Don't be the Biff.

So the problem with the question of what one would do with a time machine is that there's a couple of things you kind of have to do. Like, you'd have to the responsible things, right? You know, things like kill Hitler, prevent 9/11, and maybe have a little talk with the Bernie or Bust people about how the electoral college works. Time travel stuff.

That bird that landed on Sanders' podium in
Portland was tried to warn us. If only we'd listened...

Although I did once see a production of Beckett's
Endgame in which time seemed to stand still.

You shouldn't say, give your younger self a sports almanac in order to bet on sports, get rich and cheat at life, right? That would be pretty selfish. It's the difference between being a Biff Tannen and being a Sam Becket. I bring this up because-huh? No, you're thinking of Samuel Beckett. He's an Irish playwright who wrote Waiting for Godot. To my knowledge, he never traveled through time. I'm talking about Sam Becket from Quantum Leap. You know, Scott Bakula? Anyway, I mention this because of this.

Yeah, idiots like a fox...

Yeah, it's another nerd auction that hit an absurdly high price, but you know that because you clicked the link, right? Right? I give up. Ok, so if you had clicked, you'd see that last week a mint, sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. went for $100,150. Of money. Which is crazy, because like everyone in America had a copy of Super Mario Bros. So what kind of idiot paid a hundred thousand dollars for one? A groups of idiots actually, who pooled their resources to buy the most ubiquitous game ever.

Now who's laughing, then wheezing,
then catching their breaths and then
laughing some more? Us, that's who.

Or did they? Well, yes, they did, but I'm trying to suggest that there's more to the story. It's called good writing. So this particular copy of SMB-huh? That's the acronym for Super Mario Bros. It's called lazy writing. So this particular copy is unopened which itself is super rare, but what's even more rare is that this is a copy from the initial test market run of the NES from 1985 and '86 back when everyone was busy doing coke and dismissing the video game industry as a childish fad for loser jerks who'd rather play those dumb game tapes than go outside and get some fresh air and exercise.

Pictured: A 4 bedroom, 3 bath house in
Cleveland Heights, Ohio for $99,999,
$151 less than this copy of Super Mario.

Assuming there's actually a copy of the game inside and not say, shredded newspaper or something-what? Who knows? No one's ever opened it. What I'm getting at is that there's nothing special about the software itself. It's the same vanilla $.50 garage sale pack-in game everyone has squirreled away in their parent's attic. It's just that this particular copy is worth enough money to buy a house. Well, not a house here in California, but a house. I don't know, Ohio. Look, the point is it's a rare, expensive copy of a game and that the California housing market is nonsense. Absolute nonsense. What? I can have two points...

Which brings me back to the time machine question, because holy shit, I'd like to say I'd only do the responsible, grown-up time machine stuff. But realistically, between Hitler-murder and 9/11 thwarting, I would 100% drop by seven year-old me's house and convince him/me to take better care of the boxes my NES games came in. Oh, and while I'm at it, maybe pick up a copy of Stadium Games and never open it.

Look, if we're being honest, traveling back in time to buy up
mint in box copies of video games and auctioning them off in the
present would beat the hell out of working. Of course, selling
rides on a time machine would be pretty lucrative as well.