Someone out there has a sense of humor and time on their hands.

Well, it's February 29th, which is something of a non-day by regular calendar standards. We move these numbers around the months all the time, but the days always stay the same. It's just Sunday through Saturday, over and over forever. Wouldn't it be great if we had one extra day of the week instead? Once a year we could have Bernsday or a Ferzday or something. I say we do it after the first Tuesday in March. We have a Lermday. And then we just go back to Wednesday. Banks could close or stay open, I don't care. You wouldn't have to go to work. No one would! It's Lermday! The calendar wouldn't miss it! I'd put my flag out!

But we'd all be a day older. That's the space-time continuum for you. It might be worth discussing if everyone was into LOST as I am. It's the only show I care about, since they started airing House on alternate Tuesdays and sometimes Fridays, with episodes from whatever season is handiest. I tried to explain the space-time continuum to my wife, who was either uninterested, unimpressed or both. It's also possible that I didn't know what I was talking about, as the Wikipedia entry on it explains it rather differently. Check it out, if you're bored. Of interest in the article is that Edgar Allan Poe was the first guy to conjure up the topic, which I found curious. Also, there's that fact that atomic clocks slow down on the space shuttle. I'd heard this years ago and found it amazing then as I do now, though I admit that I have no idea what it means.

Nor does anyone else, I wager, that is, outside of Poe. Edgar Allan Poe was quite a character, and an unearthly one altogether. He was found delirious in the streets of Baltimore wearing someone else's clothes and crying out stranger's names right before he mysteriously gave up the ghost. This is basically what happened to a few of the characters in LOST last night. Expect Poe to show up mid-season as one of the original "Others".

I was reading about Edgar Allan Poe recently when I heard that the mystery of the "Poe Toaster" had finally been revealed. It was such a disappointment of a revelation, right up there with the deathbed confessions of that faked Loch Ness pic and the bogus Bigfoot footage. Ah, well. If you missed those stories, they're here, here, and here. And don't even get me started on crop circles, the shroud of Turin, and Piltdown man. It's all too depressing.

I saw Edgar Allan Poe's original dorm room, of all things, when I was visiting the University of Virginia once. They had a sheet of plexiglass in the doorway and you could peer in at the 50 year-old display. I remember there was a taxidermic raven on the antique desk and I thought, such cheese. There was a button you could push for an aged audio recording that recounted Poe's time spent at UV. I remember that it claimed he had "pulled a few boners" during his time in college, which really got a fall-down hearty laugh out of me at the time. Actually, it still makes me chuckle.

I'd always thought a "boner" was a tall-tale, but the dicktionary (sic) says it means a "stupid mistake or blunder", among other things. (I should have known this, since I've been pulling boners all week!) I actually remember my grandfather using the term, which got raised eyebrows out of me and my brother at the time. A little Googling unearths this sweet find from comic book lore...







Now that's just the funniest thing I've seen all month. Oh, what I wouldn't give to read about the "Other Famous All-Time Boners"! (Square #1) Pretty sure that these comics are the genuine article. I take solace in the clear fact that history itself is far more entertaining than any hoax.

Have an excellent weekend. Don't get forced into any boners!

So! They laugh at my boner, will they?! I'll show them! I'll show them how many boners the Joker can make!


~