Can the 1300s get a little love?

Haycomet just wrote a very nice piece about living in the middle ages, and it sort of touched a soft spot in my emotions. Because like her, I too have always wanted to visit a different time period. I actually wrote an essay about my time machine in the SpaceBrew Scroll. You can read it here if you’re interested. You probably didn’t even know that existed, did you? Yeah? Well it does. You should go check it out. It’s a small series of collaborative efforts by the entire writing staff at the time. Anyway, I’ve gone off on a tangent, and there’s your opening paragraph.

But I have to admit something, friends. I mentioned where I had gone and what I had done with my time machine in that post, but it wasn’t really true. I don’t really own a time machine. I know, I know, I’m a bastard for misleading you and everything, but it was fun to pretend for a while. I really want one though, if that’s any consolation. I like to think I could go back and meet some of those really cool, influential people in history. Albert Einstein. Seka (when she was younger)… Adolf Hitler. You know, just those people you really kind of want to get to know. Find out what made them tick. Well, I know what made Seka tick, if you know what I mean. :perv:

See, I’ve been all over the world. I mean, it’s just like Phil Collins said in “Against All Odds”: Take a look at me now, ‘cos there’s just an empty space. That’s right, friends. Traveling through these here visible three dimensions is just a bunch of empty ass space. It’s just not the same as manipulating and controlling the fourth. And that’s really what I want to do. I want to travel to a different time.

I think it would be awesome to do a couple of things. Number one, like Haycomet said, I think it would be retardedly awesome to go back to like the 1300s and hang out. According to wikipedia, the 14th century saw the transition into the Little Ice Age. That sounds cool. (So to speak.) I don’t know what a “little ice age” is, but it sounds pretty fun. It probably snowed a little or something. But it was also the beginning of the Ottoman Empire. And you know what that means. It brought us the invention of the ottoman. What living room is complete without an ottoman by the sofa? Gotta have a place to prop up your feet, am I right? And you know the first real handgun was created in the 1300s. Dude, I bet that sucker is worth a ton of money now days. It’s probably fun to fire too. I wonder what size cartridge it takes.

There was also some bad stuff that happened. Like when Black Death wiped out a third of the European population. That’s hundreds of people. And the Great Famine of 1315-1317. The Famine in China from 1333-1337 wiped out six million people. Six million. That’s like the Hitler Famine of 1945. F famines dude. Those always suck. And let’s not forget, The Great Schism of the West. I have no freakin’ clue what that is, but I would have been hanging out in the East during that shit.

But regardless of all that stuff happening, how cool would it be just to say, “Hey doodz we’re alive right now, and it’s the 1300s. Far out!” And everyone would high-five and drink a tankard of – well, of whatever the hell they drank back then. Some ancient grog. They probably drank ancient grog. “Hey doodz, come get a glass of ancient grog, this one’s on me!” And it was probably cheap as hell too. I bet you could get a tankard of Ancient Grog for like a nickel.

So have I swayed you yet? Do you want to go hang out in the 1300s? Well, if not, then hear this shit out: Ibn Battuta began his travels in 1325. Yeah. Seriously. That shit was worthy of mentioning on wikipedia. You know, I’ve gone on a lot ot trips for work. I’ve traveled all over the country. Like I said at the beginning of the column, I’ve been everywhere, man. Like Barry Manilow said in “A Little Traveling Music, Please”: … a little traveling music, please. But they’ve never found reason to document when I left for my travels.

Okay, so I don’t really have much here to persuade someone to go visit the 1300s with me. I mean, I could probably get away with something like, “Hey, at least it’s not the twelve-hundreds.” or “Dude, we need to get in there and check this shit out before it’s the fourteen-hundreds!” Maybe that would change someone’s mind. There doesn’t seem like a lot of interesting shit was going on. But it’s gotta be worth checking out. Of course, I would love to go check out the 1400s, 1500s and 1600s as well. Maybe all the hundreds. I can’t say I just wanna plop up and move there without at least checking it out first, like Haycomet. But I would definitely consider all of them. Just like Billy Thorpe said in his hit, “Children of the Sun”: They passed the limits of imagination, through the door to the world of another time.

Imagine the stories you could tell your grandchildren if you were to go back and hang out in the 1300s for a few years. “Well, grandkids, I look back now on those summers I spent in Timbuktu, eating prehistoric grubs and goat urine, and I find I miss them more every year. Did I ever tell you about the time…”

This Post Has 4 Comments

  1. SahSah

    Famine! Epidemic, Pandemic – Famine! While I think it might be cool to go back and check it out, I think that having lived in this time, that time would seem a bit…boring in comparison. I’m just sayin… however – the “fewcha” would definitely hold some interesting ‘not done yets’ :science:

  2. scott

    Hey, if you want to visit the 1300’s, just drive about 180 miles north to OKC. I have a nice little wooden shelter on the back part of my land. We even have a few mice running around, so we could even role play the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Seriously…..

  3. Catina

    Dude. You’ve mastered the art of not saying anything in about 150 words. Lol

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