Immortality is the greatest thing ever. It's also highly overrated.

It would seem that my moms is reading the "Twilight" series of books by Stephanie "BRIGHAM YOUNG" Meyer. Oh lord.

There's a shitload of things wrong with "Twilight," such as the utter banality of the story to the size 40 font size to the despicable (despicable) writing style to the misogyny to the utter failure of conception that it is. But this post, like Barack Obama, is not about that. The books are bad though seriously if you take nothing else away from this, believe me that the books are bad. They're bad. THEY RAPED MY FATHER.

Anyway, I think the most repulsing thing about the books is that the protagonist (no, not Bella, the other one) is an immortal vampire who has the appearance of roughly an 18-year old post-emo shitstain. Yes of course it's a cliche, but what galls me the most is that this little wanker is immortal, incapable of dropping dead like so many NBC pilots, and yet he literally fucks around in HIGH SCHOOL. I mean, he LITERALLY does it. IN THE LITERAL SENSE. And if it's one thing I hate more than immortal vampire cliches, it's people misusing "literal."

This is how wonderfully bereft of imagination Meyer is. Here you have someone who has lived like a century, and okay yes he looks like a chump kid, but all he's interested in is banging high schoolers and flunking chemistry?

I think it's telling when anyone writes a story about immortals. In this case, we have Meyer, able to grant this enormous gift to anyone she wants, and what does she do with it? She gives it to a prick and his prick family and they squander it. They squander it by being stuck as perpetual adolescents. And while it's true that most adults really don't get past adoloscense, it's also true that they're all boring punks and are the cause of most of the world's problems and I object to being asked to sympathize with them.

In Bella Whateverthefuck (and in a lesser sense, Eddie "Not as good as Matt" Cullen), Meyer imagines herself as being a mincing vampiress living forever (or as they say in "The Sandlot," FOR-EH-VUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH) with her shitty boring boyfriend. Well I don't care how stupid you are, you're going to get bored with someone if their idea of a good time is perpetually attending study hall.

Because I mean look, can we be real for a second? Can we B Real? Cullen is a fucking VAMPIRE. He doesn't have to pretend to be a kid for the rest of his loathsome imaginary existence. I mean, for God's sake ANNE FUCKING RICE does more interesting things with her gay vampires!! But he does it anyway. And his family pretends to be boring ol' middle class chumps living in fucking Washington state. I don't get it. And I'm not supposed to get it because I'm not a middle-aged housewife who's grown bored of Fabio. But it still alarms me nonetheless.

There have been countless stories told about immortality and how great/ungreat it is. Everyone usually concludes that immortality is in fact balls, being fun for a little bit before shit takes over. I'm not so sure that I agree with that assessment, but then again, I am not immortal myself so I am biased.

I think the quintessential depiction of immortality in popular media comes in "Vampire Hunter D," portrayed quite plainly by Count Lee, the unmincing vampiric villain. Lee flat-out states that being a vampire sucks cock because it means he can't die, and that means he's bored all the time. "Perpetual boredom," he says in the dub (in Japanese he says something like "Higeyoshi tsune maka baka wa! NANI??? SUPERU-GATCHAMAN POWER UP! FIGHT FOR LOVE!!").

Well yeah, if you're an old yet powerful vampire and you have nothing to do, then yeah, you're going to get bored. Lee tries to spice things up by banging sluts but in the end it's pretty clear that he's desperate and it's sad. Then D kills him and it fucking ROCKS. Good movie go see it.

There's not a lot of nuance to the depiction, but when we're talking about shit as grand as immortality, I don't think nuance becomes a factor. At least not for long. I mean sure, after the first 100 years, being unable to die sounds great. You get to travel the world, watch the world change, see all sorts of interesting people and so on. But then we inevitably see two problems spring up: 1) a lack of permanence and 2) super boredom.

The first point usually gets brought up when people try to wrestle with immortality in fiction. Vampire stories tend to do so because the poor widdle vampire can't marry his cute human bride because eventually she gets old and then dies but meanwhile he stays studly and unchanging and Gary Oldmanish. And then he gets all sad because she's dead and he can't die and now he's allllll alone!

This may not be a problem for our adolescent types, though. Because adoloscents are unable to see clearly beyond a few days what their long-term goals are, they think that whomever they've hooked up with at the moment is their ONE TRU ROVE and then oops they get bored and there's that. Onto the next one! So if your old broad dies, well, really what adolescent immortal is even going to hang around when the first wrinkles come? Immortals don't have the luxury of loving people for who they are because there are so many damn people that it's pointless. Why get attached when you'll have centuries of hotties to work with? Deep down, adolescents know this is true but they delude themselves because the delusion is nicer. But despite their hypothetical longevity, relationships like that end.

Unless they can loophole it by making their current crush immortal, just like them, as what happens in "Twilight." Oh sorry did I spoil it for you? You're welcome.

Yes that's the solution Bella and Edvard (Slavic spelling) come up with. Bella becomes a vamp bitch and after some stupid nonsense with some other vampires, they live happily ever after. They do so because Ms. Meyer is not an adult and thinks there is such thing as "ever after." It doesn't occur to her that, in all likelihood, if Eduardo (Chinese spelling) didn't get bored with Bella (shitty name spelling) when she caught her first whiff of menopause, he would after realizing that she's an insufferable bitch and, as an immortal, he is under no obligation to put up with her shit forever. And there would go that.

So what's the deal then? Is immortality all it's crack-cocaine'd up to be? I don't really know. When I was growing up, I wanted to be a baseball player, and then a cop. I also wanted to live forever because the world was just so damn fascinating and technology was becoming cooler and shit seemed to be progressing. But now I'm not so sure. I mean, let's just stick with the practical. What if I accidentally kill someone and then I get sent to jail for life. I mean sure after 400 years someone would notice that I'm still serving the sentence, but that would really be a stupid predicament to find myself in. What if I fell into the Grand Canyon? What if I fell off a boat in the middle of the Pacific? What if I accidentally was jettisoned into space? What if a natural disaster or nuclear war wipes out everyone? Not so fun now, is it? Well, as long as I have a Gameboy and Kirby's Pinball, yes it is you fucking loser KIRBY'S PINBALL IS THE SHIT.

"The Twilight Zone" was keenly aware of this reality and made a few jabs at how living perpetually is a risky move at best, and kinda pointless at worst.

There's also of course the argument that, well, humans are supposed to die. Circle of life and all that. Your job, as a gazelle, is to get eaten by Mufasa because you are the jungle equivalent of a serf. Not even a serf. You're literally cattle to be eaten by the lions and Disney perpetuates feudalism. YOU FUCKING BASTARDS. But yeah, nobody is supposed to live forever. It's unnatural, and unnatural is scary because we can't imagine what else there's supposed to be. And yes, that is a completely ironic view to hold.

If you have someone who can't die, what then, ultimately, is he or she (let's be real though, only men can be immortals. Sorry girls, but I am a fucking sexist DEAL WITH IT) supposed to do with their time? Do they stand out and have people notice that they never age? Or do they sit perpetually in the background, being drifters and observers, unable to alter the world around them because they know that the world they live in is one constant temporary state of being after another, and that true permanence is illusory when it comes to human affairs?

I mean, don't give me those two classic immortality subsitituion bullshit canards. You know them well. "Ohhh, but what if you do something so great you're remembered throughout history? That's like being immortal!"

Well no, it's not at all like being immortal. It just isn't. I mean, look at Lincoln. He's pretty much "immortal" in the imagination of Americans. They can see him, they imagine how he talks, and they have a basic template of his personality that they feel like they know him. So does that mean he's alive, in the heart of every man and woman, in the smile of every baby, in the wings of every majestic bird? No you stupid twat. He's dead. He told me so when I called him the other day! Actually he was more like "OH MY GOD WHERE THE FUCK AM I? IT'S DARK! I CAN'T MOVE! HOLY FUCK WHO IS THIS CALLING ME RIGHT NOW? NO I CAN'T TALK RIGHT NOW I'M IN THIS THING! YEAH IT'S LIKE A BOX. WHAT? NO, I DIDN'T GET THE EGGS I'M SORRY I FORGOT. WELL MAYBE YOU SHOULD'VE PUT IT ON THE LIST. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU WANTED TO ASK ME? JUST WRITE IT ON THE FUCKING LIST. WHAT DO YOU THINK IT'S THERE FOR? NO LOOK HONEY, SORRY, I GOTTA GET OUT OF THIS THING I'M IN OKAY? YES. OKAY. I'LL TELL HER. LOVE YOU TOO. BYE."

But yeah, Lincoln is dead and he ain't coming back. He no longer exists except in Heaven, and even there he's not that big a deal. His body has turned most likely to dirt or perhaps even mud, and he is a part of the ecosystem. And no that's not like being immortal either. If you could somehow retain your consciousness while going through the digestive tract of a non-large worm, then we could argue if he was still alive. But you can't. And believe me I tried. It sucked. But it was a worthwhile learning experience.

So no, that's not at all like being immortal except in the most abstract of senses. And humans do not exist in abstract terms unless you're some kind of bored god observing the universe and going "heh" from time to time.

What about the other way? "Oh, well if you have a family, you live on through your family!" No. No you don't. It's real easy folks, you cease to matter to your family after a few generations. I don't know who my great-great grandparents are. I just don't. They have no bearing on me. I mean sure, I guess in some way I vaguely resemble them visually, but that's where it ends. I don't even know their names!! And how far forward is this immortality supposed to go? Do you think my proto-ancestors back in 200 B.C. were going, "Well I hope our greatx31 grandkid Adam turns out to be handsome and awesome and great and shit, and I hope he lands a bangin' Massachusetts bitch and they have lots of kids and then he retires as a world-class jetskiing champ and she becomes a famous writer and they have such pretentious conversations. I really hope that's what happens with him." No, they didn't say that at all.

Hell, they didn't even speak english, first of all, and second of all they were probably serfs in Latium. Wait, they weren't even all in Latium. Some probabaly came from Latium. (That's in Italy by the way if you don't know shit.) Some were probably in north Africa. Some were probably in Turkey. Some were probably Mongols, Chinese, Harrapans, Israelites. Some were probably Jews, Christians, pagans, Zoroastrians and Mormons who time-traveled back to the past to fuck their ancestors because Mormons are really really weird like that. And if you want to be even more fucking outlandish about it, some were probably apes, amphibians, fish, avians, trichordates (I know I have some trichordate blood in me I KNOW IT. IF YOU AIN'T A TRI YOU AIN'T FLY), eukaryotes, etc.

There is no permanence there. It's all changing. And when things change enough, they cease to be what they were. My Sicilian ancestors don't resemble me today. They just don't. They were shorter and spoke a different language and had different expectations out of life and had different understandings about how the universe was. They haven't passed anything onto me but greasy hair, dark skin and a desire to ravish every Roman bitch who comes my way. And do I!

And that's absolutely okay. I'm not really concerned what my space-descendants are going to be like outside of a general desire that their world is a more just and less shitty place than it is today. I can't bring myself to care about my great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandson Adam IX Space Poseidon and his wife, a robot named INDUSTRIAL MODEL 62-A. Actually wait, that's fucking gross. No kid of mine is gonna be a robofag. NO ROBAGS!!!! :votes Space Republican:

I think my carenocity (a measure of care) will only reach to my great-great grandkids. I think that's about as much as I can muster. I don't even know if I'll even see them but I'm sure they won't be that annoying. At least they better not, or you better fucking believe I'm not gonna give them any vintage coins for their first birthday.

But yeah, that's not immortality in the slightest. That's just people trying to come to terms with their own lack of permanance, and they're trying to punt it by saying they don't have to DEAL. WITH. IT. because it's not really a problem because hey, live on through kids! But that unleashes all sorts of other unhealthy bullshit that's not worth going into at this point.

So there's nothing else to talk about re: this subject anymore. In conclusion, I will say that extending lifespans is ultimately pointless. Who wants to be an old dude for 30 more years? WHO???? No, the only thing that can REALLY usher in immortality is the Singularity. I don't really know how exactly that'll work but it's supposed to be awesome. Imagine being a computer playing Kirby's Pinball, forever... my god, so this is what Heaven is like..............

DE END.