So Tuesday afternoon, Shelly blew the engine in her car while travelling back to Gainesville from spending time with her new sweetie in Tallahassee. I had (naturally) forgotten my cell phone when I went to work Tuesday morning, so I came back to 17 missed calls and an “I’m stranded in some Godforsaken hellhole!” voicemail from Shelly.

Into the car, up to said Godforsaken hellhole (about three hours’ drive), and I picked her up in…

…the. Creepiest. Hungry. Howie’s. Ever.

They had, if you can believe it, an old-fashioned analog telepone with a mechanical bell in it, of the kind young whippersnappers today have never even seen. Every time it rang, I reached for my cell phone, which has a ringtone that mimics those old-fashioned telephones for, y’know, irony’s sake.

So Shelly’s car is a total loss. I drove her back to Gainesville, then the next day headed back to Tampa myself.

But that’s not what I came here to talk about. I came here to talk about the Singularity.

The Singularity, as all transhumanists know, is that point of technological shift past which people on one side of the technological change can not predict, or even understand, what life is like for those living on the other side. Transhumanists sometimes call the people living after this point in time “Humanity 2.0”–something that scares the crap out of conservatives of all stripes.

But as it turns out, they’re all wrong.

You see, on I-75 south of Gainesville, there is a billboard that makes it all clear. The billboard advertises “Life 2.0”. Apparently, Life 2.0 doesn’t come after some profound new disruptive technology or some social or technological paradigm shift. No, Life 2.0 is what happens when you retire to a retirement community outside of Gainesville.

Silly transhumanists!