It was a dark and stormy night. The fancy lamp timer programmed with sunrise and sunset times for the entire year provided a sense of invulnerability in the predawn world of carelessly placed objects, but there were no clouds in the morning.
Next time I'm at the hardware store, I think I'll get one of those old-school light sensors. I like clichés as much as the next guy, but breathing through my mouth gives me a sore throat.
How did they pack so much gauze in my nose? That's the real mystery.
Big Science can't determine sunrise and sunset times any more than they can predict whether it'll rain tomorrow. The earth's not round, the galaxy's not straight, and darkness and light have too many gray areas.
ReplyDeleteGreat picture for this piece, with time off the dial.
I trust the gauze bit was added at the last minute, Hollywood-style, so as to sell the piece as a rip-roaring action-adventure.
I'm a former mouth breather myself (deviated septum). The Latin "septum" means "enclose[d] hedge," and that might explain why I've been trapped in this devious maze for so long.
A devious maze it is, overrun with hedgehogs who won't let me merge when I want to.
ReplyDeleteYes, the gauze was packed in after the fact. Better to degauss anyway, since overmagnetized nostrils attract unwanted smells left and right.
This deceptively simple post has set my cogs spinning all day. You deconstructed the fancy lamp timer and pulled out the brass tacks -- the quest for invulnerability is absolutely it. If only we could know the (unknowable) moments of sunrise and sunset, then ___! Unintelligent designers of fancy lamp timers all seek to prove the watchmaker analogy, to measure a universe of intelligent design. But the hands on their clocks point only to the origin of the specious.
ReplyDeleteJust so! And if only the dawn of civilization had taken daylight savings into account, invulnerability would be available long after the watchmaker has turned into a pumpkin, or an inscrutable monolith. Not that there's anything wrong with having a good soak in an offworld swamp.
ReplyDeleteI'd add something here, but I do believe we've covered it.
ReplyDeleteYes. There's no time like the present to avoid recovery.
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