For Those About To Blog, We Salute You

Outside Jokes

2006-02-15T00:14:00.002-06:00

``Ray``

+I can't begin to express the number of times I've started to tell somebody here an amusing anecdote or said "Oh, that's interesting because...." but had to cut myself off or make something up because the anecdote is nonsense here or the point of interest doesn't apply to those off the Main Line. I tried to think of these things as inside jokes, but I've come to realize that here they are most certainly from the outside. Finally, a chance to unload some of these stories!

+I've found it difficult to associate heavily with adults here. They are generally very set in their thinking and their thinking doesn't quite jive with mine. It certainly isn't a fault of theirs. Before I jumped, I sometimes had trouble relating to people from other parts of the city I lived in. These people grew up quite a bit further down the street than that. Children, though, have an amazing capacity to match their world to yours. I can go on and on about things from home and they just get it. So it is that I have found myself most comfortable living among the colonies of schools that have cropped up on the Library planet here.

+The young man that stops by the most regularly to listen to a traveler's ponderings is a precocious student named David Bowie. I've taken him under my wing for a few reasons. At first, I was just amused and amazed by his remarkable name. Once I got to know him though, he proved to be a most interesting fellow, starring in his own personal tragic comedy. If his life was a book on the Main Line, the rear cover would relay this story:

+"Meet David Bowie. No, not that David Bowie, but a young man struggling to fit in among a wacky gang of schoolmates! In Flatland, Ziggy Stardust never picked up a guitar and Major Tom never phoned home! Although our protagonist's namesake never existed there, his name is ridiculed all the same. In an ironic twist of fate, there is a prominent politician in Flatland named David Bowen who is none-too-popular among school aged ruffians. Our little trooper faces a daily barrage of David Bowen taunts from his unrelenting peers with hilarious consequences!"

+I've found that people who summarize books have a knack for ruining them. "Okay, I wrote 285 pages of masterpiece.... You have one half of one page to not screw it up.... Go." Invariably, the synopsizer will gleefully spray paint your fur. I met one of these "writers" once. He gave me a business card which read as follows:

+ D & E Synopsis Studios
"Ever Succinctward!"
Johnathon Fitzbom, Synopsisaurus Rex

+Surrounding this exchange, he was telling me a story about where he lived growing up. He was raised in a part of this city known as "Little Mexico". One day, he got home from school and there was a different family just hanging out, watching TV in the living room. They told him, "Hey... muchacho. This is Little Texas now. You best scoot." And he and his family scooted. But he turned out fine.... blah blah blah... here is a business card.... blah blah blah.....

+Seldom have I simultaneously been so mildly amused and enraged. The card was clever. The story was ridiculous and to my liking. But he was arrogant and worse, a synopsizer. You are a shortener, sir! A shortener!

+This does not change the fact that Flatland David Bowie (In my head, I call him David Bowie Prime. I also wrote a book wherein David Bowie Prime is instead an enormous, agile robot.) is made fun of for having a name so close to this aging politician. Indeed, he is made fun of frequently for any reason the winds might blow into the heads of his peers. Oh! The tale of his dog's misfortune is entirely worth relating. A tragedy that would have been the pride of Greece, to be sure. That will have to be a tale for another fire.

-Cloudkicker

A Blind Man's Vision

2006-02-12T03:17:00.000-06:00

+I’ve come to know this place very well. The sights, the sounds, the scents, the tastes, the textures… everything about this place is as familiar to me as darkness is to a blind man... and the similarities don't end there. The difference being that everyone is in agreement that a blind man lacks the use of his eyes but I am the only one who agrees that I lack the use of mine. It’s difficult to explain, really; especially since I can see the world in front of me just fine. I've been here for quite some time. I'm happy here. By default, I’ve come to call this place my home, but I know it's not. It's more of a break, an interval in my life in which continuity has been suspended. I call this place Hiatus for that reason. Even if I wanted to leave Hiatus I couldn't. The things I could see before, the lines between here and there... I can't see them anymore. I'm blind.

+I noticed my "vision" was getting worse and worse with time. The lines separating this universe from the next grew fuzzy and eventually I couldn't see them anymore. I used to travel everywhere to learn whatever there was to learn. The more knowledge I soaked in the harder it was to remember what life was like before. It wasn't necessarily bad; not like becoming old and senile. I haven't become incompetent or incapable. I prefer to think of it more like how a man does not remember his birth or first few years of life; how a child's thoughts are as clear as day but as an adult many childhood memories are difficult to recall. I wanted to learn all there was to learn, and to do so I had to find the right teachers. Some people call these teachers Benefactors. Fortunately for me, the second thing I learned was how to spot these Benefactors across several planes of existence. Unfortunately, doing so also requires the use of my "vision" which is not what it used to be. When I was learning about inter-universal travel, the first step was accepting that there are no boundaries to what your mind can comprehend, to open your mind and then open it even further. That was the key that unlocked the gate, the crack that broke the damn and allowed information to flow through my mind in a tidal wave of revelation. Sadly, it is much easier said than done. It's not quite as concrete as "1 and 1 and 1 is 3" or "the 18th letter in the alphabet is 'r'."

+Not every trick I learned requires sight. I once learned how to moon walk through walls. I guess, at the time, I expected something more earth-shattering, but I didn't know how to moon walk before so I was still very excited. One of my favorites is the double-jump. At the peak of my jump, I can jump again in mid-air. Plus, my second vertical is much higher than my first. It's pretty hard on my knees when I land, but it's worth the satisfaction when those 7 footers try to dunk in my house.

+I am a great fan of the written word. And as you already know, I love to learn. Even so, I don't read or write very often. There exists a highly touted library in Hiatus. I have never been. I'm not even sure how to get a library card. Perhaps there is information of my home in this library to end all libraries. I never thought to check until recently when I stumbled upon a lyric not of this world, a lyric with the same familiarity as my mother's face... of home. Before I lost my sight I took home for granted, I assumed that it was only a thought away. But now home has become a long lost memory, a place that I can no longer return to. I have thusly decided to write to the author of these lyrics and am now impatiently awaiting a reply…

On The Space Road

2006-02-08T00:59:00.000-06:00

+The following is an excerpt from a newsgroup in the universe where I live:

"Subject: Life On Mars?

It's a god-awful small affair
To the girl with the mousy hair
But her mummy is yelling "No"
And her daddy has told her to go
But her friend is nowhere to be seen
Now she walks through her sunken dream
To the seat with the clearest view
And she's hooked to the silver screen
But the film is a saddening bore
For she's lived it ten times or more
She could spit in the eyes of fools
As they ask her to focus on
Sailors fighting in the dance hall
Oh man! Look at those cavemen go
It's the freakiest show
Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?
It's on Amerika's tortured brow
That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow
Now the workers have struck for fame
'Cause Lennon's on sale again
See the mice in their million hordes
From Ibeza to the Norfolk Broads
Rule Britannia is out of bounds
To my mother, my dog, and clowns
But the film is a saddening bore'
Cause I wrote it ten times or more
It's about to be writ again
As I ask you to focus on
Sailors fighting in the dance hall
Oh man! Look at those cavemen go
It's the freakiest show
Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?

Hey newsies,
That is a song I've been fine tuning the research on lately. Thought it would provide a needed break in the pseudoscientific rhetoric populating this thread lately.

-Cloudkicker, Stranger In A Strange Land
We could be heroes, Just for one day"

Here is the most notable reply:

"Re: Life on Mars?

Look at your children
See their faces in golden rays
Don't kid yourself they belong to you
They're the start of a coming race
The earth is a bitch
We've finished our news
Homo Sapiens have outgrown their use
All the strangers came today
And it looks as though they're here to stay

I don't often take up the pen, but your words begged a reply, yes?

-Ray, Space Oddity
Just gonna have to be a different man"

+I will dispense some useful facts at this time:
You and I are from what is plainly known as the Main Line. There are many routes which branch from this line at various points. Each of these routes is what may most usefully be termed a "universe". This is not entirely descriptive of the true state of things, but it will suffice at this time and for our purposes. It is also a matter of usefulness that our own home universe has become known as the Main Line. The truth of the matter is that there is, to our knowledge, no central universe. For reasons that I will soon attempt to explain in part, our universe is in a unique position. We are (that is to say, we will become) the only subset of existence which is largely aware that we are, in fact, a subset and that there are others. Knowledge is, as they say, power and the writers of the history book decide their own place between it's covers. So it is that we became known officially as Universe Abraham and later (due to secular protest) simply Universe A. As a writer and a colloquialist, I prefer the more common nomenclature, Main Line, to the cold-sounding, government-committee-altered Universe A.

+Each distinguishable universe has become so due to a Benefactor. These are people who travel between the Zero Universe and another . The Zero Universe (commonly called any of the following: Zero U, Aught U, Oklahoma State, etc.) is so called because that is approximately what we know about it: zero. It is a term that essentially means "wherever Benefactors go when they are not here or somewhere else we know about." There are several popular theories, but there are several popular theories about many things. I have it on very good authority that none of these theories approximate the reality of the Zero Universe. The best way, says my source, to get a look at the nature of this place is to walk to the top of a mountain with your eyes closed, look straight up, and open you eyes. If you can't manage that ("Oh, you can't do that?" he asked), the second best way is to float on your back in the middle of a lake and listen to Ziggy Stardust front to back ("Yeah, it's right there, man"). It is my understanding that only one Benefactor visits each universe and he (ours happens to be male, I use "he" for all Benefactors out of habit and convenience) does so at seemingly odd intervals, sharing what knowledge he, or his superiors (theories abound), deem worth sharing. Often, Benefactors lead very full, apparently unconnected lives at various points throughout the history of a universe, frequently gaining fame and fortune for their worldly exploits before heading back home for a spell. In general, people seem to be unaware of the existence of these teachers unless they are chosen as pupils. On the Main Line, our Benefactor's job is to share the knowledge of how to jump to another universe. So it is that I have retired to this place. As other universes believe themselves to be the only one, they just call themselves the universe. Due to this misconception, I have come to call this place Flatland. You see, in the original Flatland, everybody exists in only two dimensions (you could argue time as a third). They do not have any words for pyramid or cube or waterslide, as these things imply height and height is a foreign concept. If you are not yet bored by that idea, I recommend giving the book a read. Flatland (A Romance of Many Dimensions) by Edwin A. Abbott. Ripping good read. Hands down, my favorite book of 1884. (Moving on...) While our Benefactor spelled out clearly the means of inter-universal travel and the hyper-relativistic affect of such a jump on my personal timeline compared those of everybody I had ever known, he failed to mention the terrifying physical ordeal it implies. Have you ever thrown up so hard it flows from your nose? Imagine that, but simultaneously through every opening on your body, including some that you might not have considered to be "open". Needless to say, I will not be commuting further. The only condition of obtaining knowledge from a Benefactor, once you are selected, is that you are disallowed from sharing it in a different universe. So it is that I can tell nobody in Flatland what I have learned. Fortunately, I am not conflicted about this, as I would not wish that level of discomfort on anybody.

+In Flatland, the Benefactor essentially forced a library straight out of a Jorge Luis Borges story. In this library is every combination of characters in whichever language you select. A complete history and prophecy of every universe is contained in the library, but for each book of truth there are countless others which are filled with lies. For each line of sense there is a mountain of nonsense. When I say to you that I am a writer, you know what I mean. When I say "writer" to a local, it signifies to them that I pare down sections of this library until I have chosen a novel or a song or a recipe for cheesecake. As Michelangelo took away all the stone that wasn't the already-existing sculpture, so Flatland writers uncover their work. This has greatly stunted the literary exploits of this people. Any adventure you choose to relate is not your own tale, but one you essentially picked from a shelf. Terrible shame really. The piece of knowledge passed on by the Benefactor was how to pass information backwards through the flow of time (which is why I am able to relate all of this to you at approximately the time I jumped) . Over an infinite amount of time, so much information had been passed back that all possibilities had been covered. And so the library to end all libraries flashed retroactively into existence in Flatland.

+This brings me back to the postings on the newsgroup. I have come to a point in my travels that I found it a worthwhile endeavor to track down others from the Main Line. Naturally, a fella can't just ask around the local tavern for something like that. One must send out a beacon to anybody who might likewise be searching. I found success using lyrics you may recognize. On the Main Line, the most recent tour of our benefactor is what is generally called the life of David Bowie. Yes. Our Benefactor is kick-ass. As all the other universes lack David Bowie, his work serves as a perfect beacon and I commonly search the newsgroups for references. Finally, I have found somebody from home. A select transcription of our communication follows......