look the part of an intellectual but is very interesting to talk to. He's a member of Mensa, yet he is a drywaller and has done physical labour most of his life. What is so fascinating about Dale is his collecting. His life is consumed by reading and collecting. He owns 15,000 books. He checks out flea markets and garage sales every weekend, dumbfounded by the 'potential' value of the things people want to get rid of. He's all about the first edition of this and the oddity of that that might be rare and valuable in the long future. He obviously collects books, but also pop memorabilia, newspapers for the front covers, magazines from up to 100 years ago, first edition lunch boxes, shampoo bottles, spice bottles -- everything. He has already made a lot of good money selling obscure stuff from the early part of the twentieth century.

While he was telling me about the range of stuff he has stored away in multiple places all over the city (he even has boxes marked 'do not open for 20 years' in various places), I couldn't help thinking of the future and wondering what society would be like in 20 or 30 years and whether there would still be a market for collectibles. It's things like this innocuous situation where I start suddenly analyzing my thoughts about such issues as Peak Oil and climate change and how much our society 'might potentially possibly concievably be transformed' in such a way in the future in such a way that we wouldn't recognize today. I'm getting consumed by the inevitable deterioration of the over-extensions of the past 50 years. Like, 30 years ago, things weren't much different from today, but that's not to say that 30 years from now things won't be insanely different. I wonder how things are going to unfold once the playing card of cheap energy is removed from the game? Is anyone even going to be concerned about collecting memorabilia? Maybe it will be the hip thing to do! I really, really hope so. I just think Dale is expending a lot of energy on a possible future that could very easily be wiped out by some sudden change in status quo that renders everything we regard as normal suddenly inconsequential. He's throwing a big crapshoot. Maybe he'll win big. Maybe he won't.

It seems a virtue of a over-privileged society that is able to afford collecting kitsch from the past. But who am I to judge about excessive lifestyles? I own five bikes and rubber clothes, for chrissake! No one should judge how a person should set themselves up for a future that may or may not exist. Their guess about how things will happen are as valid as mine are. Am I going crazy with worry? That this starts to consume all of my thoughts? That I worry about the course of humanity and that we are about to witness something radically tranformative within our lifetimes (as I've said many times before)? Yes, I blame Dale for these thoughts tonight...Oh yeah, I forgot, I'm drunk....zzzzzz......