04 On the Evils of the Modern World

Speak to us of the evils of the modern world, spoke a middle aged woman, whose job it was to write movie blurbs for TV Guide magazine.
The prophet said:
There are exactly two. One is the camcorder, and the other is the cellphone.

At that point, a slight hush rippled though the gathering, and Ali, who had been taping the event for future generations, quickly shut off his camcorder, and tucked it away.

The prophet continued his narrative:
Seek not to mummify your memories on electromagnetic tape, for they refuse to be embalmed. The lens is not an eye. It records, but it cannot see. Can a Frog, high on formaldehyde, recapture the gay bounce of his former days? The more you record, the less it will mean.

Fain would I seek to live life while manufacturing a myth, but how can this be done? Don’t obliterate your present by seeking to relive the past. Would you willingly lay bare your waking hours on the editing altar, to create a memory of an event not experienced?
Or would you rather refuse to even digest your tedious footage, simply to add to the detritus that is Bob Saget’s private collection, and our very public hell? The camcorder has bestowed upon us an aesthetic that allows our eyes to be blinded by reality television and our minds to numbed into accepting without outrage a cinematic hoax titled: “The Blair Witch Project.”

Dear people of Orphalese, please don’t accept the bastardization of truth - not even in your fiction.

Just then his bloody phone rang. He chose not to answer it.