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"The Junkyard" by Rob Kutner (contains adult robotic content)

by Claire Zulkey | Jul. 20, 2011

The following is an excerpt from Rob Kutner's The Future According to Me, a collection of 35 short comic scenarios of what our future might look like -- touching on everything from nanotechnology to existentially self-aware Smart Toilets to the upcoming Chocolate Famine.

In the future, you can change your parts as easily as you change your pants.

This gives all of mankind access to hawk-like eyes, ears that can hear a pin dropping onto a pillow thousands of miles away, and noses that can smell the pollen stirred up by that pin drop and cause the hawk-like eyes to begin watering immediately.

At least, that's the theory. In practice, people pretty much just swap genitalia.

Men become women, and women become men – often, due to a long bathroom line. Women organize and triumph in World Snow-Pissing Contests; men spend whole months going to 3rd Base with themselves.

Husbands can now legitimately say “We’re pregnant,” while wives pace the delivery room barking, “Breathe, honey, breathe” until the child emerges and the doctor proclaims, “It’s a boy… for now.”

Blurring gender lines make business-world sexism and homophobia unsustainable, verging on hilarious. Dual-installment capability makes masturbation a thing of the past, and unplanned self-pregnancy the crisis du jour.

Meanwhile, the planet starves, chokes, and bakes to death – while all 9 billion of us 2-year-olds sit in the bathtub and play with our wee-wees.

The Future According to Me is available today and even though it's a Kindle book, which is available on all devices thanks to the Kindle App. Rob Kutner is an Emmy-winning writer who currently writes for "CONAN," and has also written for "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," and "Dennis Miller Live." He is also the author of the bestselling "APOCALYPSE HOW: Turn the End Times into the Best of Times!"

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    Claire Zulkey
    Claire Zulkey is the author of AN OFF YEAR, published by Dutton in 2009 and selected by Indie Booksellers for the Autumn 2009 Kids' Indie Next List and nominated as one of the ALA’s 2010 Best Books for Young Adults.  Since 2003 Claire has run the blog Zulkey.com which has been mentioned in places like the New Yorker and USA Today. She is a television critic and contributor to the Los Angeles Times and AV Club.  She lives in Edgewater and runs the Chicago literary humor reading series Funny Ha-Ha.

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