Time Travel With Blaze and his Red Haired Girlfriend.
No, we are not talking about revolving door Prime Ministers or footy finals, the sad losses of the great Aretha Franklin or Aussie guitarist Spencer P Jones or Melbourne art icon Mirka Mora. No raving about the excellent TV that is Killing Eve or record that is Halfway’s Rainlover. Tonight we look to the stars and think about time travel. After all, who cares about climate change or whether Collingwood will choke or the Broncos will win when we can think about travel into the past or the future?
See what I did there? I mentioned some of the other noteworthy stuff that has been going on in the world so I am still being topical and relevant without having to go on about stuff that already has had literally millions of words written about it.
Except for the Album Rainlover by Queensland band Halfway; that deserves much more notice.
Have you thought what time is? I mean like a dictionary definition of time. One dictionary defines time as the “indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole.”
Which is exactly what I would have said if asked.
So by this stage you might be thinking, “ Man, I hope this goes somewhere soon and quick because that right there or should I say then is some time of my life that is gone and it is not coming back."
One night a little while ago under a sky filled with stars and chilly as the Liberal party’s heart, Blaze was dragging back on a cigar he had bought from the local tobacconist. Except now days they are not called tobacconists. Now that smoking is a major social no-no and any one who lights up is a social pariah on the same level of a dealer pushing crack on high school kids the tobacconist is now called boringly The Smokes Shop.
Usually outfitted in the cheapest most mundane ship fittings ever seen and situated in low income areas and strip shops these retail oddities are outposts of contrarianism and hence a natural environment for Blaze, much like the match of a NT billabong and a crocodile.
Which is why he has a plan to buy them all up and bundle then together as a chain around the country and in NZ. Naturally they will be called Blazes and Blaze hopes that with a bit of rebranding and social media marketing soon they would be everywhere filled with people buying the latest in vaping, cigarette lighter technology and skull ashtrays with LED lights in the eye sockets as an optional extra. Not to mention the finest in cigarettes, both tailor-made and roll your own, cigars, cigarette papers and assorted paraphernalia.
The aforementioned cigar stunk like a wet dog had just spontaneously combusted at our feet but Blaze dimly lit by the light from distant galaxies, light that had in fact been travelling to us since the time of dinosaurs, was in his element. Sucking in and then expelling large volumes of smoke and polluting the clean sea air Blaze explained that his master marketing stroke would be to build a time machine.
Blaze and his time machine would then go back to just before Pauline Hanson started her never ending appearance in various governments, he would seduce her and marry her and then use her as a pawn to advance the practice of smoking. He would also use her head in neon as the logo of the Blazes chain of stores. Sort of her in profile in red flickering light and a thick phallic cigar near her mouth with the word Blazes in a blue grey smoke colour.
So I said to him, “Well crack on son, and get building!”
And he said, “ Well how do you know I haven’t already done it and all this will happen.
So I pointed out that he was not to my knowledge married to the aforementioned Senator Hanson and as far as I could tell smoking was still on the outer.
Blaze responded that actually smoking rates had ceased to decline and in some age groups were now showing increases again in the taking up of ciggies. He also pointed out that his invention of vaping was also going along well and seeing he was a time traveller it was unfortunate that he had been unable to take advantage of the success of his intellectual property.
He also showed me a piece of fat stained cardboard suitable for food contact. On it was written a mobile number. This was he told me Pauline’s personal mobile phone number. He told me she had given it to him after a rendezvous at a drive in complex near Ipswich. Apparently drive in sex is much to their liking and if the smell from the deep fryer is in the air well turn up the speaker because things get very hot.
I said, “Bullshit, there is no drive in near Ipswich.”
Blaze just smiled, “There was in 1983.”
I said, “But there were no mobile phones in 1983, though,”
Blaze blew out a thin stream of cruddy cigar smoke. I can tell you there is a world of difference between a Cuban cigar and one from Mexico that costs eighty three cents with a fake Seniors card.
“Temporal Paradox,” he said.
I went to bed at that point in time. After all the gentle offshore had done its best to blow the stench from Blaze’s cigar out to sea and there should be some waves in the morning. Besides talking about time travel with Blaze was exhausting and to do it best I think you needed to be smoking something other than cheap cigars.
For example there is a double paradox in the idea of time travelling back and killing your grandfather. After all if you kill your grandfather back in time you couldn’t have been born so how are you alive to go back and kill your grandfather?
Anyhow if you want to know more about time travel then do what I did and have a look and a listen to Catalyst, the ABC TV’s science program.
The episodes are on Iview and the one on How to Build A Time Machine is, dare I say it - worth your time.
Unfortunately no one on the show seems too optimistic about knowing the Powerball numbers ahead of the next draw anytime soon.
Six great songs about time
Time- David Bowie from the Aladdin Sane album
Everlong - The Foo Fighters – For me their finest moment
Minute By Minute – The Doobie Brothers
Yesterday – The Beatles
Out of Time – The Rolling Stones
Time Capsule- Matthew Sweet
