As I hover over the final hours of the year, the first rays of 2013 are already beginning to show above the artificial horizon I use to prevent plowing into the fields below. Like the dawn of aviation, new years are best experienced from the cockpit, because stowaways aren't able to see the lights of the runway until it's too late.
Having established a clear connection between farming and navigation, it's time to begin sending the packets to their final destination, which is, of course, the tail of 2013. Since the first packet contains the seeds of subsequent transmissions, proper alignment is crucial. This is where a ball of string comes into play, because if there's one thing string is good for, it's keeping vegetables in line.
If there's one thing a ball of string isn't good for, it's aligning a scope with the polar axis of your home planet. This is necessary to keep the object of desire from drifting from the field of view, or worse, out of the field of vegetables slated for lunch, or dinner. Although the mechanism in question is beyond the scope of the average hunter, the difficulty of examining jitter when the rising edge is obscured by clouds—in your coffee or out—is reason enough to thank an astronomer, without whose efforts we would still be eating primordial soup with our fingers.
Having established a clear connection between vegetables and astronomy, it's time to begin making preparations for the end of 2013, which, owing to the powerful spring alluded to in a previous monologue, is really the beginning of 2012. In certain vegetative states, there's nothing quite like a comet to remind the citizens of less certain neighboring states that they aren't in Kansas anymore, particularly when the comet can be seen in broad daylight through even the narrowest eyes.
Fortunately, there's an elegant solution to the problem, one that doesn't require the blather-rinse-repeat mumbo of modern science. All that's required to send the comet away, with its tail between its legs, is a simple incantation that every bad comet understands as the command to go home.
All together now.
Oort!
Oort! Oort!
Oort! Oort! Oort!
Oort! Oort! Oort! Oort!
Oort! Oort! Oort! Oort! Oort!
Oort!
Suggested revision: pluralize "Kansas," because "At one point, Kansas had two separate governments, each with its own constitution" (Wikipedia), not to mention the theory of parallel universes.
ReplyDeleteThanks for alluding to the powerful spring. That spring could become a running thing.
Nice Carly Simon reference.
I may have to take the easy way out on this one: "I don't think we're in any Kansas anymore," which ought to cover my multiversal bases as well.
ReplyDeleteThe spring thing . . . yes, it could wind up running on and on.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
You're so right about the powerful spring's effect on time. Today's (Jan. 2, 2013) Frog Applause panel asks if 2013 is over yet:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.gocomics.com/frogapplause/2013/01/02
Some things are just too in-your-face springy to be ignored. Springs, for example. Especially when they make time go backward. That FA duck probably has an internal spring.
ReplyDeleteJeff, your timely insight is popping up everywhere I look. Consider this tweet and know that you're not alone in this:
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/robhuebel/status/286585575971106816
Here tonight the years turn backward,
ReplyDelete'Till my youthful days I feel.
—Adelbert Clark, "Memories of 'The Old Virginia Reel'" (1915)
Thanks, Craig, for putting a spring in my step. Good to know. Good to know.
ReplyDelete"I cannot help but shudder as the years turn backward." —Hardin Wallace Masters, _Edgar Lee Masters: A Biographical Sketchbook_ (1978)
ReplyDelete"It was really sensational to have the years turn backward like that." —_Dear Ones at Home: Autobiography of Leona L. Burr_ (1965)
ReplyDelete"Dang. I shouldn’t have thrown the transmission into reverse without stopping first." — Uncle Grandma (2014)
ReplyDeleteYour coupling of "vegetables and astronomy" is a Googlewhack (in the non-Omegaword hits, vegetables and astronomy appear as items in longer lists, and those don't count). My first reaction was one of surprise -- "what about those killer tomatoes from outer space?" Then I remembered that tomatoes are fruits, not vegetables. And yada yada yada, here's this piece in your honor:
ReplyDeletehttp://oneletterwords.com/weblog/?id=8659
So much to love there. The unlikely pairing (not paring) of nightshade tubers, their so-called eyes connected, like dots in the firmament, napping on the couch with (no doubt) their potato-chip crumbs. It is glorious!
ReplyDelete"Napping eyes of a potato," "potato's napping eyes," "sagging potato eyes" and "droopy potato eyes" all deliver zero Google results. So good on you for conjuring more Googlewhacks! Here is a rock that looks like a sleeping potato, but that doesn't count:
ReplyDeletehttp://i.imgur.com/biwgt.jpg
Great potato-chip crumbs on the couch quip!
Googlewacking could easily become a hobby. A pleasant diversion, until it turns into full-blown addiction, thus forcing me to reconsider rehab again.
ReplyDeleteI think that sleeping "rock" might be a petrified spud. Will investigate.
And now this extraordinary potato:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dvdbeaver.com/film4/blu-ray_reviews_58/the_tin_drum_blu-ray_/large/large_tin_drum_blu-ray_subs.jpg
It isn't obvious from the subtitle, but I think he means that all potatoes are extraordinary. Even the spring-loaded ones.
ReplyDeleteForgive me, but there's also that time the Potato Face Blind Man dreamed of tobogganing to the moon:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.gutenberg.org/files/27085/27085-h/27085-h.htm#THE_TOBOGGANTOTHEMOON_DREAM_OF_THE_POTATO_FACE_BLIND_MAN
[Homer voice on]
ReplyDeleteMmmmm . . . Sandburg . . .
[Homer voice off]
Yes, your phrase "all potatoes are extraordinary" delivers zero Google results. :-D
ReplyDeleteOh great, now this:
ReplyDeletehttp://oneletterwords.com/weblog/?id=8661
A new favorite, despite the anguish it must have caused during its plotting phase, and after. Even with a bare minimum of solar maxima, it bears mentioning that propagation is never in the eye of the beholder, but is, instead, squarely on the shoulders of Atlas, who now wishes he hadn't shrugged off the advice of his collage advisors.
DeleteI find myself curious whether these "certain vegetative states" can be induced by the consumption of certain legumes. String theorists posit that so-called "black p-branes" serve as solutions to the black hole problem[1], which all but demystifies the traditional consumption of black-eyed peas. They serve as a "solvent" to the general problem of relatives. Or maybe I'm just being pea-brained.
ReplyDelete[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_p-brane
At last! The coordinates of the Worldsheet of the Black P-Brane, explained in exactly the sort of plain-vanilla language that opens the eyes of potatoes and legumes alike, for they, too, are relatives in the primordial pea soup that so often engulfs the coastal regions of black holes, and Massachusetts.
DeleteLets eat!
Your carrier pigeon whispered something about the Creature of the Black Legume, but did you know this?:
ReplyDeletehttp://oneletterwords.com/weblog/?id=8662
Certainly not. Suspected it, possibly. Intuited it, maybe. Infernal pigeons, probably.
ReplyDelete