- J e f f e r s o n's - W e b s i t e - O f - W o n d e r -
Through the Looking Glass, Darkly
(a.k.a. - page 2)
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"All torment, trouble, wonder and amazement inhabits here; some heavenly power guide us out of this fearful country!" - The Tempest, act V, sc i
Self-portrait, 1989 (right)
"For the eye sees not itself, but by reflection." - Julius Caesar, act I, sc. ii
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I've attached this, one of my all time favorite pieces of music, while you were still mid-way on page one, ducking out of camera range like an errant gaffer or the sound boom guy just before this page pulled up. Oww, I stubbed my toe.... This Jerry Goldsmith masterpiece lasts like 8 minutes; for the record you don't have to stay for the whole thing... it's not a ballet or opera or anything you purchased tickets for. And unlike ballets or operas, no one dances and no one dies (proud to say, this site has gone 134 days without any deaths or injuries, not counting my poor toe). Okay, if you're just joining me, I'm Jefferson, and I'm a smart-ass. (The first step in escalating a problem is admitting it....) God only knows how you stumbled on this page without the first; you must be consorting with some great evil. Whatever. Be sure to check out page 1. I can't stand those sites & blogs that go on so long you have to scroll down until you strike oil or find dinosaur bones, so I've divided and expanded, kind of like some terrible hydra... like Paris spreading over the banks of the Seine.... Like London expanding over the Thames... Or like Crunchberries spilling out of the bowl and rolling all over the table.
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Everything has its context... and here is "Everything's" Context: (Jefferson Hall, 2007)
Everything has its context... and here is
"Everything's" Context:
If the 13.7 billion years of the universe could be compressed into the timetable of one 24 hour day, a million years would pass every 6.3 seconds. At 4.5 billion years of age the Earth would form at about the 2/3 point of the day, say about 4 in the afternoon. Our lovely planet--not so lovely at first, but more like Rachel Leigh Cook in She's All That--would require at least that feature length's time to become hospitable (yeah, again, much like Rachel Leigh Cook in She's All That). Dating back more than 3 billion years, Stromatolites represent the earliest fossil record of life; appearing at about 7 in the evening, they would remain the dominant form of life on the planet for the next 4 hours. Land based animals would begin heaving themselves out of the broth at about 11pm, or 500 million years ago. The last half hour of the day, then, would see the upheavals and excitement of the Cambrian Explosion, Great Permian Extinction, Age of Dinosaurs, a few meteor impacts & more ice ages than there are cubes in your freezer. Stone-age man, therefore--pushed off the program like a green comedian on the Tonight Show when better segments are allowed to run long--would emerge in the last second before midnight (roughly 11:59:59, plus or minus a few milliseconds, depending on your definition of when man picked up a tool other than his own... which in & of itself, you have to imagine probably delayed the process...). Our entire civilization--all our hopes, deeds and accomplishments of the past 10,000 years--would comprise barely a .063 second. To put such an abstraction into perspective, if film plays at 24 frames per second and video at 30, our existence of the last ten thousand years wouldn't even consume two frames, shorter than a subliminal message.
"The Universe" is like one of those epic 24 hour Mini-Series Events, featuring an all star cast (but) crammed into just the last single frame and a half: with Jesus Christ, Gene Hackman, Leonardo da Vinci and Leonardo the Ninja Turtle all sharing the same frame with Steve Guttenberg (who as the joke goes WAS in everything for a while), William the Conqueror & his swath of destruction, William Hung & HIS swath of destruction, Charles Barclay towering over Charles the Great (Charlemagne) with grandson Charles the Bald (not to be confused with bald Charles Barclay) next to "Charles in Charge" star Scott Baio (who arguably conquered more "territory" than Charlemagne), Kanye West & his silly Ego, the Kellogs corporation & its equally silly Eggo, 270 Catholic Popes, 43 US presidents, 31 dynasties of ancient Egypt, 14 incarnations of the Dalai Lama, 2 incarnations of Darren on "Bewitched," 18 seasons of yellow people on the "Simpsons," 11 seasons of blue "Smurfs," 1 blue-blooded Paris Hilton posturing for the paparazzi and drunk redhead Lindsay Lohan (who despite her brief screen time STILL manages to flash her crotch & go to rehab. Go, girl; do your part to advance the species!)... 400 generations of human civilization, and if you were God watching this program from the sofa and blinked You would have missed all of our precious drama while wondering how they made the dinosaurs look so real.
..."Holy Crap, I did that? You can't even see the strings. Better than Phil Tippet; he and that Harryhausen can 'stop-motion' in hell now. Yeah, MINE were awesome.... Whatever happened to THOSE? Rewind the footage, 'Me'dammit...." |
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