Awesome

Okay, might as well start things off with something fun:

Tuesday, May 9th, 2006

9:04 am

Awesome I think there’s some rule, some natural law, that states that you always look dopey in old pictures. I don’t care how incredibly awesome you thought that picture looked when it was taken, as it sits in that photo album, over the course of ten years or so, unseen forces twist it slightly so that the next time you see it, you’re appalled. ‘Did I actually look like that?’ you wonder. No, you didn’t. You looked awesome. Remember? It’s just one of Mother Nature’s little tricks. The odd thing is, that’s even happened to my memories. I think back to things I did just a few years ago, and my first reaction is: “Did I really talk like that?” Even though little has changed about the way I talk now. My theory: Maybe the universe is just constantly getting cooler. You, me, and everything in the universe increases its awesomeness at a steady rate. I haven’t run enough calculations to yet determine if this awesome increase is constant throughout the immediately measurable universe, or if there are areas where the increase is more marked than others (I’m looking at you, Jamaica,) but my research has led to the inexorable conclusion that everything is increasing in awesomeness to some degree. I call this the awesometological constant. I hope to calculate its exact value soon.

Pretty cool, eh. I certainly thought so at the time. The trouble is, I originally composed this blog post 3 years ago and it's still about as awesome as it ever was. The implications are obvious: I've stumbled upon the principle of Awesome Relativity.

Awesomeness and bogosity are not absolutes, but are necessarilly measured relative to some frame of reference. This sounds like common sense, but can cause a lot of counter-intuitive complications due to the fact that there appears to be an upper-limit to awesomeness.

I can illustrate this upper-limit with the folowing thought experiement: Imagine an army of vikings fighting a hoarde of zombies. Now imagine that the vikings are armed with chainsaws. And then a bunch of redundant bionic vampire ninja cyborgs get involved for some reason.

You have probably noticed that the amount that the total awesomeness increases diminishes with each new addition to the battle, so that if a bunch of sexy amazon valkyries parachute in off the backs of luck dragons, the increase measured is on par with the emergence of subterranian penguin accountants, even though the rest awesomeness of the valkyries far exceeds that of the penguins.

And since all awesomeness is relative, it's possible for something to always appear to have the same level of awesomeness due to the fact that the ratio between the awesomness of that awesome thing and the squaresville frame of reference from which it's awesomeness is observed does not appreciably change.

Obviously further study of this phenomenon is warranted. I'm going to need a flamethrower and some nachos.