Blame Kubrick
Are We Then Yet?
Time’s a funny thing, isn’t it?
(I hope so, since this is s’posed to be humorous.)
Day-um! I been busier than a Viagra salesman at a whorehouse. Ain’t NEVER enough time.
First off, it’s an even year. I’m an odd kind of a girl. Gimme the odd years...no gawd damned elections for one thing. Throw all the politician in a box. Cage matches should decide who runs the government. Let ‘em fight dirty, hell, they do anyway. Wouldn’t it be refreshing to have one of ‘em do a commercial that said, “Hi! I’m Joe Sleazy. I’m running for State Auditor. I know you don’t know what that is, hell I don’t either, but my advisor says it’s a stepping stone to bigger things. It doesn’t matter anyway; I’ll have a bunch of minimum wage flunkies doing all the real work. I’ll be out raising money for my run for the Senate. Paid for by Sleazy campaign contributions I accepted in return for favors when I’m elected. See you in 2009!”
Wait a minute, back that thought up. (Cue the sound effect of going-in-reverse-alarm: BEEP BEEP BEEP!)
How ‘d you just say the year in your head? You know, that little inside-your-brain voice? (Hopefully there is only one, and it isn’t telling you that you are Napoleon, or that trees are actually space aliens. They are, but we ain’t supposed to let on until...oops, never mind.) Did you say, “Two thousand nine”? Or “Two thousand aught nine”? Or “Twenty oh nine”? Or “Nineteen ninety-nine plus ten”?
How are we ever going to get a handle on time if we can’t agree on how to say what year we’re in?
I know what is responsible for this mess - Science fiction.
Way back in the last millennium, Arthur Clarke wrote a book, and Stanley Kubrick made it into a movie, and ain’t nobody been right since. Yeah, you know which one I mean, it had the monolith and the monkeys and the ending that no one understood but everyone had to act like they did.
And it was pronounced Two Thousand One, A Space Odyssey.
So we all thought, “Well, if those geniuses can make a book and a movie that no one understands, and pronounce it Two Thousand One, that MUST be the correct terminology for the next millennium, which no one can even agree when it starts.” So here we are six or seven years in, (depending on which camp you fall into) still unsure of what to call this millennium.
Or this decade.
The LAST decade was the 90’s. So this one is….uh….the oh’s? That doesn’t sound right. The aughts? That’s worse. The single digits? That’s the one the meteorologists use, and we all know they're right up there with science fiction writers, on the scale of making grand pronouncements that no one understands.
(A small clap of thunder is heard, and I keep telling myself that meteorologists cannot MAKE the weather…can they?)
Scientific types will tell you that time is made up of steady, unchanging units of measure: minutes, hours, days, etc.
Baloney.
The time unit called a minute can fluctuate wildly in length. A standing-in-line-at-the-DMV minute is nowhere close to the same length as a reading-a-good-book minute.
Ask a parent, and they will tell you that an hour spent in a vehicle with small screaming children is at least 500 minutes long.
I know for a fact that a working-against-a-deadline hour has twelve minutes in it.
So I ain’t doin’ so good with this whole time thing. I’m not havin’ a good day/week/month/year/incarnation.
My car’s dead and that makes me pissy. Ain’t got no money to buy another one. Got crappy credit, but that doesn’t matter ‘cause I couldn’t make the payments on another car anyway.
Every other commercial on TV (and I do l-o-v-e my TV) is some lying liar tellin’ lies about themselves and whoever the other liar is.
And there ain’t never enough time, no matter how you measure it.
But...(you know I’ve always got a big but - LOL) I’ll keep on truckin’. (Whoa - acid flashback! LOL)
I got a lotta good years left in me, despite my many vices. If nothin’ else, I gotta hang around to annoy the crap outta my enemies. I ain’t no quitter. I’m a fighter and an optimist, and I’ve got enough spunk left in me to last out a boatload of steady, unchanging units of time.
I’ll write a bestseller and make a lot of money and then run for political office....
:)
To leave a comment, please go here
Thanks!
Time’s a funny thing, isn’t it?
(I hope so, since this is s’posed to be humorous.)
Day-um! I been busier than a Viagra salesman at a whorehouse. Ain’t NEVER enough time.
First off, it’s an even year. I’m an odd kind of a girl. Gimme the odd years...no gawd damned elections for one thing. Throw all the politician in a box. Cage matches should decide who runs the government. Let ‘em fight dirty, hell, they do anyway. Wouldn’t it be refreshing to have one of ‘em do a commercial that said, “Hi! I’m Joe Sleazy. I’m running for State Auditor. I know you don’t know what that is, hell I don’t either, but my advisor says it’s a stepping stone to bigger things. It doesn’t matter anyway; I’ll have a bunch of minimum wage flunkies doing all the real work. I’ll be out raising money for my run for the Senate. Paid for by Sleazy campaign contributions I accepted in return for favors when I’m elected. See you in 2009!”
Wait a minute, back that thought up. (Cue the sound effect of going-in-reverse-alarm: BEEP BEEP BEEP!)
How ‘d you just say the year in your head? You know, that little inside-your-brain voice? (Hopefully there is only one, and it isn’t telling you that you are Napoleon, or that trees are actually space aliens. They are, but we ain’t supposed to let on until...oops, never mind.) Did you say, “Two thousand nine”? Or “Two thousand aught nine”? Or “Twenty oh nine”? Or “Nineteen ninety-nine plus ten”?
How are we ever going to get a handle on time if we can’t agree on how to say what year we’re in?
I know what is responsible for this mess - Science fiction.
Way back in the last millennium, Arthur Clarke wrote a book, and Stanley Kubrick made it into a movie, and ain’t nobody been right since. Yeah, you know which one I mean, it had the monolith and the monkeys and the ending that no one understood but everyone had to act like they did.
And it was pronounced Two Thousand One, A Space Odyssey.
So we all thought, “Well, if those geniuses can make a book and a movie that no one understands, and pronounce it Two Thousand One, that MUST be the correct terminology for the next millennium, which no one can even agree when it starts.” So here we are six or seven years in, (depending on which camp you fall into) still unsure of what to call this millennium.
Or this decade.
The LAST decade was the 90’s. So this one is….uh….the oh’s? That doesn’t sound right. The aughts? That’s worse. The single digits? That’s the one the meteorologists use, and we all know they're right up there with science fiction writers, on the scale of making grand pronouncements that no one understands.
(A small clap of thunder is heard, and I keep telling myself that meteorologists cannot MAKE the weather…can they?)
Scientific types will tell you that time is made up of steady, unchanging units of measure: minutes, hours, days, etc.
Baloney.
The time unit called a minute can fluctuate wildly in length. A standing-in-line-at-the-DMV minute is nowhere close to the same length as a reading-a-good-book minute.
Ask a parent, and they will tell you that an hour spent in a vehicle with small screaming children is at least 500 minutes long.
I know for a fact that a working-against-a-deadline hour has twelve minutes in it.
So I ain’t doin’ so good with this whole time thing. I’m not havin’ a good day/week/month/year/incarnation.
My car’s dead and that makes me pissy. Ain’t got no money to buy another one. Got crappy credit, but that doesn’t matter ‘cause I couldn’t make the payments on another car anyway.
Every other commercial on TV (and I do l-o-v-e my TV) is some lying liar tellin’ lies about themselves and whoever the other liar is.
And there ain’t never enough time, no matter how you measure it.
But...(you know I’ve always got a big but - LOL) I’ll keep on truckin’. (Whoa - acid flashback! LOL)
I got a lotta good years left in me, despite my many vices. If nothin’ else, I gotta hang around to annoy the crap outta my enemies. I ain’t no quitter. I’m a fighter and an optimist, and I’ve got enough spunk left in me to last out a boatload of steady, unchanging units of time.
I’ll write a bestseller and make a lot of money and then run for political office....
:)
To leave a comment, please go here
Thanks!
posted by Marti at 4:26 PM
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