Future Literate Me

Well this is it guys, the final blog. I would like to use this blog as a chance to express some regrets as well as paint a (hopefully accurate) picture of the future of my literacy. Let's start here, first of all future literate me is certainly NOT typing this blog a day late because he procrastinated and planned to start the assignment at 10 PM, but instead fell asleep on the couch watching a Tarantino movie for the second time this week (two separate occasions, two different movies, same director, crazy, I know.) Now that that is out of the way here is what future literate WILL be doing, and I apologize if  this gets redundant.
Future literate me is relaxing on a sturdy but comfortable wooden chair with a slight incline, at an undisclosed location, somewhere close to a mid-size body of water. Future literate me is leisurely turning the page of some eastern religious text. Or maybe a study on insects of the American North East. Future literate me has read the Qur'an. Future literate me has read seven different translations of the Tao Te Ching. Future me knows the exoskelletal differences between a katydid and a cicada. Future literate me will tell you the difference, but only if you ask. Future literate me is thinking about how the feeding technique of the Northeastern woodpecker applies to his life. As future literate me raises a glass of cold but not too cold seltzer, he ponders the concept of there being no gravity at center of the earth. Future literate me is writing a children's book that he does not intend to publish. Future literate me has paired each of his top ten favorite novels with corresponding albums, and ice cream flavors. Future literate me is cutting pictures out of The National Geographic and pasting them into The New Yorker. Future literate me has learned the secrets of time travel and in a series of Bill and Ted like events has gone back in time to edit this post to make sure the details are correct. Future literate me realizes that past tense illiterate me got all the details right in the first place so time warps back to the future without editing a thing.

Listen up you uncultured swine! (the music of The Velvet Underground)

Cultural literacy, to me, is a dangerous concept because it implies that there is a cultural "language" of people, events, and ideas that you have to know about in order avoid becoming an uncultured loser. To tell someone what they need to know about in order to be culturally literate is kind of a balancing act, which if unsuccessful, leaves you drowning in an ocean of pretentiousness. While on the subject of things that are sometimes misunderstood as being pretentious, I'd like to talk about the music of The Velvet Underground. The Velvet Underground was an American rock band that embodied the late sixties New York City underground music scene. The Velvets were one of the first groups to start making Noise Rock music. They often blurred the line between music and pure noise via screeching guitar feedback, which was usually set to simple solid song structures. Their lyrics, written by singer and poet Lou Reed, often detailed the events of no-income New York City life, including tales of transvestites, drug deals, murder, prostitution and other savory subjects that your grandparents probably don't want to talk about. Although late sixties rock music is sometimes thought of as a colorful psychedelic sing and dance along, The Velvet's music is more like a black and white movie about a sexually ambiguous criminal, who is actually really nice. The combination of a game changing musical style, and real raw lyrics, result in music that is strange but beautiful and kind of makes you realize that the world is a scary place, and that your parents are just trying to protect you until it's too late and then you're on your own, and that you don't really know what you are doing, you could totally get killed at any second by anyone, and come to think of it they're probably in your room right now. Did you check the closet? No? It's too late now. This is how it ends. All alone at your computer, tablet, fablet, (nook? Kindle fire? Kindle fire HD?) or mobile cellular device, reading my blog. Was it worth it? I hope so.