Elf Sternberg

Our next stop was Epcot center. We got there a little late, mostly owing to our oversleeping, having been so late in the first place. We parked and went around to the back of the car, where Omaha said, "I just need a minute," sat down on the ground and immediately had a seziure. It was a middling one, no grand mal, just a brainlock. But the staff could not help but see me dragging this poor woman by her shoulders out of the sunlight, and asked if we needed an ambulance. I said we just needed time. They let us have it. One "cast member" said that he was willing to call ahead and have FastPasses generated for us, if she would take long to come around, but I said it would only be half an hour or so, and she'd be fine.

Actually, she was back up in less than ten minutes. Not entirely coherent, but she was able to follow us to the gate. When the gatekeepers said we had to open the bag for them to examine, I had to unclip her waistpack and open it, then lead her through. Her eyes were pretty vacant. I had to give a fingerprint to get into the park, though.

We stopped at the Innoventions! hall, which was a bunch of branding for IBM to tell us how they're making the world "smarter." Red Hat had a mention among the software IBM uses, which was amusing. Other vendors having their say included Segway (lame!), T. Rowe Price (spammy!), and Underwriters Laboratory, which told us all about how they test TV tubes to make sure they don't explode. (As far as I know, there are no US manufactures of tube televisions anymore.)

We went to lunch at Le Chefs Du Paris, the restaurant in Epcot's French Quarter. All of the waiters and waitresses there are actually from France, and Sebsatian, our waiter, had an accent so thick he could barely be understood. There was also in-meal entertainment, when Remy stopped by with his handler, Armand.

But Omaha's epilepsy was still dogging her. Her hand spasmed when she went to get a drink of water and the glass shattered in her hand, sending water and shards flying. I will say the staff was amazing, materializing almost out of nowhere, clearing the table and restoring it to normalcy with maximal aplomb and minimal fuss. Omaha was dreadfully embarassed, but I pointed out their professionalism and said I was sure that, this being Disney, they were trained to deal with much worse.

Champagne & black current cordial was awesome. I recommend the salmon with extra vegetables and no potato.

She also spotted Greg Bear! The Clarion West t-shirt was a giveaway.

We did the "Imagination!" tour, which was silly. Eric Idle narrated, but I have to agree with Wendy Pini's assessment of that little dragon, Figment. I'm fond of the quote, "When inspiration finds me, it had better find me working." Nothing about actually working was anywhere in that.

We stopped to have our picture taken, a very touristy thing to do. The family in front of us had a little girl who desperately did not want her picture taken, and fought to make sure it didn't. That'll end up on awkwardfamilyphotos.com, I'm sure.

The space simulator was awesome. The entire ride is in a centrifugal G-force simulator, and it worked, amazingly well. It was narrated by Gary Sinise, and had all the expected thrills and crises. The cryo component was creepy, as expected.

Ellen's Energy Adventure was narrated by Ellen DeGeneris and Bill Nye, with Jamie Lee Curtis and Alex Trabek in supporting roles. It was dreadfully unenlightening. First, it was poorly married to a decrepit dinosaur ride, and second, it glossed over the controversy of deep ocean drilling, tar-sand extraction and natural-gas fracking, while redlining the controversy over fission, bought into the whole clean-carbon myth, avoided any mention of birdkills and windpower, and glossed past fusion so fast if you blinked you missed it. And Ellen, "just Ellen," isn't all that funny.

Plus, the entire facility is plastered in photovoltaic cells! A nice gesture, but a better gesture would have been a sign somewhere telling you how successful they were, and whether or not they supplied a significant fraction of the buildings power.

Note to self: Disney has signs everywhere with warnings about different medical needs. There are no signs warning about strobe lights, which the Energy Adventure has. Send them a letter.

General Motors's "Test Track," a pseudo-roller-coaster where GM sang its praises, was also fun, although Omaha and I did the math and decided a Volt would not be economically viable for us at this time.

As we walked out, the fountain in the middle of Tomorrow World was doing all kinds of interesting things with water jets to an electronic soundtrack. Omaha and I identified the music as Yanni's. How much geek cred do I lose for admitting that I knew that?

We finally made it to Planet Earth, where Siemens tried to impress us with "the world of tomorrow!" Unfortunately, tomorrow is here, it's just not evenly distributed. They tried to wow us with the promise of being able to take clean, electrically powered mass transit (we do that already), to use WiFi on said mass transit (we do that already), and to be able to continue working with voice and video conferencing from the beach (we do that already). Basically, the future is already present to those who know where to find it.

We enjoyed the Norway Adventure, courtesy of Norwegian Cruise Lines. As we exited through the gift shop, I held up a Norwegian-made sweater and cap, and Omaha said, "It makes the Norwegian in you come out. It looks like it belongs on you." I didn't see it. We didn't buy the ensemble.

We went to the Marrakesh restaurant for dinner. That was good; the lamb on couscous was very tasty, there were lots of veggies, and the waiter was as friendly as any member of the Disney Cast is imagined to be. He was also from northeast Africa, and wrote Kouryou-chan's real name in Arabic writing on the tabletop. That was very cool.

Dessert was layers of pastry mixed with a vanilla cream and almond sauce. Absolutely delicious.

It was time to go home. We'd even missed the fireworks, but that was no big deal. It was late, and we'd had a good time.

While at Disneyland, I avoided Tomorrowland for most of the day, sure I'd be disappointed. And I was. The House of Tomorrow was, well, the house of today, only with more monitors. The home office of tomorrow is made of stained cherrywood, very masculine, with a four-monitor setup (and every monitor that wasn't in a tablet or handheld was 24" or bigger) on the desk, a monitor over your head with your to-do and agenda staring you in the face, and monitors on your desk facing outward convincing anyone who looks at your desk that you love your family. The den of tomorrow has a 100" TV. The kitchen of tomorrow has 24" monitors and tablet computers running Windows 7 to help you cook. Every bedroom has a wall-embedded gigantic monitor, and a tablet for environmental control, and pitch-perfect surround sound. The patio of tomorrow has an enormous gas grill and, yes, a monitor. This one was vertical; I kept hoping Wheatly would show up. It's all fully aspirational.

"The House of Tomorrow" is really the House of Today With A Much Higher Electric Bill.

Oh, and the sound systems are all controlled by a Microsoft Zune. Bill Maher recently did a skit about Osama Bin Laden, then apologized for one slur: "Saying Osama Bin Laden was a Zune user is a line I should not have crossed, and I'm sorry." Disneyland uses Zunes.

I walked through the exhibit, amused, and when I reached the end I said aloud, "Dammit, where's my posthuman future?"

A hipsterly dressed young man next to me said, "That's what I was wondering, too." We smiled at each other and went our separate ways.