David Hadley's Blog, page 183

Everything is Everywhere

Here, there and quite probably down the back of the sofa, or – if you are not careful – somewhere in the midst of Hartlepool. That is the trouble with stuff – it is all over the place. Although, if scientists are to be believed, and on the whole we should believe them, after all wishful thinking hasn't got a patch on verifiable evidence – then there is stuff throughout the universe (and Wales).

Still, on the whole, it is probably better to be in a universe of stuff, because after all we are stuff too and if there was no stuff there would be no us. Admittedly, that would solve some of Earth's more pressing parking problems and reduce the queues at nearly all the supermarket checkouts in the known universe, but it does – on the whole – seem rather a steep price to pay, even if it does make the place a lot tidier.

Of course, on the upside, it would solve humankind's most pressing problem of finding a cure for religion and politics, but it would seem to entail a severe curtailment of existence. Which is always a bit of a bugger, especially if you spend those last few minutes of existence embroiled in some mundanity of existence like putting the bins out, rather than pondering the eternal verities, or doing something very rude indeed with a bevy of naughty acquaintances of your preferred sexual orientation and compatible level of erotic imaginings.

Thursday Poem: Where the Time Goes, We Go Too

Where the Time Goes, We Go Too

We have stumbled across deserts.
We have struggled through forests.
We have seen so many far places,
but still this world remains the same.

Where the time goes, we go too
and look for what can be found
in those places where we remember
days that passed too long ago.

Our lives are racing past now
in these places where time crawled
and the days seemed endless
as the summer sun lasted forever.

Now the winter calls to us
out of those days running towards us.
Fewer and fewer of them each year
and yet, we wait still for life to begin.

Seeing her again

Those were the easy days. I found them there at the bottom of my bag of time. A few days I'd left over from a year I'd created for someone I'd once cared about. I had given us a year together, that was all, because there was some other place that needed my time, and I didn't have all that much to spare then.

Although, in the end it did turn out that I did have more time than I thought, but still I had to leave her behind when the year ran out. I put those last few days aside, meaning to go back to her, once it was all over. As with many of these things though, the period I left her to go to turned out to last longer, much longer than I'd anticipated - several human lifetimes, in fact.

I'd left her frozen in a moment, her hand reaching out for me as we stood together on her balcony. Human centuries had passed since then, but I knew she would still be there waiting for me, even though the scene beyond her balcony would have changed beyond recognition for her.

I did wonder if it was wise going back to her for those few days we had left and the chaos and confusion the sudden leap through the centuries would bring to her, and what would – inevitably – happen to her when our few days ran out and the centuries caught up with her.

Then I remembered her smile and I knew I had to see her again.

Invisibility Cloak: A Technological Breakthrough

Recently several leading scientists announced they have moved a step closer to making an invisibility cloak. By using the natural force that makes one sock of a pair sometimes disappear in the washing machine, scientists have developed pairs of invisibility cloaks, which they then wash together. The quantum uncertainty of the washing machine cycle then sometimes makes one of the invisibility cloaks disappear. However, as with socks, which sock or cloak will become invisible, and when, is still very uncertain.

As one scientist said:

Sometimes, as with socks one of the cloaks will disappear in the wash, which means you get an invisibility cloak, other times you get the two cloaks you put in back, other times you get two cloaks back, one of which you've never seen before. On a few occasions, we have even found – after washing – that we are left with a cloak that we cannot lose, even if we get a government official to leave it on a train. When that official gets home, thinking he has left the cloak on the train he discovers he still has it with him, even if he has lost the memory stick containing vital top-secret information wrapped inside the cloak when he left it on the train.

As with the socks that become invisible in the wash, scientists believe that the visible part of the cloaks slips through the wormhole in reality that exists inside every washing machine through which socks and other similar items become invisible. The socks – and other items – still exist in this universe, but they simply become invisible and thus remain inside the washing machine until they reunite with their visible part when it slips back through the wormhole and the sock seemingly magically reappears as if from nowhere.

Scientists also believe that this wormhole phenomenon also explains the sudden mysterious appearance in the wash of items never seen before when an invisible sock in the washing machine somehow reunites with a visible part that is not its own, thus appearing as something completely different and never before seen.

All scientist now have to do is develop someway of detecting when an invisibility cloak is in the washing machine before it gets washed again and reunited with its visible part. Therefore, scientists are trying to develop a washing basket capable of holding several invisible cloaks without any of them getting lost or slipping back through the wormhole to re-entangle with their visible part.

Unbounded by Mere Reality

These days it is only natural that the sudden unwarranted appearance of a WWI-era biplane in the vestibule is enough to cause trepidation, if not out and out consternation. After all, unwarranted fluctuations in the time and space continuum are specifically outlawed in some recent EU-wide legislation and – thenceforth – should not now occur.

It is a matter, surely, of documented fact that once a government of any stripe – up to and including the EU bureaucracy - passes any law then whatever it is that that law outlaws ought to stop happening. As the current success of the Euro shows, once laws are passed even the rules of economics must bend to fit, reality itself must alter itself, to fit the new regime.

For it is obvious by now that if – for example – a governmental body were to, say, repeal the law of gravity we would all, once that law was passed find ourselves suddenly floating free of the pull of the Earth. Well, at least in those areas of the planet that came under the jurisdiction of that new law, while the rest of the world's population would find themselves still tied to the surface… and probably quite jealous of our new-found freedoms.

For, after all, that is the role of politicians - as they themselves see it - to create the world anew in an image of their own choosing, unbounded by mere reality and trivial universal laws of nature.

New Head of University Average Access Body Announced

The government has today announced a new head of the University Average Access Body, a quango set up by the government to prevent anyone with any academic ability getting to university. Most MPs of all parties welcomed the move. As a political commentator said on hearing news of the appointment:

MPs, of course, cannot understand the concept of anyone getting any position, including a place at a university, based on ability, rather than just ticking all the right PR boxes. After all, most of them realize they wouldn't be allowed within 500 miles of being an MP if we chose them on ability to do the job rather than their talent for wearing the right coloured rosette, smiling indulgently at political weirdoes and saying and doing what they are told.

MPs are concerned that the university sector is not dumbing-down as fast as the rest of the education sector, and that consequently the country could miss its target of everyone in Britain having a First-Class Honours degree by the middle of the 21st Century.

Politicians and educationalist believe that if not enough people of average or lower ability are not awarded top-class degrees, then society will remain unfair. For example, those whose, say, knowledge of history goes back further than what happened last week on Eastenders, or know what E=MC2 actually means, or know how to count beyond ten without taking their socks off, will, MPs believe, have an unfair advantage in the workplace.

Some Conservative MPs oppose these changes. However, the coalition business secretary Vince Cable, responsible for making this appointment, has promised to meet then around the back of the Houses of Parliament later today, where he will explain the advantages of his choice with the aid of his favourite 'parliamentary debate' baseball bat.

The Return of Hunting

Anyway, since that last government took it upon itself to make hunting foxes with hounds illegal there have been those eager to see that the grand tradition of the hunt has not become lost to this once-great nation.

Obviously, this requires that there be something that needs hunting. Since anything that is either cute or fluffy – or has the appearance of so-being to those who know little or nothing of its ways – is unlikely to be allowed to be hunted. Because this country seems to have an unlimited supply of those killjoys who cannot see anyone doing anything they find enjoyable without those killjoys having an almost uncontrollable itch to see it made illegal, then the hunts need to find something no-one likes.

Obvious among such creatures are politicians, journalist, estate agents and other such modern-day vermin. Chasing each one has its virtues and the eradication of all such from our society can be nothing but a boon. However, some problems to remain with the possibility of say hunting politicians with hounds. First of all, obviously, is the problem of cruelty. However, experts have proved that the hounds should suffer no great detrimental effects from having too close a contact with politicians, proving elementary hygiene practices are adhered to, so that is one problem solved.

In future, then, it should soon be possible for all and sundry to delight in seeing the magnificent spectacle of their local member of parliament chased by a pack of hounds through the constituency that very MP has done so little to represent. Anything closer to true democracy than that would be much too difficult to envisage, especially in these times of mirthless woe.

Monday Poem: The Distances in the Universes of our Eyes

The Distances in the Universes of our Eyes

We fall between the stars, and know,
as distances all spread around,
about what it means to be alone.
We stood and watched the arcing skies
above us, turning with the world

looking for signs,
looking for reasons

for why this world is turning still
and why it turns alone each day
we stand and watch the turning stars

looking for signs
looking for reasons

we turn back to each other, search
the distances between the stars
in universes of our eyes

looking for signs
looking for reasons

We will walk back together now
to that small room we know so well,
remove each other's clothes to lie
together, skin against warm skin

looking for signs
looking for reasons.

Is Something Burning?

In the distance was one of the greatest cities on Earth at the time. However, it was shut. We had set out on our journey across the great wastelands, forgetting that it would be early closing day when we arrived.

We had fought our way through bandits, crossed the swollen river and forsaken the pleasure spots of many lesser cities in order to end up here, stuck outside the closed city gates.

'Oh, bollocks,' we wailed at our misfortune and in our grief and mortification set about burning down a few of the peasant hovels that lay outside the city gate. It didn't help much, but setting fire to things sometimes does help, as the great philosopher Albert the Moderately Singed said upon the occasion his wife set fire to his beard when she refused to believe it was – as Albert claimed – yet another philosopher's holiday.

Anyway, Albert was packed off out of the house to go and do some philosophising so they could have some money for food, even though his regulation philosopher's beard still had one or two embers still alight in it.

This all goes to show that things are not really as straightforward as we hope and this world often throws trials and tribulations in our paths and that often the one wise answer is – as wise old Albert said - to find someone else to take the blame for it… and then to set fire to them.

Miss World and Religious Fundamentalism

Once, a long time ago now, it seemed most unlikely that a woman from the strict Uttabollux religion would be allowed to enter such a contest as the Miss World (& Canada) Beauty contest, let alone possibly go on to win it.

When Pulchritude Shexy-asa-Ghoat first applied to enter the contest, after entering the Miss Tipton 2011 contest, people were sceptical that the judges could consider a woman who spends her life completely concealed inside a cardboard box as a legitimate entrant, let alone her standing any chance of winning.

When the case came to trial, however, the UK High Court ruled that despite the fact that Miss Shexy-asa-Ghoat's religion compelled her to stay inside her cardboard box, and that the judges, audiences and everyone else was forbidden to look at her, it should not be a bar to her entry into the competition. The judges ruled that disqualification of Miss Shexy-asa-Ghoat from the competition would be a breach of her human rights, especially her right to follow her religion and the demands it places on its adherents.

Consequently, the Miss Tipton contest judges were forced to judge Miss Shexy-asa-Ghoat through the various stages of the contest such as the Evening Dress Round and the Swimsuit Round all while she was completely hidden from their view inside her cardboard box. However, what was more surprising, especially to some of the audience on the night, was that Miss Shexy-asa-Ghoat won every round. Some audience members even complained that a woman ensconced in a cardboard box winning the contest was an insult to the young women of Tipton, saying 'how would you feel if someone said you were not as good looking as a cardboard box?' However, the judges, especially those familiar with the women of Tipton, refused to be swayed by such arguments and their judgement stood, leaving Miss Shexy-asa-Ghoat to go on to enter the Miss UK contest.

After wining the UK national contest, Miss Shexy-asa-Ghoat now automatically qualifies for the Miss World (& Canada) Beauty contest and there is a very strong likelihood that she could win it, despite facing entrants from countries where Uttabollux is the national religion and whose contestants will, therefore, all be hidden from public view inside their own cardboard boxes.

However, some critics of the Beauty Contest industry claim that viewers will not be interested in watching a stage show consisting of several ambulatory cardboard boxes, no matter how well choreographed, and that this could destroy an industry that weathered the storm of po-faced feminism in earlier decades.

Still, however, several worldwide brands have expressed interest in the advertising opportunities offered by large woman-sized blank cardboard boxes and so those record amounts of sponsorship could mean that the contest continues well into the foreseeable future.