I'm Gonna Miss You, Pal

Last weekend was one of the most interesting of my life. First my hard drive crashed and I was forced to use my limited computer knowledge to repair it to avoid buying a new one, since I am broke to the point that bums should be giving me money out of pity. A three day project which ended in success I am happy to say.
Then my dad wanted me to drive two and a half hours through the wretched Oklahoma terrain to assist him in planting this year's wheat crop, something he has never asked of me and even swore not to ask of me and which is made all the more ridiculous by the soaring gas prices and my aforementioned poverty.
Then I helped my best friend pack things into a U-Haul so that she could drive away and out of my life.Unthinkingly. Just trying to be a nice guy. I help her desert me. What was I thinking? Why would I facilitate the vanishing of a friend?
The rest of my weekend has been filled with her absence. She was someone very special to me, a confidante, a pal, a buddy with whom worry and dreariness sort of melted. When we occupied the same room, the only other thing that could fit was our love of each other's company.
I don't want to be misunderstood, here. She's happily entrenched in a long-term relationship, and the thought of her leaving him for me never crossed our minds. It just wasn't like that for us, we were a different kind of close, not the kind that really would or could work in a boyfriend-girlfriend setting. And I think of all the things about her, it's that particular closeness that only we shared that I'm going to miss the most.
Our love for each other's company. Just hanging out in the morning eating grapefruit smothered in sugar while her bird, a slightly vocal cockatiel named CeeCee who happened to adore me, hovered overhead, perched on the ceiling fan and looking down at us like she was waiting for some sort of signal to come join. Just forcing her to watch my hideous cartoons and comedy shows and read my sadistic comics and tolerate my general malaise. Just following her around while she was taking pictures and occasionally stealing her camera to capture my own bits of art. Just laughing about McCain. Laughing about Obama. Laughing about laughing about McCain and Obama.
Even our hideous and stubborn discourse on the nature of satire, which ended in nothing but hard disagreement. These things, all of them. I'm going to miss the hell out of her.
When I met her, I was just starting college. A good Christian boy from a good Christian town. My eccentricities were on full blast to preserve my fragile frame, my own personal security blanket. Most people remember me as the guy who pointed to his nipple and said that he was from there (my right arm extended out made a crude, impromptu image of Oklahoma: the arm forming the panhandle, and my body, the rest of the state. My hometown is located roughly above the right nipple), but she remembers me as the guy who wanted to see a dead hobo in a fountain. This, as is often recounted, is her first real memory of meeting me.
Basically, to explain my dead hobo thing: All too recently, a hobo had been found dead in this fountain we passed by on the way to a school outing. I remarked on the morbid romanticism of a dead hobo in this gaudy fountain, saying it was picturesque or something to that effect. The instant reaction was, my what a strange person. Most everyone else cut my chances of being friends off right there, but for some reason, she didn't.
We started spending more and more time together, me and my polar opposite. I was a good Christian boy, she a good Atheist girl; my dad raised beef and I was ravenously carnivorous, she on the otherhand was violently vegetarian; I was morose and morbid, and she was happy and life-loving. Polar in so many ways, but our friendship really worked.
After the first year, I made lots of mistakes and we ended up drifting for a year, but we came back together very soon, started hanging out again, even moved in next door to each other so we could wake up, walk to class, come home, and eat breakfast and talk about how ridiculous our teacher was. Then we might pack up her cameras and go hiking (which I had hitherto detested) or go to this crazy hotel liquidation store on 23rd.
This place is filled with insanity and repetition. Walking around in there is like walking through a surrealist film, couches on top of couches, rooms full of thousands of copies of the same painting, a large wooden fish attached to a tacky light up tableau waterfall which all together looked like it had spent some time in a Chinese buffet restaurant. There's a look to it, a feel that is entirely indescribable. There was also a cement room with walls lined with the X-bottoms of chairs, stacked to the ceilings, and the light flickered like some horror movie. The room itself looked like it might have been used for interrogation by the intensely foreign owner who was not a little frightening. Here she took some amazing photographs of various things. They looked like fallen Roman pillars.
I spent Saturday morning packing her things and moving them out, piece by piece she emptied her apartment. The couch I had so often passed out on, the table we would eat apple pancakes at, the desk where we would watch new installments of The Onion News Network. Everything left for the van and I was left behind to vacuum.
And my best friend was gone.
It later dawned on me that I would have to do this more and more as I grew older. That people will come and go from my life and that I will have to pack their things for them, because I'm a good guy and that's what I do. My buddies will get married and leave me behind holding the bag as they move on to a more fulfilling relationship with a spouse, and I'll help set up their new home. And then one day, they'll start dying and I'll go to their funerals. Everything I will ever get close to will leave me behind: friends, family, children. They will all go on to something better than I can give them. Just like my cat, who also left this weekend to find a better life far away from me. No one stays, everyone leaves.
And I'm sure there are people who feel the same way about me.
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Out of Her Misery

I never like killing animals. It's not something I enjoy doing. But it is my job.
I'm in one of the most loathed occupations in the world, certainly the most hated in the vet clinic. I mean, when it comes down to it, nobody wants to kill animals. It's just something that... well... it's just a thing. In the 5 years I've been doing animal euthanasia, I've been kicked by children, punched by grown men, snubbed by countless women, scorned by PETA (even to the point of property vandalism when they found out where I lived and decided to throw animal corpses tied to bricks through my living room window), and my right thumb cut off by a punk rock guitarist who screamed, “Try killing defenseless animals now!” as he was being dragged away by mall security.
“I'm left-handed,” I had said sullenly, picking my severed finger off the ground, and the look of utter dismay flooded over his face as though I had just killed his dog. It was the exact same face I'd seen thousands of times. Deal with that face. I dare you. Deal with it once, and then understand that I have to everyday.
Animal euthanasia is the worst job in the world.
I do it because I know that it's best for the animals at a certain stage. It's worse for them to continue living in overwhelming pain that will never get better than for them to simply fall asleep and never wake up. I believe this, and that's how I'm able to keep doing this hideous job, day after day. I do it for their good.
But this time is completely different, and honestly, I can't quite put my finger on why. I brought this dog in myself, a Border Collie about a year to a year and half old, blood red on white on black, breathing heavy, more like gasping. Not moving a muscle, barely making a sound, but looking at me like I was Jesus come to take her home.
She looked at me like I was some sort of angel. Like I was hope, I was everything she needed to be okay, like if she never saw anyone ever again, it would be fine because she would have still seen me. Her eyes were glass in the deep black of her hair and deep red of her slowly caking blood.
She looked at me like I was a savior, but it was me who made her like this in the first place. I hit her with my car. It wasn't her fault, I just wasn't paying enough attention. She... was just there, in the wrong place at the wrong time. I heard her head hit my bumper, and at that moment, I knew I had killed her. She might as well have been already dead. Unfortunately, she wasn't.
I carried her into the Clinic, blood washing over my hands, coating my shirt. All I could feel was her breathing, and how it matched my heartbeat: too quick.
I laid her on the table and checked to see if she had a collar with a name or anything. No. She was alone in the world, no friends, nothing. We were more alike than I had thought. She kept starting at me. I think I was all that she could see, but I believe that she saw me with perfect clarity.
They brought the syringe for me. This is what we do when there's a dying animal and there's nobody to call, after all, we're not a charity case. We can't save animals that need saving just to do it, we have to do it for money. When there's no money, there's no surviving.
She and I locked eyes for a long time. She looked at me because I was all she had, and I looked at her knowing what was coming and wishing someone, anyone, else would do it. But it's my job. This is what I do.
Her breath fogged out on the metal table. Like she's breathing smoke.
I took a breath and drew some pentobarbitol into the syringe. Tap the needle to get air bubbles out, more out of habit than for any purpose, and slid the needle into a vein on one of her front legs. All I had to do was push the plunger and she'd go to sleep, her pain would disappear, and maybe somewhere in doggy heaven, she'd be happy and playful again. All I have to do is kill her to set her free. But I couldn't stop thinking, “Haven't I hurt her enough?”
Her breathing was heavy but consistent, her bloody chest heaved with the effort to continue, but it was all so mesmerizing. I couldn't move. Locked in a trance, I was frozen, her frail body draped in front of me waiting for me to do something... anything.
If only she would stop looking at me. If only she would break eye contact, I could finish this. I could end it. My thumb is on the plunger, the needle is in the flesh ready to overload her system with barbituates... but I don't think I can do it this time. I don't know if I can end this... even if it is best for her and best for me. The pained look in her eyes only beckons me to stay my hand just another second or two. Maybe she'll be fine, maybe I'm misinterpreting the signs. I know I'm not, but I'm telling myself anything to keep her here. But why? There's no special connection between me and this dog other than the whirlwind romance between her and my fender.
But still I freeze. Looking at her and knowing I could save her from her pain by moving my thumb an inch, but not being able to bring myself to do it for some reason. Some reason I'm not certain of.
I just don't know if I can end this.
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The Great Equation

Ok. So here goes.
The Earth is a planet, spinning on an axis, roughly spherical. The particles of the Earth are not connected, but more like compressed, simultaneously being held in by the magical force of gravity (more than likely caused by the Earth’s massive core) and the being repelled by the equally magical centripedal force (more than likely caused by the rotation).
We think it’s all one big ball, but it’s just particles orbiting the center. And those particles have electrons that orbit nuclei. And beyond that, who knows how many orbiting bits.
To continue: The moon revolves around the Earth which in turn revolves around the sun which in turn revolves around a super-massive black hole in the center of our galaxy. Revolution by revolution by revolution, so is it safe to assume that the pattern doesn’t stop there? There is a theory that there is one point in the center of the universe, super-massive as hell, around which everything else turns. One single stationery point which exercises it’s own gravitational pull to give the universe a sembelance of order.
Now imagine that there are some masses near the stationery point. Can we safely assume that these masses will be dragged faster toward the point, colliding with it and eachother and making it even more massive, thereby adding to the gravitational power of the point? Making it able to pull in more and more mass from further and further out, eventually causing the universe to collapse in on itself.
This is called the Universal Collapse Event (UCE), and this would not be the first time it has happened. Remember the Big Bang? The sudden explosion of matter? According to scientists, this is what happens after a UCE. This is not our first universe. Nor will it be our last. Who knows how many we’ve had or will have.
Scientists have estimated that the next UCE will take place in another 900 billion years, but I’ve done the math myself. Measured the dense microwaves eminating from the center over a few years, seen the exponential growth on a day-to-day basis, carried the decimal and the universe ends today. At approximately 2:30, the gravity of the center will become so great that the galaxies will start colliding as they begin their speeding toward the one stationery point. Andromeda collides with the Milky Way collides with Erratz-13 and so on until we reach terminal velocity (at this point, we’ll already be dead, of course). Then it’s reset and it all starts over again.
2:30 this afternoon. That’s when I’ve estimated it starting. That’s what my math shows. Most scientists are off by 900 billion years. I assume they just don’t know what they’re talking about. That or they want to preserve the order so they aren’t telling anybody.
Most scientists would start getting depressed about this, thinking, “But there’s so much we don’t yet understand.” Not me. I think I get it. I mean, I know where they’re coming from. I used to be the same way: even human nature, which is a purely human invention, is a mystery. We fight wars we don’t understand for people we don’t know for rights or land we’ll never have. We work jobs to pay for things that we wouldn’t need if we didn’t have jobs to start with.
But, I got past all that and realized it’s all something we’re not supposed to figure out. I caught on that projectile motion, fluid motion, quantum mechanics, and everything is part of an equation that explains it all. And that equation also explains why such-and-such girl doesn’t like you, why this guy smokes, why this war is happening in wherever where such-and-such person is getting shot. Even the location on his body where the bullet enters and whether or not it goes out again are part of the equation. Everything contributes to everything, the universe is a clock with billions and billions of little parts. That’s why we can’t find the equation to explain it all. Right now, there are trillions of variables we can’t see, because the whole universe gives a little; however, as the UCE occurs, the variables will diminish with the universe.
That’s why I’m sitting at this table looking up at the sky, waiting for the world to end: so I can spend that last bit of life finding the equation, albeit greatly diminished to only a few variables. I know I can’t publish it. I know nothing will come of it. But I just want to know.
I watch my cigarette smoke in the ashtray, the smoke clouds whisping upward, floating toward the sky slowly in a way that only cigarette smoke can.
My prediction is that when it all starts, time will speed up greatly. In fact, time has been speeding up since it started long ago, but soon it will speed up exponentially. Of course, no one will notice since we’re in time-space with everything else, nonetheless that is my prediction. The smoke will continue to float, but were I able to observe it from outside the accelerating timeframe, I would see it burn up almost instantaneously.
At 2:28, the television starts the breaking news: the Andromeda Galaxy crashes into the Milky Way, an incident that is supposed to happen hundreds of billions of years from now. The news anchors call into question all of the various predictions of scientists. I smile, knowing that before the scientists will have time to rebut, it will all be over. I look back at the sky and wait for God to hand down the Great Equation. Read more...