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Late Night Samba

It's amazing what useless things a night of sombre, slow music, some rhum, and a peanut butter sandwich can do for you.



Such as this really rather silly, pointless thought it plunged into my brain. It's so annoyingly senseless that I don't understand why I'm still thinking about it. But there it is. It's stuck there, like margarine or pork fat on a frying pan after a heavy bout of saute-bleu.



(So what's the thought already?)



Don't interrupt. This has to be orchestrated slowly. Like a flower going into bloom, or the slow, rumbling approach of an earthquake. You savor the moment, lest it runs away from you. Remember Kodak. Think picture-perfect. A single second trapped for ages.



So okay. Here it is. The thought that has been bugging me ever since I read that webcam-related post about long-distance face to face communication. The One Thought. To Rule them All.



(Get on with it, you bitch.)



God, but you're pushy. Fine, fine. Here it is. If you cross the inernational date line, do you get older? Or younger?



This reminds me of that old joke about the two buddies:





Buddy 1 (knocking on door of buddy 2): Buddy! Buddy! Wake up! I need your help!



Buddy 2 is startled out from a deep, peaceful sleep by the incessant knocking and goes to open the door.



Buddy 2 (yawns): Hey buddy. What's up?


Buddy 1: I can't sleep.





G'night y'all.

Comments

  1. AnonymousJuly 5, 2007 at 1:36 AM

    my answer: you don't get any older or younger. obviously you are not a fan of enough sc-fi, but ontologically speaking, you remain, fixed, where you are. positioned. located. anchored. what moves is an image, transmitted. not you, because you remain where you are. if you were to travel physically then the dateline is crossed--but then again--the dateline is a figment of man's creation.... one guy just went up to Greenwich in the UK and established the international dateline there... along with some more sci fi you must read Dava Sobel's Longitude. and with that last clue, you know who i am..

    ReplyDelete
  2. MartinJuly 5, 2007 at 3:07 AM

    Yea, I know you don't age. Ahaha. That's the entire point of the question. The dateline just redefines the concept of date and time for the two hemispheres of the planet. It doesn't affect the person, at least chronologically. So to ask if you age or lose age after crossing the dateline's useless. It's just to pass the time as a faux-intellectual question.

    But tell that to somebody who's jet-lagged and has spent the better part of his life living in an area with equally distributed day and night transitions, and he's sure to hit you with a frozen carp. And no, areas with equal 6-month days and nights don't count.

    And no, I don't know who you are. :D But your answer's hella cool. And I do read sci-fi; not the hardcore sci-fi types, since I'd still like to retain some erudite qualities in what I read, so I end up reading Niven, Clarke, Asimov, Zelazny (which isn't really sci-fi), Sheri Tepper, and Mary Doria Russell.

    ReplyDelete

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