Sometimes on the front porch in the morning I ruminate on the value coffee has in my life. And pretty soon I am telling myself a story. Here’s the story I told myself this morning…
My name is Ishmael Quark Kaku, and I have a problem. I’m an idiot savant. I live and breathe and think and exist in the antipodes of the dead bang mean. Yet, summed and averaged, I am simultaneously located at the very dead bang center of the continuum of the dead bang mean. As a result, I can not locate myself.
We all triangulate our positions in life with reference points. Given two stable landmarks we can generally figure out where we are on life’s ocean.
Unless, of course, we are not on the ocean at all, and instead hovering at the zenith of one landmark and it is unknown and unseen beneath us. Or if, for some odd and inexplicable condition of higher physics, we are hovering above both landmarks simultaneously and can’t see either one of them.
I suppose that’s a possibility since I thought of it. It could explain being everywhere and nowhere at the same time. But I would suspect it simply because it was an explanation. It would likely turn out to be like all the other explanations I’ve come up with which are really nothing more than observations of nearby conditions which, lumped together, seem to satisfy the requirements off whatever it is my mind considers an explanation.
The logical, rational mind speculates calmly upon odd and inexplicable things and can postulate outrageous things and prove them true… How do we get off the infinite moebius strip of the synaptic cosmos?
I’m thinking we hit the kill switch on the treadmill while we’re running flat out, shoot out of the blocks there, run through the wall and streak past the cliff’s edge out into the unknown dark beyond and see what catches us as we fall.
But that’s just me.
Last night I dreamed I couldn’t make up my mind ordering breakfast in a diner, and the waitress hollered back to the cook to hold everything, she had an indecisive swamp brain out here… So I ordered the ultimate breakfast platter, everything, and then asked her if it included coffee. “Yeah” was all she said. It was the way she said it that made me feel like a swamp brain. Of course everything includes coffee.
The Cascadian Wanderer 
6 Responses to The Antipodes of the Dead Bang Mean
I’m thinking that before you mentioned this no one could hover over both reference points simultaneously. But now the Universe has had a chance to say, “That sounds interesting and just may be fun.” It will probably let us all do it now – perhaps changing the mean to a mode – or creating a mean a la mode.
AHA! Time to get out the old pie chart. Sometimes the classic methodology is still the best way to go. I’m thinking a wedge of tart cherry with French vanilla. Coffee, of course. And since the concept has been conceived and so achieved we can muse idly on Heisenberg’s monkey wrench or, as an option, just chew and slurp and grin at each other.
I’m thinking we should probably stay away from Heisenberg unless we want to risk having the waitress come around and see me being a swamp brain again. It’s not the condition that bothers me so much, it’s just the exquisite disdain, you know?
I have this theory that waitresses, like angels, are satellite extensions of the cosmic enlightened Master, and everything they say and do is for our benefit. Once I went into a diner for breakfast and decided I’d had enough instruction for now, so I just said up front and straight out, “Look, I’m in no hurry for enlightenment here. I’d just like a cup of coffee and a good breakfast.”
She took a good long look at me and replied, “That’s cool. That’s very cool. You got it.”
How often do you hear something like that from the Master? It made my day.
Haha, speaking of swamp brain… Where are we, really? Quantum physics made a muck of that one, didn’t it. Here or there? Here AND there? Everywhere, nowhere? And let’s not even get started on When, or What (electrically controlled meat-suit, sure, but what’s doing the driving?), and certainly not WHY. I’m hard pressed to find anybody who even has a decent grip on Who and that’s supposedly the easy one. Please, Lord, don’t make my purpose in life to write a scientifically sound essay on existence that includes the Five W’s and all the salient points of the Scientific Method. My head will cave in. (Now, where’d that kill switch go? Does it involve pie?)
Speaking of Pie — You saw that movie “Waitress,” right? She seemed to be able to invent a pie for any and every state of mind. I’ve just invented another one for her: “Thinking too hard and can’t seem to quit” Pie. Pecans in salted caramel and melted unsweetened chocolate in a greasy, too-tough crust. Bittersweet, lots of work to chew, and a lead ball in the gut. (Flambe, naturally.)
Of course then there’s always “Reset Button” pie. (Blackberry. Always. Never underestimate the power of good blackberry pie.)
The 5 W’s versus blackberry pie… Decisions, decisions. It appears to me that quantum physics and string theory are doing quite nicely in closing in on metaphysics and creating an even more intricate model of the 5 W’s. That’s good enough for me, I’ll let them carry on with that. Pie it is.
With coffee. Which, as I recall, returns us to the top of this page.
BTW – your pie recipe is just too good for words! A surefire recipe for a double dose of rational over-exercise and all the “heartburn” it creates…
““Thinking too hard and can’t seem to quit” Pie. Pecans in salted caramel and melted unsweetened chocolate in a greasy, too-tough crust. Bittersweet, lots of work to chew, and a lead ball in the gut. (Flambe, naturally.)”
L.O.L. *delightedly*
We came up with a good one in the car on the way into town for groceries today:
“A highly developed mind is not necessarily a realized mind.” Not as funny as pie, but we both laughed when it came up in the course of conversation, then got suddenly quiet, and then looked at each other and simultaneously said, “Exactly!” And laughed again.