The Serpent Creates an Anomaly

One of my 6th grade students informed me that if a snake managed to successfully eat its tail then an enormous tear in the universe would result, and the former location of the hungry serpent would open into the gaping maw of a black hole. This dark portal, the diameter of which was stated to be about as large as the picnic bench, would pull brave adventurers into a tunnel of time (insert copious black-hole-like sucking noises). Imagine the possibilities for escaping homework!

If that was the case, quipped one of his friends, then a similar result would occur if the precocious young theorist was to successfully eat his own feet right there on the play yard, thereby allowing everyone an escape from the impending bell that would signal their return to the classroom.

But before anyone could get both shoes off, recess was over: swallowed by time.

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

2000 Music

Albums purchased in 2000:

• Priesner— Requiem for a Dream
• DJ Cam— The Beat Assassinated*
• Baby Fox— A Normal Family**
• Graeme Revell— Phoenix Soundtrack, Interview with a Vampire Soundtrack
• Everything But the Girl— Temperamental
• Queensryche— Empire
• Enigma— The Screen Behind the Mirror*
• Moby— Play
• Lisa Germano— Excerpts From the Love Circus
• Air— The Virgin Suicides Soundtrack
• Lycia— Cold
• Brendan Perry— Eye of the Hunter
• Dead Can Dance— The Serpent and the Egg
• The Innocence Mission— Birds of My Neighborhood
• Bowery Electric— Lushlife
• Nick Drake— Time of No Reply
• DJ Krush— Code 4109, Kakusei
• Moloko— Do You Like My Tight Sweater?**
• This Mortal Coil— It'll End in Tears
• Loveliescrushing— Xuvetyn
• Enigma— Sadness/Mea Culpa (single)
• Red House Painters— Down Colorful Hill
• Radiohead— Kid A
• Bjork— Selmasongs
• William Orbit— Pieces in a Modern Style
• Kruder & Dorfmeister— The K&D Sessions
• Sarah Brightman— La Luna**
• Songs of the Siren

*Regrettable decision. . .

**Woefully regrettable decision. . .

Scratched Negatives

• Take a glossy postcard and cut one frame sized window
• Put negative with scratch over window and tape edges of negatives down
• Dip q-tip in distilled water
• Blot it semi-dry on hand and then rub the scratch with it
• Blow dry the negative dry
• Then fill a steamer with distilled water and a teaspoon of salt
• Get is steamin' and put negative over it
• Then blow dry it dry and repeat a few times and. . .

BOOM! You're dead!

Just kidding. . . the scratch goes away.

The Second Vision

Bri had already left for school and I was running about trying to gather all of my things in time to catch the bus. As I was closing the door to the apartment, the click of the lock catching to wish me goodbye, I had a sudden premonition that if I turned around and rang the doorbell then I would be inside the answer the door and let myself back in. Ridiculous as it seems, at that moment in time I believed it whole-heartedly, and so I faced my door and rang the bell.

And waited.

And during the wait all sorts of thoughts crept through my head— What does it mean if I do answer the door? Will there then be two of me with the same ambitions, capable of completing double the amount of work in the same quantity of time? Can one of me lead another life completely, separate from the ambition of the one I'm currently living? Would our lives be interchangeable: each of us waking up from time to time wherever the other one laid his head down— unaware of where we are and what brought us there?

I fully believed that I would answer the door and let myself in. But after five minutes it hadn't happened and so I shrugged the thought off and went to catch the bus.

All of this and I was entirely awake.