"Do not open until 2101".

"Offnen Sie Nicht Sich Bis 2101."
"No se abra Hasta 2101."
"Nao abra Ate 2101"
"bu xing bai bao yi 2101."

I'm not much of one for those "What are your top ten marital aids" kinda lists (Although, come to think of it, that particular one might be very interesting...) however it occurs to me that our children's children know how this all ends.

They know, in final analysis, what was transitory, what was important, and what changed the course of history. They know what forms of art and literature survived. What people look back on with awe, and what they laugh their asses off about and wonder how grandpa would have been such an absolute fucking idiot.

So what would you save and send along to them to make them understand us?

What words and pictures and music and vids and household objects would tell our children's children what living in 2005 was like to us. Not the things Future History majors will write shitty term papers about, but the things that really make us laugh and cry and roll our eyes...

You can pack whatever you want into a cylinder -- 4-feet-long with a 2-foot diameter (for those of you not spatially inclined, lets call it a very wide-mouthed coffee can that's as tall as a five-year-old) -- and launch it into a long, slow, parabolic orbit that will land back on the face of the Earth -- anywhere you'd like -- light as a feather and completely intact, on September 11, 2101.

Remember that JumpDrives full of clips and pix are a fine thing, but you can't understand a lover without kissing them deeply, babies without changing their stinky diapers, and a shot of 20-year-old scotch until you have rolled it around in your mouth and let it evaporate off your tongue.

In telling the tale of our times, the physicality of things matters as much as digital representations.

It will have been a century since the attack that changed our nation, and school-kids will only know about it from books...whatever books may look like them (of course the homeschoolers in the Republic of Jesusland will only know about if from the Newer, Gooder Tess'mint, and will have been taught that the 'Slums were actually queers and feminists lead by a cabal of Liberal Judges...)

So set the little bastards straight.

What was 2005 really like?