The selfish time traveler
Let’s play a little game, just for fun. You have a time machine, a magic wand, a genie or a fairy godmother. And you can go back to any one moment in history to experience an event or perhaps meet a famous (or not so famous) person. Whatever. It has to be selfish – it can’t be about changing history or saving the world or killing Hitler when he was a baby. It has to be something you’d simply have loved to have been around for.
What would you do?
I’ll go first.
Your turn.
lullaby pit 
Honestly, I’d want to be there for the moon landing. There was so much promise and so much hope in that single moment. It was a moment when we as a nation & as a species could *believe* that we were truly capable of great things.
I don’t know that I’ve seen anything approaching its equal in my lifetime, though I certainly hope to.
For me I’d want to go back to the IPO of Microsoft with a load of cash to buy stocks.
I wish I could have seen him live when he was a just a young soul singing his music.
BTW when you post videos these days I usually cannot view them. Today, although the second one is available your first is not – just a dented square with a red x in the top left hand corner.
That’s weird – both are using straight YouTube embed code. What browser are you using?
I would like to have traveled with Caesar on his Gallic champaign; as part of his entourage, of course, not as some poor grunt Legionary. Not because it would be more comfortable – The Divine Julius lived a pretty Spartan lifestyle while ‘in the field’ – but so I could see his generalship up close. I suspect I’d have to get in better shape first, however.
RE: YouTubes. I only see the “Bloody Sunday” vid.
Int. Explorer 7.
lets face it .. I’d selfishly like to have been hanging around during the last days of that meteoric cult figure known as Jesus christ with a damn tape and video recorder…
So I could tell my ‘english was good enough for god’ relatives “that aint what he said at all.. it went like this”.
and hey if by a literal miracle there is a resurrection etc.. well, that would be good to know too.
the Gospel of Scott in MPEG format on youtube.
of course finding competent folks to do the translation would be REALLY tricky.
my second choice would be to do a tape of interviews with the Founding fathers on the constitution.. so I could selfishly say “This is what they meant.. I have thier words to prove it” .. except if that would work the federalist papes would already be doing that…
I only see “Bloody Sunday” vid as well
If there is a square with an x red in top left it usually means that the thumbnail link for that icon is invalid. So either the thumbnail does not exist or the address that the thumbnail is pointing to is incorrect. I believe that is what is wrong…
I would do any of the following:
– Meet Elizabeth I (and/or Shakespeare); Leonardo da Vinci; Monet; or Marco Polo
– Visit (and photograph) the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair
– See the launch of the Titanic
– Experience the Vatican (as we know it) being built (and maybe meet Michelangelo?). After reading Pillars of the Earth, I’d love to see a cathedral work site before modern building capability.
– Seeing America before Europeans showed up, especially areas like San Francisco or NYC or Boston that are complete concrete cities today
Okay, some confusion. In this post there is only the one video, the live “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” I thought Elaine was saying that a vid in a previous post wasn’t showing for her.
My brother was having the same problems with the vid links. But I was able to see everything I sent him. Weirdness.
Anyway, we’ve played this game before. And in the past, I’ve said I’d like to be there for the Moon landing, or relive a very specific week in my undergrad years. This time I’ll pick some other times.
Patton heading into Palermo or the Battle of the Bulge
Cook arriving in Hawaii the first time
Whenever it was the first “human” first became self-aware
Kitty Hawk, December 17, 1903
With Peter Jackson filming the Lord of the Rings movies
Or Francis Coppola with Apocalypse Now
Or Ridley Scott with Blade Runner
Or with Tolkien, Conrad, or Dick while they were writing
While they were building the latest incarnation of Stonehenge
Or the Great Pyramids
Or the Great Wall of China
Hell…I could go on forever. đ
“HellĂąâŹÂŠI could go on forever.”
Very true. So I will just stike with the one choice. đ
…stick that should read.
“stike” – what, you mean that’s not a weird British spelling of “stick”? đ
(Two countries separated by a common language, and all that… )
I’d like to revisit the first time my lovely wife and I talked for four hours one fall Sunday afternoon outside the student union. That was the day I fell in love with her. I was a conservative Republican, and she was a real bona fide card carrying member of The American Communist Party…hell, she was a friend of Gus Hall if any of you remember him. Politics meant nothing that day, or any other day to me.
Jeff
đ
…but the pronuciation would probably make it sound Germanic.
You have confirmed that there is only 1 video for this post but when looking at the post there is another square (dented) with a red x in the top left hand corner. This ‘ghost’ appears above the video that you can click and play.
In most of your Saturday video roundup posts (for a number of weeks now) this same square shows up multiple times. I cannot view the videos you post but can read the comments.
This could be some kind of bizarre IE “feature.” You don’t have anything like Adblock installed, do you?
Sweet jeebus, I just looked at it in IE7, and it’s fucking stuff up left and right. Gods, I hate Microsoft.
In any case, that x is referring to what I cannot imagine. There’s nothing there, so it’s inserting something strange on its own.
IE7 is Micrshaft’s best virus to date barely squeaking out Vista in the competition to destroy peoples computers
I meant Microshaft
I’d go back to the meeting at Microsoft where they decided that the W3C standard box model was deficient and that Internet Explorer would use an “improved” (ie non-standard) model instead, causing me, and our readers, no end of trouble….
– Sysadmin
You have a magic wand, but not a gun.
Oh gosh. Where to start. I have so many selfish desires. For instance, I’d like to be smuggled into Theodora’s bedroom. I understand THAT was an amazing experience. On the other hand, I’m also insatiably curious about history’s mysteries, so I guess I would decide to go back and follow Jesus of Nazareth through the lost years.
I mean, where the HECK did this man go,and what was he exposed to during those years that caused him to take a war God like YHWH and turn him into a god of love and gentleness with philosophy bordering on Buddhist????
THAT I would like to see.
But Rufus, the 13th Apostle, already told us why we don’t have those lost years. They dealt with Jesus’ brothers and sisters.
Ah. The Gospel according to Chris Rock. Always useful (and usually entertaining).
Well, having seen all your comments, I have only one place that I’d like to go to and from for a while, the great library at Constantinople prior to its being burned to the ground by the followers of the prophet, and where I’d gradually substitute a whole pile of worthless papyrus from the tombs of the pharaohs dealing with accounts paid and owed, for the priceless and now existent only in reference of the great scholars of the ancient world.
Let teh kitty’s know the truth…