In the beginning, the universe was created, which was regarded by many to be a very bad move. Some believe it was created by a God, but this God was never pinned down for a proper interview, so the jury is still out on that one. However, it is an accepted fact in some circles that since the universe WAS created, it stands to reason that it will end, thus a whole cottage industry was created for the sole purpose of predicting when and how this will occur. One consortium of various species have banded together to open a restaurant, aptly named "The Restaurant at The End of The Universe", which will open somewhere, sometime, to host a gala event to witness this very phenomenon, and since this is the very last phenomenon worth noticing that will ever occur, the guest list is very exclusive and the cover charge quite outrageous. However, a rather chipper little crustacean that is considered a delicacy on the planet Vogon will be on the menu, which to some degree should negate any distress induced by this extreme example of price gouging, a practice which was copied from merchants on the Planet Earth, who tend to get rather more prosperous in the wake of natural disasters, with the possible exception of the destruction of same said planet, which had a similar detrimental effect on same said merchants.
It is very interesting to note, at least to those who pay attention to notes to begin with, that none of this would have come to anybody's attention had it not been for a book, the second in a series, actually, by a fiction writer by the name of Douglas Adams, also, by coincidence, a resident of Earth. He became somewhat famous for having described in painful detail the "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy", a very famous publication known the Universe over as a bad copy of a very good idea. How this descendant of a primate happened to have guessed, however unintentionally, that such an instrument even existed, is still hotly debated by slug-like creatures that inhabit the second layer of a very scummy pond on a planet somewhere in the Crab Nebula. The story, which is actually quite factual in just about every detail, was even made into what humans describe as a "movie", which didn't quite make it to syndication and broadcast on terrestrial television in order to be sent into deep space along with other interesting cultural artifacts as "Amos and Andy" and "Friends", before the planet was demolished to make way for a hyper-space bypass.
Hidden somewhere deeply in all this is a true tragedy, for just 37 seconds before the planet was destroyed, Mrs Beverly Brokesdale of 3795 Martin Luther King Avenue, Port Sanders, Idaho (which incidentally has no body of water to host a port to) discovered cold fusion while attempting to program her coffee maker with the aid of a badly translated Japanese to English operating manual. Careful study of this event, most experts who study just this sort of occurrence agree, would have finally brought peace and prosperity, as well as perfectly toasted bagels, to the beleaguered planet, after years of strife and repeated elections of Republican Presidents. This method of energy generation, in fact, was so far in advance of anything that any other civilization had so far managed, that a superior race of beings on the planet upchuck (not to be confused with the Earth slang for "vomit") designed an advanced computer expressly for the sole purpose of recreated the conditions that led up to this discovery. Part of the Matrix, strange as it may seem, that comprised this computer, included the eventual birth of the exact duplicates of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, whose fight for the supremacy of the personal computer market would result in the galaxies' most advanced operating system failing miserably to win market share against the galaxy's worst example of computer code ever written, strangely named "Windows", which indirectly would have something to do with an indian programmer being hired to translate Japanese owners manuals into English.
A common misconception is that this amazing computer was "Deep Thought", which was created for a similar, but entirely different project altogether. The computer we speak of here was cleverly disguised as a blueberry Imac, whose insides were actually designed to hold a 87 billion million quadrillion ziga-bite hard drive spinning at 789 million RPMs, a processor so fast it arrives at conclusions before they could possibly be computed, and a nifty little bottle opener, which oddly enough, only works on Heinekens. Originally, on the false assumption that an auditorium full of chimpanzees working double shifts were responsible for Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, twice that amount were bred to operate the keyboard, which they trashed within minutes. Then it was discovered that out of work American programmers, who had lost all their jobs to India, could be hired to do the job for half the cost, as long as they were supplied with pizza and at least one week of vacation at a Star Trek convention. Finding these programmers was the most complicated part of the process, considering no one was sure how and where these humans might be found now that their home planet had been vaporized, but it was assumed that at least a few might have been kidnapped by those infamous grey aliens with large heads and even larger eyes who enjoyed performing medical experiments on any one dumb enough to get talked into boarding an alien spaceship with promises of a lifetime of debauchery with blonde, large breasted women with the IQ's of toaster ovens. Just such a human was found on the planet Magrathea, where he was in the middle of a hunger strike to protest having been given a brunette, large breasted woman, instead of a blonde. The aliens were more than happy to part with him, as it turned out he rather enjoyed being experimented on, which ruined all the fun. One interesting offshoot of all of this is that having once worked for Microsoft, the programmer innocently incorporated the infamous browser known as Internet Explorer into the computer's matrix, which set off alarms all across the Galaxy, and almost resulted in the whole project being terminated.
The downside to all this was that Mr Douglas ended up dying, as humans have a bad habit of doing, and everybody lost interest in anything remotely having to do with his epiphany, such is the attention span of most inhabitants of the Universe, as measured in milliseconds on a very inaccurate device now out of favor with anyone wanting to time anything. Now, a very interesting thing happens when this many sentient beings lose interest in something simultaneously. The sudden disappearance of all that interest creates a sudden vacuum in the space-time continuum, which when it collapse in upon itself, causes such an upheaval all across all existence, that everything careens into everything else, which is a fairly close approximation of the end of the universe, which if you really want to get technical about it, IS the end of the universe, which incidentally occurred just five hours before the opening of the restaurant of the same name, which really pissed off those who had payed inordinate amounts of their planets' gross global product to attend the final show. However, it was finally agreed to amongst all the galaxy's philosophers just moments before the end that none of this would matter once there was no one around to worry about it. Which brings us back to this God character, who having been harassed for what seems an eternity to come clean on the big question, i.e. Life, the Universe, and Everything, finally agreed to an interview, which incidentally he did so only because he knew he would not have to carry through, and having such supreme foresight, took the advance and spent it all in one wild night at the Hard Rock Cafe in Miami Beach, without the slightest bit of guilt over the whole bloody affair, since in reality he had utterly nothing to do with the whole mess to begin with.
Now, I am sure that somewhere in your mind the question is being asked, "How in the hell could I possibly know all this, or even report it on it if it were true, if the universe has already ended? Well, I can answer that question, just let me program it into my Imac G-5, give me about 15 years, and you will have your answer. I will even set my processor to the "You're kidding me, right?" level just for you, because I like you, I really, really like you. All I know for sure is that it has something to do with relativity, like how time behaves when you are waiting for Friday to come along, which takes an eternity, and once it does, the next three days accelerate to 57 times the normal time it takes a weekend to pass, and you find yourself right back at work before you even left. So, if the Universe HAS already ended, that does not necessarily mean we are aware of it, since frankly ceasing to exist is not one of our priorities. Matter of fact, most of us will probably insist on finally getting our tax refund checks before we bother to acknowledge that there is no longer an IRS to send one from, which will have doomsday waiting impatiently in the wings so that it can do it's thing and put a stop to taxation altogether, which will please many people to no end, at least for as long as they are capable of being pleased about anything. So, let me get to work on this question so that I can answer it before it sinks in that doing so would be totally pointless, considering that I could spend such valuable time drinking Pina' Coladas and sunning myself on the septic mound instead.
Oh, and thanks for all the fish........
P.S. I would like to thank Mr. Adams for posthumously inspiring me to create this post, which was innocently created strictly for the purpose of producing some smiles in the wake of yesterday's sad atmosphere. I wish he was still with us.
No comments:
Post a Comment