I love the smell of 2004 in the morning. Even though it smells suspiciously like 2003. Christmas was beauteous, and I am now the excessively proud owner of a new scanner-copier-printer. That doesn't stop me from thinking about this whole 2004 thing, though.

Listen up, inventor-types. Aren't we supposed to have jet packs and floating cars by now? Think about it. We haven't had very many technological changes around here lately. In fact, not much has changed since 1990. Sure, we've got DVDs now. And cable internet, and MP3s, and giant sports utility vehicles that CONTINUE TO PLAGUE THE NORMAL CAR-DRIVING PERSON'S EXISTENCE. But you know, so what? DVDs just aren't the same as a floating car. Where's the cure for the common cold? Where's the end to world hunger? Where are our bizarrely-accented talking Jetsons dogs? Where are all those blindingly utopian ideals? If we can't have little green-skinned, bug-eyed, peace-to-your-leader aliens doling out free health care to humankind by 2004, then could we at least get a little Blade Runner disutopia going on? I'm not asking for much. Just a few towers billowing fire here and there, or a few frighteningly flexible robots, or possibly a sexy kind of Harrison Ford detective running around -- maybe into my apartment, maybe setting out on a sexy kind of sexy detective mission? Is that too much to ask, 2004?

Oh, but GIANT SPORTS UTILITY VEHICLES, those the twenty-first century can do.