Fri., June 4, 1999"He's dead drunk, Jim!"
Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy to Captain James T. Kirk
while standing over my crumpled body
in the little-known "Star Trek" episode entitled
"Ohio?! Let Me See That Goddamn Star Chart!"Forgive me if I seem a bit wobbly in my writing today. I've just recently been given some very troubling news.
It seems that the astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have discovered the universe fucking with me.
Again.
And although I've been advised by my attorney not to discuss the details prior to my lawsuit known as Birtcher vs. The Cosmos And Everything In It going to trial, I really can't help myself. I mean, I've made a commitment to write something here every day, and it's really, really hard to stay focused on the antics of my cat or the voices in my head when the Milky Way has me by the scruff of the neck and is shaking me back and forth like an old, possibly smelly slipper.Perhaps some background is in order.
I think I was in the 5th grade some 30 years ago when I first had the theory of continental drift dumped on me. It broke my heart to learn that the North America I had come to love and trust was actually a wanton hussy of a landmass roaming the world night and day in a fruitless search for the comforting arms of a stronger, better place. That the wandering was occurring at the rate of a mere three feet every 100 years didn't make it any easier to take.
Not until I grew up and learned to distinguish between $5 streetwalkers and $5000/plate political fundraisers, anyway.Whatever comfort such mature acceptance of the waywardness of the land gave me, however, was blown all to hell when a kid I was babysitting told me that the whole earth was chasing its tail at the rate of one complete turn per day. Simple arithmetic drove the sharp point home: The only planet I had ever known was utterly in the throes of a dervish that was spinning me through space at the rate of at least 421 miles per hour. The fact that that explained why I could never get a glass to my mouth without spilling its contents all over my skirt was very cold comfort indeed.
And then I remembered that Vladimir Nabokov had once written a story about a man unable to stand because of the earth's mad rotation. Suddenly I fully understood the point Nabokov was trying to make, though I kept forgetting it every time my head bounced against the pavement back in those foolish, pre-helmeted days of mine.Alas, no helmet could protect me from the shock I felt that day I was in college and a passing motorist shouted out to me the news that Copernicus had discovered that the earth was also orbiting the sun at a speed of 67,000 miles per hour. Granted, he was seated on the passenger side of the planet and so didn't have as clear a view of the speedometer as he might have. Even I knew you'd have to be a pretty mediocre sort of genius to mistake a needle pointing to 67,000 mph for zero just because you were looking at it at a bit of an angle.
Whatever impulse I had to hang my head out the window of the earth and feel the solar wind in my face was almost immediately eclipsed by the convulsive vomiting typical of an utterly motion sick soul....That's where matters stood until today. I'd learned to get by with the help of a permanent Dramamine IV drip, special rubber headgear, and the knowledge that all the Legos at my side were moving right along with me.
Then the astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics just had to tell me that the sun, the moon, and all the planets are doing doughnuts around the galaxy at a speed of 486,000 miles per hour.
DOH!Really, I don't know how I can write now at all. The universe has me so motion drunk that I really ought to be heading off to some amusement park Tilt-A-Wheel in an effort to get me some rest.
Can you even read this without the letters all blurring together and looking like an orgy of "Sesame Street" sponsors?
Well, you're a better victim of the universe than I am....For those of you who are as dull as I am and still aren't sure what in the world I'm talking about, here's a brief summary:
Continental drift is moving us at a rate of 0.0000000000018 miles a second.
The earth's rotation is moving us at a rate of 0.10 miles a second.
The earth's orbital obsession is whipping us around the sun at a rate of 18.46 miles a second.
And now we know that the solar system is caught in a Mix Master of a Milky Way and spinning us at no less than an additional 135 miles a second (plus or minus 8 miles a second - prospective leapers off the Golden Gate Bridge hoping to hit the bay, take note!).
Is it any wonder that things have never seemed to stay where I leave 'em?
Is it any wonder that so many other people over the years have lost their rhythm, their good names, and even their minds?
I think not.
And if the lawyers for The Cosmos And Everything In It are any good at all, I expect to be offered a settlement any day.Until then, please pardon my barf.
(All material not accidentally snagged on the horns of the crescent moon © 1999 by Dan Birtcher)
(All nausea, vertigo, and migraines © At The Dawn of Time by The Cosmos.
Use of any of these materials outside the known universe strictly forbidden under penalty of non-existence.)
