Time Machines - Why Not?

Whatever happened to Time Machines?

I was thinking about this when yet another "Spring Forward" ruined the awesome feeling left from the "Fall Back" so many months ago. I forget that it's hardly worth re-playing one hour of your life ala Pete and Pete when you jump into the future willy nilly six months later. Boolcrap.

Is this really the best time-jumping we can do? Back in the H.G. Wellsian days, time machines were the hippest quick fix to any past or future problem. Why not now? Did we become so disillusioned by the Back to the Future trilogy that we just gave up on our dreams? I think the public has soured on the hope of time machines at a time when a time machine would really come in handy right about now. The unnecessary-kitschy-sex-romp-ridden Watchmen depicts an alternate reality in which the US wins the Vietnam War using a giant, glowing, blue ultra-superman and Nixon's elected President three times and somehow this all leads to the prolongation of the Cold War. I'm not talking about anything quite so radical (although perhaps some minor adjustments of the ballot shapes and some convenient pamphets regarding sub-prime mortages and bank regulation in 2000 might be a bit of a help). I understand that we have to "live with our mistakes" and "it's all a part of the larger plan" and all that jazz, but just think of what a few, carefully selected, happy eraser-marks on our past might achieve:

1) Stop the invention of skinny jeans. While this might make hipsters slightly harder to identify, muscley-legged people around the world will rejoice.
2) Put a working, affordable electric car in a 25-year-old Steve Jobs' or Bill Gates' basement and just see what happens.
3) Enroll my 18 year old self in one of the following: film/writing school at NYU, art/animation school anywhere, or environmental engineering at Columbia. Then four years later when I am scrambling for a job, I would feel I was actually legitimately good enough at one thing to deserve to be hired in that sector.
4) Stop those giant sloths from going extinct way back in the day, but mainly because I think they would make for an awesome form of transportation. And who doens't want to see giant sloths!?

Ponder these things, and if I come up with any other ways a time machine could save us, I'll let you know. And if you find out there's one available, you let me know. In the meantime, I guess I''ll have to make do with Apple's restoring software and Hot Tub Time Machine, a film in which all of its actors will inevitably wish they had a time machine so they could stop themselves from signing on to this film.