Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Rewinding

Prettyboy often talks about how nice it would be to have a rewind button. He brings it up in the context of things he would do if he did, in fact, have such a button.

A SFW example:

"If I had a rewind button, I would throw this banana cream pie at the stuffy maitre d' to see his reaction." In this scenario, Prettyboy would then be able to hit rewind and the pie would never have been thrown, except in his memory of the event.

I often want a rewind button, as well, largely because I am a big, awkward doofus and I wish I could unsay half the things I've said, untrip all the falls I've made, and unspill all the bowls of cereal/cups of coffee/glasses of orange juice. It's in that reddened, uncomfortable, embarrassed moment immediately following whatever verbal gaffe I've made most recently that I wish against all hope that I could rewind and undo. As a teenager, I once playfully told my Daddio to "shut up," at the outset of the world's longest trip home from a party. He was angrily silent the entire time. Seething. Imagining my punishment. Becoming redder and angrier. And I sat there, helpless, stunned at the intensity of his reaction. So a rewind button, right? Would have been perfect.

What would you do with a rewind button?

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow. The possibilities... -TR

Anonymous said...

If I had a rewind button, I would rewind any and all incidents involving the conversion of a perfectly good banana cream pie into a missile. Because banana cream pie is fucking delicious.

harley said...

TR- I had a few ideas myself.

Michael- I had the best banana cream pie last weekend on the Chesapeake Bay. It had this fudgy chocolate part and real bananas on top. For that, I would willingly enter a diabetic coma.

QP said...

I would do a lot, just to see if it was a good idea.

How far back are we rewinding?

Because there are some job interviews I'd like to rewind my life back to and redo a couple hundred times until I get it right.

Suzie Schwartz said...

i'd love to be able to quit in an angry honest way and then rewind back as if nothing happened. or hit on people inappropriately. and do crazy drugs just to know what they do. but the problem is.. even if you rewind, you still did those things, but only you know so. that might be even worse. in the end we really are only accountable to our own sense of propriety.

Anonymous said...

Re: doing crazy drugs and then "rewinding"

Insofar as there is a huge psychological component to addiction (and there must be, since cocaine is not physically addictive), there is nothing to be gained from "rewinding." You would still have the memory of the experience, and you would still be susceptible to psychological addiction.

-TR

Anonymous said...

Maybe Chesapeake Bay banana cream pie is good, but the best in the world is the pie I used to get from the Camellia Grill in my New Orleans days. It was a venerable countertop diner at the Riverbend uptown, where they cooked every single item of food they offered (except the cold stuff) on the same grease-spattered, rarely-if-ever cleaned griddle, prepared and served by guys in incomprehensibly clean smocks - and the banana cream pie was so brutally effective it was party to the Geneva Protocol.

Also, to return to the topic at hand, any rewind buttons should come with an accompanying, one-time use fast forward button, a Ctrl-Y for the Ctrl-Z. Because maybe you'd change your mind.

Suzie Schwartz said...

it doesnt matter how much coke you do (or other drugs) in one sitting. addiction is a process (including hte physical, emotional and psychological) and i highly doubt you could become addicted after one "rewind." plus all drugs (including pot, uh oh) are physically addicting in that it gradually alters your brain chemistry. So even if you aren't physically addicted to the substance you brain is addicted to what it does to you. Much of modern addiction research focuses on this.

Anyways, my point was a moral one.

Anonymous said...

So if it doesn't matter how much coke you do in one sitting, and if you can't get addicted after doing it just once, why not just try it - and other "crazy" drugs - just to see what they do, rewind be damned? If you don't believe in instant addiction, and you want to try a hard drug, why not, um, do it? I mean, I know a guy...

Suzie Schwartz said...

Hah. No I've been sober nearly a year and in "treatment" for over two. I've had my time.

My point is moral, and drugs are a mere example. It doesnt matter what you rewind. you still did it and you would know. it would go into your own personal history blah blah blah. I'm only accountable to me and my standards ie i do what i want, but i have to live with it.

i'll give you another example-- i could cheat on my girlfriend and then rewind it. no one would know, and it effectively would never have occurred. but I would know right? thats the point? the memory?

Ok.

Duchess said...

Now I want pie. If I eat pie and then rewind, does my body rewind the calories?

harley said...

This conversation got nice and heavy. My two cents:

Erin- pie is good and if you rewind, the calories don't count. Just as if you were eating it off someone else's plate or standing up.

TR and Zie- you both rock my world. Someday you will meet and I will tape the ensuing wrestling match.

Michael- How dare you tempt me with long lost pie from so far away. You're going to have to make me a pie-themed mix tape just to make up for it.

And now we're back to innuendo, where I'm comfortable.

Anonymous said...

It is NOT IMMORAL to do drugs.

Harley said...

I think Zie was suggesting not that it's immoral to do drugs, but that it may be immoral to do something (particularly something you had promised yourself and others that you would not do) and then rewind it so no one else knows you've done it. In relation to drugs, that would be if a former addict had promised never to do drugs again, did them, and then rewound, as if it never had happened. The moral quandry then enters because that person has done something that they had explicitly promised that they would not.

Anonymous said...

Harley, Fair enough, except I don't think recovering drug addicts should be promising themselves or anyone else that they will never do drugs again. Better to say "today I will not do drugs" and worry about tomorrow when it comes.