The Theory Of Relativity Explained In Less Than 1,500 Words

After reading some of the crap I put out here, you might have come to the conclusion that I'm totally without discipline and that I have set myself no goals in life. You would be extremely not very correct. I have goals. As a matter of fact, I am now going to tell you my ultimate goal in life.

I want to go directly from childhood into senior citizenship.

("Childhood" is here loosely defined as that period from the time of your birth up to and including when you begin to question the humor in Tom & Jerry cartoons. "Senior Citizenship" is when people stop asking you, while you're laughing at Tom & Jerry cartoons, if you're ever going to grow up. Therefore, "Middle Aged" is when people are still bugging the shit out of you and you don't find it hilariously funny when a mouse whacks a cat in the face with a frying pan and the cat's face assumes the shape of the frying pan. Or the cat and mouse are bowling, see, and the cat gets his fingers stuck in the holes in the bowling ball and he propels himself down the alley and he gets a strike and when the pinsetter comes down it picks him up and sets him as the headpin and he's shaped like a bowling pin! And then there was the time Tom was chasing after Jerry, wielding an andiron, and he smacks Jerry three times with it, but Jerry gets away and when Tom looks at the andiron there are three outlines of a mouse sticking out his tongue at him! Hah!)

So, anyway, towards this end I have endeavored with all of my heart and soul to skip being middle aged. I figure I'm entitled. I started going bald at around age twenty. If God decided to stick me with the ultimate in old age accoutrements - a baldy head - at such an early age, then I have to assume it was a sign that I should forget about aging gracefully and just go for it.

(Of course, it might have been a sign that I should grow up right then and there, but fuck that. No offense, God.)

Does all of the above have anything to do with what follows? No, not a thing. I just felt like throwing it in and tough titties if it's five or six non-sequitorish paragraphs. And I'll make up words anytime I feel like it, too, so there.

(Tough titties. That always cracks me up. Puts a picture in my head of huge rubber tits that, if you slapped them, would bounce off of each other with a sound like "BWIPADA-boobada-bapada-bipada-BWIPADA-boobada-bapada-bipada" - which I wouldn't recommend doing, by the way, unless you want to get a nickname like "Titslapper" - and with ginormous pencil-eraser-material nipples. And now, unfortunately, forever after it will put that picture into your head, also. And if you don't like it? Tough titties.)

So, what is the point of this thus-far-inane ramble? I haven't decided yet. That's how I write, you know. I just sit down at the keyboard and start hammering and where it will end up is up to God and sometimes not even He knows.

(So far, I've made two vaguely blasphemous references to The Deity. I look at it this way: God either has a sense of humor and He doesn't mind, in which case it's all good, or God has no sense of humor. And if God has no sense of humor, then I'm screwed right from the get-go, so I may as well enjoy myself while I'm able.)

Let's see - we've covered my theories on aging and theology. What other bullshit can I throw out here to fill space?

I know! Love! Everybody likes love! And everybody who isn't reading a comic book hates it when every sentence ends with an exclamation point! So I'll stop it right now!

MY WIFE. She knows how much I enjoy following the trials and travails of Boston College football. She was working on Saturday and I was watching the Boston College Eagles play Wake Forest.

(Wake Forest has the best nickname for a football team, ever. The Demon Deacons. Way cool. However, I digress.)

Anyway, she comes home during the fourth quarter and BC is losing 21 - 7. She goes into the kitchen and then comes out and hands me a coffee mug. Except it doesn't have coffee in it. It's a new BC coffee mug and she's filled it with cookies. She says that they are "rally cookies".

Now, here's an example of why it doesn't pay to be mature. I said, "Oh, wow, a BC mug! Thanks! I haven't had my dinner yet, though, so I'll wait to have the cookies."

MY WIFE said, "But they're rally cookies. If you don't eat them, how are the Eagles going to rally?"

"Oh, sure, OK. I'll have ONE."

"Give me one, too."

"OK", I said, biting into one cookie and then handing her the remaining half.

Now, never mind that I had a mugful of cookies and I was being a cheap bastard and only giving half a cookie to the woman who had bought me the damned mug and filled it with cookies in the first place. The point is... they were RALLY COOKIES.

See, here's how things like that work, but only if you're immature enough to buy into them. If you say that a cookie is a rally cookie, it isn't. However, if someone else, especially someone who really loves you, says that a cookie is a rally cookie, it is. It has been invested with true magic. And if you want to be so friggin' grown up that you don't eat the rally cookies, instead going for the entirely adult option of not ruining your dinner, then you get what you deserve.

I had an entire mugful of rally cookies and I ate half of one. BC scored a touchdown and made it a 21 - 14 game, but that's as close as they got. So it's all my fault that they lost. If I had done what any sane kid would do - eat the damned cookies, as quickly as I could shovel them into my mouth - BC would still be in line for a possible New Years Day bowl game. Instead, they'll probably be playing in the Burma Shave Bowl on Christmas Eve in Cleveland. And that's not even a real bowl game.

And you know what? Dinner was alright, but it wasn't cookies. From now on, whenever MY WIFE offers me cookies, I will eat them immediately and gratefully. That's true love.

And, finally, here's where I blow off the title of this piece.

I've said this before, somewhere on these pages, but I feel I should say it again for the benefit of those who have come late to the party. It is very important information and should be disseminated widely.

The Theory Of Relativity is a crock of shit.

Einstein was no dummy. More often than not, he knew what he was talking about. However, there is no such thing as time.

The concept of time is a useful tool invented by human beings. It serves a purpose. Without that concept, we would constantly be overcooking three-minute eggs. However, time does not exist in the same way as something solid and real does. It is utterly arbitrary and imaginary.

We need the concept of time and all that is needed to make it work is a constant of some sort to measure. As it stands, we measure the speed of one trip around the sun or one revolution of the planet we call home. It could just as easily have been based on another constant, perhaps something like how every season I predict that The Boston Celtics will make the playoffs but they stink instead.

(That's just an example, of course, because if we used that as our constant, then the world would end the next time the Celtics won a championship. Of course, that would mean we aren't in any immediate danger.)

The point, as if I had one, is that while we can make machines that measure what we call time, it doesn't really exist. Simply put, there is no past to travel back into, ever. Once a moment passes, it is gone for good. There is no future into which we can travel. It has not happened yet. There is only the present; the place and space where we are now.

And you're wasting it reading this dopey shit. Me? I'm probably watching Tom getting his ass blown up by Jerry and laughing like all hell through a mouthful of cookies. And if you don't like it? Tough titties.

BWIPADA-boobada-bapada-bipada-BWIPADA-boobada-bapada-bipada.

Heh.