Daydream Believin'

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Added: Wed. Nov 30, 2011 4:02pm
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The air is crisp and cool, Christmas music blares throughout the entire free world -- and even France. It all signals that a favorite time of the year is upon us, once again: PBS Pledge Week.

 Every year, I can hardly wait to see what new scheme the PBS people will try to guilt us into coughing up unholy amounts of cash so they can sponsor even more Doo Wop Reunions and also televise stuff like the Bowel Cleansing Yoga-Diet Dance Method over and over again.

 A few years ago, during Pledge Week, PBS went about shaking us down by digging up the bodies of a bunch of old Rock n Roll stars and forcing them back onstage to give one last performance. More recently, they used blackmail and got Ken Burns to tell anybody who’d listen, how everybody in the country managed to get all liquored up during Prohibition[1]. Essentially, through the Freedom of Information Act, Ken obtained never before shown secret government film footage of our parents and grandparents being boozers, flappers and dancing the Black Bottom. (My grandmother, a woman who thought it sinful to even think about fun, would not be amused with Ken and his expose tactics. Were she alive today, I can visualize her ‘having a talk’ with him about how it’s not nice to air dirty laundry in public[2].)

With Ken very likely being put on punishment by his own parents this year, PBS has taken the science angle and has televised a program entitled The Fabric of the Cosmos… and it may  be the most intriguing PBS Pledge Week program ever.

Get this: according to Brian Greene, a Professor of Physics at Columbia University and the host of the new PBS series, there is a better than even money chance that we live, not in a universe, but rather, in a ‘multiverse’. There is more than one universe, Greene and his scientist buddies say--one that you can see and other that you can’t see even if you have the visual acuity of Superman or of a health department inspector looking for germs in a greasy spoon.  

According to Greene, who appears to be sober, there are portals, roughly akin to interstellar porta-potties that the inhabitants of the individual universes within the multiverse use to go back and forth. In other words, we are living in something like an interstellar multiplex movie theatre where the theatres are all connected by a giant lobby portal that allows you to sneak into the X-rated universe when the usher’s back is turned.

What’s more, Brian says there’s very likely a parallel universe in which there is someone who looks and acts more or less like each of us except for the fact that they all wear goatees or have big hair. Somewhere else in the multiverse there is a goateed Ken Burns with an even worse haircut, a goateed bunch of Republican Presidential candidates debating ad nauseaum; another bunch of goateed, big hair Kardashians running amuck, and even worse, goateed, big haired Gloria Allreds.

 

Good grief!

 

None of this multiverse stuff has been scientifically proven yet because proving it involves some really god-awful long equations involving higher mathematics such as long division, Algebra I, and even worse, fractions. But Greene says that scientists they are working on it, though it will take another 100 years to actually prove.  (A hundred years?! Sounds like a great job creation in a bad economy. if there ever was one.)  

 Of course, there other scientists, likely all working for TV networks other than PBS, who don’t believe a word of any of it. They call all of this “one big day dream and essentially say that Greene and his crowd are just seeing double as a result of too much to drink at the PBS company picnic.  

 

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Call me a Daydream Believer, but I believe what Brian Greene and his buddies say. Every word of it. In fact, I’ve believed it since I was a child.  

The multiverse-identical twin –interstellar porta-potty stuff explains crop circles,  the Bermuda Triangle and the loss of a lot of my stuff over the years: car keys, cell phones, golf clubs, coats, hats, etc.  Specifically, I’ve always figured that ‘Alternative Will’ in one of those parallel universes is a notorious prankster, who regularly saunters over into our universe and hides things from me, when the interstellar multiverse movie usher has his back turned.

 I’m just sorry Mr. Brian Greene didn’t come up the multiverse stuff years ago. It could have kept me out of a lot of hot water when I was growing up. To wit:  my neighbor’s broken window or when I was nine and our telephone somehow ended up in a million pieces. There other incidents too numerous to list here.

 The multiverse concept also helps tremendously with ‘Plausible Deniability’, an excellent thing to have when one does not live alone. (Plausible Deniability is the reason that kids really want dogs for god sakes!)

 

“Will, who ate up all the pickles?  There was a whole jar of gherkins in the refrigerator last night. I just bought it new at the store yesterday?”

 

“Well, Mom, it wasn’t me!!!! You’re always blaming me for every little thing that goes wrong around here.”

 “Who was it then, pray tell, mister? We are the only ones living here and I didn’t eat ‘em. And don’t you dare blame it on the dog, this time, young man.  I know for a fact that Alibi doesn’t even like pickles. They make him itch.”

 “Mom, I’m innocent. It was that Alternative Will… from the parallel universe…the one with the goatee. There is one of those portals in the kitchen, right next to the ‘frig, ya know.

 

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The parallel universe excuse is an excellent replacement for the ‘dog ate my homework’ excuse or the neoclassic “I’ve got a bad back and can’t help you move to your new apartment’ excuse.”

 

Just think of the possibilities.

 

In using the new multiverse genre of excuses to get out of stuff, I’d better hurry though. Scientists, even the ones at PBS, are always changing their minds about one thing or another. One minute spinach is good for you, the next minute it’s the worse stuff ever invented. One minute we live in a multiverse, the next minute, you never even existed.

 

Maybe I shouldn’t get rid of my dog just yet.

 

In the meantime, I’ll wait for what PBS will come up with next for Pledge Week next year. I think that Ken Burns may be off punishment by then.