I’m Fixing to Clear Up a Few Things

I’m fixing to clear up a few things.

First off, there are no vampires, werewolves, mummies or wizards. There is no man-made global warming. There are no aliens from outer space. And due to the cool temperature and all the rain there won’t be a decent tomato to eat until sometime in August probably.

Tomatoes won’t grow until a nighttime temperature of over 58 degrees is maintained, so due to Mother Nature we’re simply going to have to wait a little longer while we continue to get by on those mealy hothouse ones.

I went out and looked at my poor plants this morning after the temperature had dropped dangerously low last night and they were just sitting there in puddles of water, wet, limp and stunted, like they were looking at each other for some kind of explanation about where the warm sunshine could be.

But back to vampires, werewolves, mummies, and wizards—I’ve never seen one or so much as smelled one. Of course I don’t know what they smell like, and the only reason I know what they are supposed to look like is from seeing them on the screen and reading about them in books. But, I don’t watch movies or TV or read any books about them anymore because the subject of them has just been run into the ground.

I really don’t want to get started on man-made global warming because I’m afraid the proponents of it will accuse me of thinking the world is flat and resting on the back of a giant tortoise.

Since the weather stopped cooperating with them they are now claiming that the storms and hurricanes of today are worse because of global warming. I think maybe that a 100 years or so ago, when some of these storms struck there was nothing for them to tear up but woods and dirt. Nowadays where those woods and dirt used to be there are condos, hamburger joints, chicken joints, barbecue joints, and beer joints, and they tend to get torn up when a tornado or hurricane hit them.

But no more on global warming, or they’ll come after me and want to put a tax on my carbon footprint, whatever that is.

The subject I really want to talk about is aliens from outer space. Even though they don’t exist any more than the vampires do, I do like to watch movies and read literature about space, time and science fiction. I mean who didn’t like ET?

The reason I know there are no aliens from outer space is because I know they can’t get here. If we sent a space expedition to the center of our galaxy traveling at the speed of light it would be at least a hundred thousand years before it got back. It’s that far.

American astronomer Edwin Hubble figured out a way to measure the distances from us to other galaxies in 1924. They named that big telescope up in space after him. In 1929 he also discovered the universe is expanding, that the distance between us and them, if there is a them, is growing all the time.

So if we can’t get there, they, if they do exist, can’t get here either.

Occasionally we hear about someone who claims to have been abducted by aliens from outer space. Those people probably also hang out with vampires.

As an afterthought, I forgot to mention that travel in time is also impossible. I mean if it was possible, wouldn’t we have already gotten a visitor from the future?

The only way time travel could be done is by traveling faster than the speed of light and that has been proven to be impossible. We have been able to accelerate particles at 99.9 percent of the speed of light, but no matter how much more power is applied, the particles will not exceed the speed of light. Science fiction writers have to suppose we can travel faster than the speed of light in order for their characters to travel in time.

In fact, the theory of relativity implies we can travel in time if we could travel faster than the speed of light. Bear in mind that a theory is a body of assumptions or principles leading to a conclusion. The theory also implies we can travel backwards in time, as the following limerick says:

There was a young lady of Wright

Who traveled much faster than light

She departed one day

In a relative way

And arrived on the previous night

I’m fixing to write a new novel about a vampire, a mummy, an alien from outer space, and a global warming activist who traveled back in time to last summer and brought us back some good tomatoes.