Quote of the Day:

“Time is but the stream I go a fishin’ in.     Henry David Thoreau

The universe, as in the royal universe, the editorial….it speaks to me sometimes in theme, and when it does, TB passes the theme along to you who inhabit the TBU. What other purpose could the universe have in filling my travellinbrain with such nonsense if not to write about it after all? And that’s a rhetorical question by the way.

So lately it seems that I’ve had time on my mind. Specifically, the speed, or lack thereof, at which it passes. The issue began preying upon me Thursday night in the 4th quarter of the State game, then again during “Hot Tub Time Machine” Saturday evening and continued all the way through this morning’s usual ritual of dread and gamesmanship involving my attempt to sleep right up to the point of where the alarm does not sound. I hate a freakin’ alarm clock. Man, that is an unwelcome, ungodly way to start a day and I have a feeling the entire world resents that moment and it starts most everybody off on the wrong foot and one thing leads to another and eventually you have war and plague and Glenn Beck and whatnot. But that’s beside the point.

The point is time is a tricky sumbitch. It keeps on ticking, ticking, ticking into the future, predictably, but at ever-changing, always infuriating rates. Go back to Thursday with me. After falling behind 17-7 at half time, Mississippi State cut Auburn’s lead to 17-14 in the third quarter and began to dominate the game defensively. They were going to win, given enough time, which they were not, in fact, provided. Quite the contrary, the fifteen minute 4th quarter sped past in the span of two and a half. Unfair, I say. Now, if I had been watching, say Alabama and Ole Miss play while waiting for a State game to start and I needed the fourth quarter to finish in an hour so I wouldn’t miss the start of my game, I guarantee you that fifteen minutes would’ve taken three days and forty-five minutes to complete. The great timekeeper in the sky must get bored is all I can think, and gets his jollies whenever the opportunity arises.

Think back to your school days and that same unit of time–fifteen minutes. You just winced didn’t you? Yeah, that fifteen minutes before the bell rang at the end of the day was a grueling test of physical and mental endurance. Yet given fifteen precious minutes before the alarm goes off when you wake too early and check the clock, that minute hand will start spinning like a damn top and you’re lucky if you even get fifteen seconds of true rest before the offending cacophony assaults your ears.

And the cruelest time trick of all is looking back at how it has flown. You have a vacation in six weeks? Might as well be another lifetime. Got a big project you need to get through at work? Gonna be a loooooooooong week. Waiting for news from your doc? Forget about it. But review your own life lived versus that remaining, or think of your child as a baby, or try to savor that vacation you finally got to take and you realize the old wheel was greased up and rockin’ when you weren’t looking.

And what’s with a watched pot never boiling? That’s some crazy time trickery for sure. It’s like being in a time machine loop if you need to get that spaghetti on the table fast. Oh, I could go on and on–a whole week it would take me to go into the nuances of airport time shenanigans alone.

I thought “Hot Tub” was pretty dang funny by the way. Just don’t try and figure out the whole time travel thing and inconsistent logic while you’re watching. Trust me, that’s a waste of time.