Time Flies

Have you noticed every year seems a little shorter? You hear people say things like, "Can you believe the year is over?" and, "Where did time go?". At first I believed I was just getting old, and that as that happens time seems to move quicker. You know, I've never been old before so this is all a learning experience for me. Then I started to hear younger adults and even children utter the same words of amazement. This got me curious, so I started to investigate possible causes. I thought the world may be spinning faster,or that we were just a faster paced society. I looked into the idea that peoples' attention spans had just grown shorter. I looked under just about every rock that I could find leaving no turn unstoned - and, in the end I found all these theories too swiss-cheesed. They all seemed to be symptoms of a much larger problem ('ceptin the one about the Earth spinning too fast - that was just a wild hair). I was frustrated - but didn't have the attention span to worry.

Then, this very morning as I sat on my living-room floor in a puddle of stale beer, browsing free clips of pornography - one of those stoned turns hit me like a drunk hit and run driver. The answer to my query lies in Atomic Time. Let me elaborate:

In our increasingly digital and computer reliant day and age most of the world receives its time via an atomic clock. This means that we are tuned into a select few clocks throughout the world and that is there were even a minute discrepancy in the clock's function, it would throw the entire populous who is relying on that clock for its time into an altered time scale. We already know that the atomic clock is only accurate to a certain degree - but that is supposedly astounding tight because of the atomic resonance timing mechanism within. So - right there we are losing 2 nanoseconds per day or one second in 1,400,000 years. Big deal, right? Well, what if - and there are couple of what if's here - what if there was a flaw in the original mathematical and those numbers are not correct? What if there was a flaw in the design of the clock itself causing it to lose larger amounts of time without the notice of its caretakers? What if - here it is - what if there is a malicious force behind the clock who is conspiring to speed up the American productivity by speeding up time??? The faster time goes, the more of a panic the workforce becomes, faster labor, less downtime, more stress... Sound familiar?

This theory is rather young but I feel it has some pre-substantiated factors involved. Just for kicks, keep a good quality quartz clock next to your digital atomic clock and monitor the time difference on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

Until next rant...

I Don't Know Anymore

11/08 /08 – Home Base – Deck – 6:23 pm

Fall has et upon the Midwestern plains, bringing a lustful chill reminiscent of those hoary nights in high school when new love was abound awash in adolescent testosterone fantasies. Nostalgia is in everything tonight – the dogs barking in the distance behind the soft roar of traffic on a distant highway that only comes when the air is cool, the smell of moist fallen leaves, the lonesome cricket hiding in the reeds singing its sad song.

Tonight I sit, seventeen years older, alone in Colorado under the few stars that can be seen this close to the city and think of all the good times there have been along this disturbingly interesting life. I remember faces of the girls who stole my heart and, in turn, became a thread woven into my intricate tapestry. There were stoner buddies and petty thugs peppered throughout the mosaic of places, times, feelings, memories, events, smiles, tears and every other darn thing. I was blessed to not face any measurable amount of tragedy, though a few have occurred around me via friends and acquaintances. This evening I remember the moments which gave birth to the man I am today with silent amazement that my heart still beats and my brain is still relatively capable of coherent thought. Seventeen years from where I once stood.....

....Where on earth does the joy go????

Time passes and builds stresses that snow-coat the mane of the most noble of survivor in the new century. The youthful wonder dries into dust and is blown to the wind. All of the curious emotions of pubescence become a dull “Blah” or are replaced with anger. Personal inter-communications seal up with welds of paranoia and disgust. Then..... Then, one morning, you wake up with a gun in your hand and a half-empty bottle of tequila looking for someone to damage.

Is this really what evolution intended? Is it in our nature as animals to destroy each other until we can destroy ourselves? No matter the angle in which you examine it, it appears that this is so. Civility among humans is such a distant concept that it is just too out of reach for the common person – yet a simple mind such as mine can conceive a world in harmony. Why, then, can't the “greatest” minds of all times?

I'm not here do pretend to deliver answers. I posed all these questions to express to the reader the utter disdain that a human in the 21st century is submerged in on a daily fight to stay afloat.