Frank’s Sporadic Blog, With Fries

After walking this Earth for lo these forty-six years, I’ve come to a couple of conclusions.

First, good shoes are a must.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, this place could use a few improvements.

I’m not talking about moving the good restaurants closer to my house or moderating the hot August weather, although both are good ideas.

No, I’m talking about a few fundamental tweaks to the fundamentals themselves.

You’ve all heard of the Big Bang. First there was nothing — okay, that’s not true, there are at any moment an infinity of other universes all bubbling up out of the quantum foam, so there was something. But it wasn’t *our* something.

Anyway, boom, and there we were. The first few seconds determined everything else — all the laws of physics, all the exceptions to the laws of physics, all the muons and mesons and quarks and charms and spins and hexes and flavors.

All the things we deal with today.

Most of it works pretty well. I don’t really have any complaints above electromagnetism or the dual nature of light or Plank’s Constant.

No, it’s entropy I’m tired of.

Entropy. The tendency of all systems to tend toward disorder.

We age.

We die.

And frankly, I’m a little tired of both.

Yeah, yeah, I know, that’s the way of nature. All part of life’s grand tapestry. With each death comes rebirth.

Yada, yada, yada.

I’m not particularly young anymore. I’ll be fifty in two shakes of an undertaker’s tail. Half a bloody century. And even if a lot of those years don’t show, I feel them, oh yes I do. My bad ankle aches all the time. My good ankle aches half the time. My wrists pop like plastic packing when I lift anything heavier than a laptop. My eyes have gotten so bad I’ve just accepted that the world is a noisy blur.

And Life can take its Grand Tapestry and — well, place it somewhere creative.

And Death can take a hike. A nice long one. Really. I think we could all use a bit of breather where funerals are concerned. We get it. We’re mortal. Message received, okay?

Things are tending toward disorder just a little too quickly and too often around here.

All in all, if I was rating the cosmos as if it were a hotel chain, I’m afraid I can only give it 3 stars out of six. Some of the views are spectacular, some of the meals have been really great, but Room Service is practically nonexistent, the elevators always open on the wrong floors, and your stay is terminated without warning or reason.

Make that two stars.

Make it one and a half.

I’m tempted to never stay here again.