Back from the future

You may have been wondering why I haven't blogged much in the past week or so. As it turns out, I had the rare opportunity to take a peek into our future -- two years to be exact. Foregoing any thoughts of personal safety and expense, I jumped at the chance, but I have to say, little had really changed.

You're not allowed to bring anything back with you, but I did manage to slip one postcard past my time machine hosts and I present it here for you, dear readers:



As you can see, there has been one minor change: the name of our fair city. It's been changed to honor our fabulous Boy Wonder Mayor: Luke Ravenstahl.

Apparently, the name change caused little controversy.

Yes, Councilman Bill Peduto started to object during Council's vote but he was quickly shouted down by most of the rest of the members who had sponsored the bill.

To their credit, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette did publish a strongly worded editorial decrying that the name should be "Lukesburgh" and not "Lukesburg." They demanded that the city keep it's cherished "h." Matt Hogue, Assistant Communications Director, first claimed that, "It's a non issue." Ravenstahl initially claimed that the "h" was there, but then said that the missing letter was merely a typo. As you can see from the postcard, the "h" won the day.

Dennis Regan -- hired back in early 2008 with the title of The Enforcer -- is the official in charge of ensuring that all governmental offices, private businesses and local citizens comply with the name change.

And, what was the reaction from the burghosphere? From what I could see, very few local political bloggers exist in 2009. Word has it that most bloggers became exhausted from cataloging Luke's many shenanigans and had simply dropped out.

That's pretty much it (except for a few primarily cosmetic changes that you can see from the postcard).

Oh, wait a minute.

There was one kind of weird thing that happened. I ran into someone who claimed to be a fellow time traveler, but he was from twenty years or so in the future. A big, muscle-bound guy with a German accent who kept mumbling something about needing to save the future from President Ravenstahl. Probably just a nut . . .

(Inspired by this article.)