A spoonful of my brains in the cotton candy machine
Creutzfeldt-Jakob prions, sweetened-to-taste and caramelized
Twirled around a paper cone handle
A time bomb with a twenty-year fuse
A teaspoon of good ideas, poorly folded
Transmissible only by eating your father’s brains
And cotton candy
Stop picking on your sister
And apologize for throwing up on your stepmother
And promise you’ll do all of your spelling homework
And I’ll stop beating you with the buckle-end
Maybe
And buy you this disease on a stick
That will completely cure you of everything
Before you turn thirty
Maybe you’ll have children before you go
And I’ll teach you to make cotton candy
Taste better with nothing but
The power of your mind.

[*]

November 30, 2009 · Posted in poetry  
    
Here’s the problem with astronomical/cosmological measurements of time and space:

Say you’re at home plate on a baseball field. The left fielder wings you the ball two seconds ago from four hundred feet away. WHILE THE BALL IS IN TRANSIT someone stretches the field another five feet and adds another second of time to what’s elapsing. Screw how many feet per second is that ball traveling. What time was it when it was thrown and what time will it have been by the time you catch it? How far away was the outfielder when he threw it and how far away will he have been by the time you catch it?

How about if you measure it again ten seconds from now, judging by echoes of the grunt from the outfielder throwing it and echoes of the ball hitting your glove when you caught it? (Assuming the field stretches at a constant rate of five feet and one extra second per two seconds, of course.)

Now, how long ago was the hypothetical big bang? How long ago will it have been if you measure it again thirty seconds from now?

You’re welcome.

[*]

PS:

Big ups to the English language for being able to handle those verb tenses as well as it did. That’s some tricky shit.

[.]

November 24, 2009 · Posted in Everything Else  
    

I once read a Richard Bach book.

There’s a confession.

Okay, maybe I read a couple of them. Johnathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions: Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah and maybe a couple more.

But the stupid confession is regarding Illusions. And here’s how it goes.

In the book, there’s this thing, basically a magic spell, where the messiah-guy is trying to tell the narrator-guy how to fulfill his own wishes with some kind of New Age visualization technique. It goes like you imagine the thing that you want, surrounded by a brilliant glow, and this will magnetize you to it, and it should come barreling down on you out of the future like a ton of bricks.

I’m not telling you what it is I imagined surrounded by a brilliant glow. I’m just not. But I will tell you that since that day, what has been barreling down on me out of the future like a ton of bricks has been magnets. I must have found literally hundreds of magnets in the twenty years since then. I am magnetized for magnets.

Found another one today. A round one, taped to the inside of the bottom of some box like the type you might get an inexpensive necklace or bracelet in, under a pad of cotton.

Go ahead and laugh now. I know you want to.

[*]

November 21, 2009 · Posted in Everything Else