Forwards and Sideways

I should state, in case it was not clear enough, that the last post was done by my blogging patron White Rabbit NI in an attempt to give me some class of Ghost of Christmas Future kick up the arse and get me blogging again, and for that thank you dear friend. It really did bring both a smile and a tear to my Ronan Keating after a stroke like face to see everything I want from life all laid out in a nice little obituary that if I actually did die in the morning would otherwise read 'Local Radio Guy in Asphyxiation Fuck up' , that is if I decided to take that up of course and I assume it would go wrong because I am really bad with anything practical such as fixing anything, doing anything with computers and enjoying the gentle pleasure of the 'Asphyxiwank'. However it ties very nicely into something that has been swimming around my head lately and that simply is would you rather get a sneak look into your future or into what might of been.

The reason why this has been going through my head recently is simply because of the 'still brilliant and I don't care what you think' show Lost. Where, in case you are actually trapped on an island and don't know, the viewers at home have over the seasons been given a look into the characters past, future and most recently what may have been. Now like I said recently I have been thinking about all three for different reasons. Firstly the 'Flashback' has been coming into play because of my hobby of getting really drunk and losing my phone, this has happened so many times now if it ever turned in an Olympic event I would have more gold than Simon Gruber had just before John McClaine came and blew him up in Die Hard with a Vengeance. So when this happened again a couple of weeks ago to a pretty new Samsung Tocco Lite (horrible horrible phone, almost glad it went) I had to go back to an old phone that I had lost ages ago but had managed to turn up a couple of weeks later. The plus side of this I thought was a lot of my numbers would be saved but it also gave me the odd trill of going through old text messages. Now I say old text messages, I'm not talking about the glory days of mobile phones where they came in lovely plastic covers and it was impossible to use one without hearing 'Baby Im ready to go' by republica playing, these texts went back to about a year and a half ago. However as we all know a lot can change in a month, let alone a year and a half. Now lot of them could be copied and pasted into the current inbox with them simply saying

'yeah, Whelans at 10 then'

'No, of course I didnt see Doctor Who you floppy haired twat'

and ' That back street Doctor you go to, still 45 quid?'

but apart from these there were texts from people I had forgotten about asking on dates, the reasons why the date did or didn't go ahead and texts about arguments that may have meant something at the time, now had been completely forgotten. Though among all these the ones that stuck in my head were a lot of text messages to someone that literally meant the world to me that now for numerous reasons, that apart from the odd facebook quip back and forth, a year and a half later is not really a part of my life. Now I don't mean that in a 'big lets listen to some emo and cry' but it just makes you think about whats meant to be. Which brings me (finally wooo) onto the point of this post, if given the choice about seeing the slightest glimpse of your future or what could have been, which would you choose?

At this point, lets set up some ground rules. As much as the wanna be time lord in me hates to do this, all games need rules so in this you can't change anything in the future, that is set. Imagine it being , to bring back my boy The Doctor, two buttons in front of you where after being explained the rules you choose either the big red button 'Forward' or the slightly off cream button 'Sideways' and then a dream like glimpse of your choice. So what do you pick?

When I first thought of this, it was because I thought would it not be wonderful to get a sneak peak of the future. Now I love a good spoiler of a TV show, when it gives you just enough to tease you into really wanting it, kind of like a stripper only when you get too much of a TV show MegaVideo might say 'Oi, enough of that for 70 mins' with strippers a rather large man in black comes in and gives you a damm good kicking. For example in one of my favorite episodes of lost, you see the future of the character and all round hunk Jack, in this he gets the girl he wants and is happy, also if you like look up an episode of 'Weird Science' where the main character gets a magic watch that would beep once he is around his future wife. So its this need to get the tiniest of spoilers into the future that had me sure I would hit the 'Forward' button and see do I get the comedy career, the role of being The Doctor and do I get the girl. However it of course was never going to be that easy, in both the T.V. examples the character Jack fucks up his bit of future happiness and in Weird Science the watch never worked, it just beeped at a random girl in order to give him the confidence to talk to her and also there is the huge issue of if your future was in no way what you wanted, could you live with it or just accept that something is going to push you that way.

So my hand might begin to move over the custard cream colored 'Sideways' button just for the trill of what if. Now for me (I hate always talking about myself by the way but the many pictures of me on this site should give you a clue that I get over that quickly) I have a moment in life, as I'm sure we all do, where if a 'Flash Sideways' were to happen it would be around this moment, and this moment is, the time when I didn't do transition year and went right into 5th year. Now while this might bend the rules slightly because my class were not given the option, for various school board reasons to do transition year, its the fact that I was going to 100% do that year but were not allowed which brings very much the idea of 'What if'. While its for the big creamy button to say and not me, I have an idea in my head of what the following years may have been like. I think I probably would not have gone to college, probably stayed in my home town and married a lovely, attractive but a little dull girl who just happened to come along first. Now this life may have been lovely and I probably would have a lot more money than I do now, I would of missed out on a lot of stuff, and while not every moment of it, a lot of that stuff made me happy, missed out on the people that have got me thinking like this at half two in the morning and the things that made me know what I would to do with my 5'7 self. However its this feeling of being sure what my 'sideways' would be like that would make me really want to press it. If if the future is coming and I can't change it, I might as well have a look at the alternative ending.

So while I think I would go for the Sideways, I put this question out on Facebook a couple of hours ago and the vote is right down the middle. With a very cheery bunch trying to decide which would be the least depressing, knowing what will be or knowing what could of been. So while I'm nearly sure what my flash sideways would be like, the real tease is the what if of the what if, and I like that. However imaginary buttons aside in the meantime I'm going to spend a lot of time trying to turn White Rabbits charming obituary (the one she wrote I don't mean actually hers.. obviously) into my flash forward. Though if it is my flash forward and somewhere there is these two buttons being pressed by stunning 5'9 pop princesses, there is probably a very panicked Pixie Lott thinking 'I mean does the man know there are hair loss products'. So for that Pixie, I'm sorry, for now have a lovely quote though and next time a funnier blog..

"The best thing about the future, is that it comes one day at a time" Abraham Lincoln