Non-Existent Things
According to scientists, the number of things in the universe is 1 google, or 1 followed 100 zeroes.
Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for this bit of information, especially since I know how boring counting can be. The only thing I can count without falling asleep is situps. But that's not because I have great concentration ... it's more because I can't do situps.
So I salute those intrepid scientists who took the time to count the number of things in the universe. I think we could do a lot with this knowledge - like put a price tag on the Universe in case we ever decide to sell it. I'm not sure there would be any buyers at the moment. The universe seems a little bit untidy these days. But who knows? Give it a deep clean and some plastic plants, and maybe it'll have some curb appeal again.
Still I can't help it. Knowing there's 1 google things in the universe just brings up more questions. Like:
- I just made Artichoke Pasta for dinner. Did I just mess up the count? Who's going to do the recount? Should I apologize to them?
- And while we're at it, this Artichoke pasta ... is it one thing? Or is it 500 things - like one for every little piece of pasta - or did you count those before, and now they're just cooked?
- How did you count them? Did you use one of those umpire clickers ? It must be pretty big. Can you fit it in your shirt pocket? Does the umpire clicker count as a thing? How did you count it? Ouch, I just hurt my brain.
- How do you know you haven't counted something twice? Did you mark everything with a dot? What if the thing already had a dot on it? What if the thing was a dot?
While we're at it, let's throw in this giant monkey wrench!
- How many non-existent things are there?
The Thing About Non-Existent Things
My philosophy teacher once performed a thought experiment with us. (Geez, that else do philosophers do? That's like saying I had a math teacher who worked with numbers.). He said, "I will describe a thing for you."
- It's red
- It glows in the dark
- It has been around for 1,000 years
- It likes The Pitt
- It forms a bowl when set down in a layer of sand
- Oh ... and it doesn't exist.
As my teacher pointed out, this highlights a big problem with non-existent things. How do we know it's red and glows in the dark, etc. if doesn't exist? We do know it likes The Pitt, because ... c'mon it's The Pitt! It won like a billion Emmys. But all that other stuff we have no idea.
And in fact, we don't really know it doesn't exist either. Did you check everywhere? Did you check the coffee table? Where did you have it last? Did you put an AirTag on it? Of course you didn't, because you misplaced that box of AirTags too.
Never mind. It's really, really hard to verify the non-existence of something. It's at least harder than verifying the existence of something. You just point at it and say, "See I told you that's where you left it. You'd forget your head too if it wasn't screwed on."
The Jackalope
Anyway, all talk of non-existence brings us inevitably to the Jackalope.
The Jackalope is the result of a ... ahem, love affair ... between a jack rabbit and an antelope. The resulting offspring is a rabbit with antelope horns.
I, for one, do not have an opinion about this love affair. I've been around the block a few times. You get a cute jack rabbit and an antelope with 6 pack abs, you throw in a few winks and some alcohol, and what did you think would happen?
I'm not a species-ist. Love who you want to, and all that. I'm all for any union that increases love in the world, even if the offspring looks a little ... meh, screw political correctness ... weird. The Jackalope just looks weird.
Why do I bring all this up? Because the Jackalope is my family's preferred method of hazing.
So recently, my niece Elena starts going steady with Lou, making him the newest member of the family. There is one thing you must understand about my family - you cannot join without a hazing ritual. And while this is common in family structures, hazing is something we take seriously.
I know, I know ... college campuses are clearing themselves of these old vestiges of bad, unequal times. It is proven that hazing causes psychological damage. But in my family, a certain amount of psychological damage is a good thing. You call it damage, we call it coping mechanism. Potato, patata.
Anyway in September, my family is up in Mitchell, SD, on the day we bury my father's ashes. In a ritual my father would totally approve of, we bring Lou to the Jackalope statue at the Thunderbird Lodge and conjure up tales of its existence.
Lou is immediately skeptical. You can tell by his body posture. But ... and here is the crucial point ... whether the jackalope exists or not, Lou is willing to play along for the sake of family harmony. He is going to eat his skepticism. He knows if he wants to "get the girl" he's gotta pretend to suspend his disbelief for at least a few minutes.
This is a good sign. A bad sign would be if Lou had said, "Jackalopes? This family is nuts!" and ran (not walked) away.
That has happened before. Unfortunately for them, once these prospective mates have moved on, all of their subsequent relationships have been unmitigated disasters. We know. We check Facebook every few minutes or so.
Yes, it is better to just admit it. The Jackalope does exist, and if it doesn't then you're not going to prove it anyway. Not to our family, you're not.
And Everything Else That Doesn't Exist
The Boy Scouts of America, which I was a member of, holds a set of virtues as core to their existence: bravery, honesty, loyalty, etc. Along with this, and just as important, they insist on the existence of various items and animals:
- 50 Feet of Shore Line
- The Left-Handed Smoke Shifter
- The Snipe
So everyone that joins Boy Scouts gets the classic line early in their career: "Can you go get the Left-Handed Smoke Shifter out of the trailer please?" About 4 hours later, they come back empty handed, grovelling and miserable, having failed as a Boy Scout.
Little do they know they had passed the most important test a Boy Scout will every face - they didn't go snivelling home to their parents.
My brothers and I passed the test solely because our parent was Scoutmaster at the time, and sitting over by the fire drinking his 6th cup of Camp Coffee. Which was made by an enterprising Scout the old fashioned way - "turn the spout to the North and boil it for one hour, then to the East for another hour, then to the West for another hour, then to the South for a final hour."
Anyway, I did not find such tests very amusing, to be honest. It was not particularly funny watching a young scout rifle through every compartment on the trailer, looking for something they had no clue what its shape was.
Was it that I had pity for them? Hell no. I just thought it was boring. My thing was asking, "Did you know that the word Gullible isn't in the dictionary?" To which they would pull out a dictionary and prove me wrong, which gave both them and me satisfaction ... at about 1/10th the cost in time and effort.
It all comes down to that. Time. I don't have time to count everything that exists. I don't have time to count everything the doesn't exist. I don't have time to hunt Jackalopes or look for your stupid left-handed smoke shifter. I only have a certain amount of time on this Earth, and I'm going to spend it the most enjoyable way I know how - sitting in my smoking jacket and pondering the mysteries of the universe, drinking my cup of Camp Coffee. Which tastes like crap, by the way.
So if someday I come face to face with a Jackalope, I will not be surprised. I have been expecting it. And there's one thing I would like to ask it:
OMG, can you believe the last episode of The Pitt?
There's One More Thing That Exists
That thing being: my wife Amy's debut novel, which has just been published:
amy doyle
Just the other day, I held one of the first copies hot off the press, so I know it exists.
The word on the street is it's a real potboiler, page-turner of a mystery novel. I don't know this firsthand. She hasn't let me read it yet. Something about she doesn't trust my judgement. Yet she did marry me, so ... pot kettle black?
But I know she's a great writer, with unlimited imagination and boundless prospects. So if I were you, I'd check it out!
