Marge's Midnight International Symposium of Physics...........or the Quasi-Coherent Participant Theory of Life, the Universe, and Everything.......

I laid down early last night, thinking to get up early this morning. After about a half hour, I gave up, got up, got dressed and headed for River City........it being Karaoke night after all.

A few beers, an Abby-shot of Pinch and my signature rendition of Brown Eyed Girl later, I quit that venue for a bit of quiet quality time at Aunt Marge's downtown.

I walked in on the usual desperate few that make up the typical late week-night at Marge's, (something on the order of rounding up the usual suspects) sat myself down between Fuzzy and Lang, and called for a frosty glass of their finest Bud Light.

The sound on the Television was muted in favor of whatever twenty-five cent, mournful-ass, psuedo-country treacle was sobbing its way out of the juke box.

It just don't get no better than that!

Professor Hawking's face appeared on the CRT briefly, and that, of course, kicked off comment on his startling turn around concerning the nature of black-holes........

After a bit of a round-robin amongst ourselves to determine that we were on the same page..............i.e.; we were talking about black holes as opposed to, say, black Ho's, and if perhaps we wouldn't rather talk about black Ho's..........we entered into a lively exchange on the import and meaning of Prof. Hawking's latest speculations.

My own personal theories, heavily founded in Hawking's views on the suspension of the normal laws of quantum physics within a singularity and the possibility of the existence of alternate universes, have been knocked into a cocked hat by the Professor's announcement. Some years ago I put together what I believed to be a plausible model of alternate universe formation that correlated what was then the current thinking about the nature of black holes, and the mystery of socks gone missing in the dryer.........firmly believing it to be on the same high order of logical thought that bolstered Al Pogue's famous and time-tested mathematical proof of the equation "Pi=ice cream"...............(laid out to me while reclining on the hood of a car, staring at the stars, on one superlatively psychedelic night in late summer of 1970).

Of course my faith in the Socks Theory of Alternative Universes has been chipped away at by littles, since July of 1998, owing to the fact that I haven't had a sock go missing since my wife left and I started doing my own laundry.

So, at any rate, me and Fuzzy and Lang had a great ol' time volleying the concepts of space and time and infinite densities and the speed-o-light squared until just a bit before closing time.

I went next door to Newt's for a last call, a handful of peanuts in the shell, and an obligatory offering of suggestive innuendo and blatant leer directed at lovely, unobtainable, terminally married but eternally desirable Annette.........whose day, I'm sure, is not complete without my embarrassing attentions........God bless all long-suffering cute bartenders.

Cheyenne, my oldest grand-daughter, came for a visit today. We hopped off to TomCat's for lunch before her nap. She had taken a sort of a purse, day-book thing that her mother had abandoned and was in the back seat getting frustrated with the zippers..............

She said:

"Purse, you're crackin' me out...."

I turned around grinning and she said, rather sheepishly:

"I was talkin' to the purse."

Cheyenne and I head off to Crawfordsville,Indiana this Sunday for the annual get-together of my Dad's side of the family. Aunts, Uncles, Cousins and semi-cousins............it's a good ol' pot-luck affair to which I'll bring my usual roasted Turkey breast and two monster apple pies..............guess what Gutz is going to cook next!!

That's all the news that fits, boys and girls.........'til next time.

Thus endeth the entry...........