Monday, August 21, 2006

Chapter 21: Party Blunders at Lightspeed

In earlier articles we have spoken about humankind's rudeness in its various attempts at time travel. This may lead one to think that the universe is a midwestern coktail party hostess who remains polite though her feelings are stepped on again and again. This is not the case. The universe more closely approaches a New York cockfight hostess who will give you the bum's rush if you don't put your money on the table (Your money, of course, being your mass, energy, spin, and the combined frequencies at which your strings are vibrating.)

How do I know this is true? Okay I don't know know it's true, but Spinner McBlam's cousin told me the following anecdote which, at least in my mind, almost completely lends support to whatever I just said in the preceding paragraph.

I will let him tell it in his own words:

"Right, so there I was, fuming mad because Ventosus Island had just materiaized on my favorite of my birth planets, Erehnrob,and spacelagged from travelling to Tenalp 2 to lodge a formal complaint. [Our records indicate that Ventosus never officially shifted there and that it was only there for a few nanoseconds anyway, but once you get a reputation. . .]Just as I opened my mouth to let the Complaint Division Customer Service Poodle have it I was interrupted by the Section Chief, not to mention bracketed editorial comments. [Sorry]

"'Here now, what are you on about!' he demanded. I tried to explain how rudely Ventosus showed up, bringing twice the polite air/dirt/tree density and all that, but he interrupted again. 'You are in the wrong line for that!! Yet you come here saying. . .well, dang! I don't know how to punctuate a quote within my own dialog within somebody else's quote. And I'm sure if someone ever tries to recreate this anecdote of yours in your own words they won't either. So I can't tell you what you said but you know it!'

"After that there was this silence while we all thought about what he had just said. During the silence I realized that my birthday party was going to start on Ooterehnrob in twenty minutes and I was thirty light minutes away.

"Now in that portion of the galaxy it is the heighth of rudeness to show up early or on time. Ten minutes late is frowned upon. And twenty minutes late is inexcusable. A person arriving eleven to fifteen minutes late will be met with swords. That's just how they are. I didn't have all time, so I could not waste it trying to accelerate to lightspeed so I settled for almost lightspeed. Here is where the universe payed me back for all the time travelling she knew I was going to haven't done yet did doing will have looked forward to regretting once for all.
[At this point he carries on as if the reader has an understanding of near lightspeed travel]
Of course I got to the party way bigger than the polite size. Well, my head was, my feet were still tiny and blue, you know how they do. I had to lay down to hear what was going on at the party. Some guest was complaining to another about how the blood sliding around in the veins of my brain was disturbing him. I realized with some embarrassment that the top half of my noggin had redshifted into the infrared wavelength and out of sight. A party foul, I thought, but certainly no worse than dropping the spoon handle into the bean dip. Finally this attractive lady noticed that I was being ignored and came over to talk to me.

'When do you think the rest of your body is going to come down out of the sky and join the party?' Trying to be witty I attempted to say, 'Hopefully not for another four minutes so I can be considered inexcusably late and not sword late.' But when I started saying it, instead of listening or laughing everybody at the party started rolling on the ground, making agonized faces and clamping their hands over their ears. A few of them got up and left. The party was over."

Now the reader must bear in mind that after recounting that tail Spinner McBlam's cousin did admit to me that he had stretched the truth. As it turns out Erehnrob was only his third favorite birth planet. He added that bit to make the story more interesting, he said.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Keep up the good work... you guys should publish this in Pop-Sci.

Dave Wise said...

Thank you, tell your friends about us and we can gain popularity. The world needs to know about these ventures into deep science.