The Sporadic Curmudgeon

President Bush presented 14 National Medals of Science and Technology in a ceremony at the White House today, causing a tear in the fabric of reality. While cause for concern, quantum physicists today stressed that the rift in spacetime is far from unprecedented.

“We see this kind of thing all the time,” said Professor Milton Heggler, director of the Aurora Cosmological Institute, a Washington-based consortium of quantum physicists. “Especially since Bush took office in 2001.” Heggler sketched rapidly on a whiteboard as he described how the hole in space, also known as a singularity, came about.

“From experimentation, we know that observing a phenomenon alters it on a quantum level,” he explained. “This means that human consciousness has a measurable effect on reality itself, which implies that thought is a form of energy.” He drew a sheet of deformed rubber on the board. “We also know that mass bends space and time around itself, like so. Einstein taught us that mass and energy are just different phases of the same thing. Anything that possesses energy also possesses mass, and that includes the President’s thoughts.”

But why would that tear the fabric of space and time apart? Simple, says Professor Heggler. “President Bush is an evangelical Christian who believes in the literal truth of the Bible, meaning he is locked into a 2,000 year-old mindset. He is therefore hostile to any scientific discoveries made since the invention of the telephone in 1876, with two exceptions: he has said he likes jet aircraft because piloting one made it easier for him to get laid, and the CIA’s synthesis of cocaine into rock form in the mid-seventies has made it much easier to keep so-called ‘urban people’ from getting too ‘uppity’.

“When a true Luddite like Bush proposes to honor men and women who have made significant additions to the body of human knowledge, the sheer chutzpah of it is just so massive that the whole thing collapses in upon itself. Reality was never designed to handle that much hypocrisy. Something has to give, and if space and time didn’t tear, then something far worse might happen.”

When asked to speculate, Heggler shuddered. “Perhaps a complete breakdown of the laws of physics ending in an incursion by hordes of huge demonic tapeworms. Unimaginably horrible.” He paused. “Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned that last part. You don’t know about the monster tapeworms yet, right?”

At last report, the quantum singularity was seen drifting west. Heggler said that there are currently some two dozen singularities floating around, and cautioned readers not to interact with them. “I know it’s tempting to jump into a singularity in an attempt to escape this foul alternate universe we’ve been trapped in since November of 2000, but the chances of making it back to a sane reality are slim. Still, it’s technically possible, I suppose.”