Forgetful Future Me

Ladies and Gentlemen, using my time machine I have just finished talking with Future/Present Me and I have no idea what that one post was about. I think I must have forgotten about it.

By the way, happy birthday to me. I want to ask myself so many questions, but I'm afraid of spoilers. I don't want to ruin my enjoyment of Lost or who won the election anything. Though thinking about it, it couldn't have hurt too much for me to have found out who won the Super Bowl and by how much. (Man, there's something about that name that bugs me.) I did accidentally learn that Future Me is into Battlestar Galactica and has a Wii. When did that happen> Future Me is awesome.

I think instead of trying to find the right moment in time when I know what happened and it recently happened, I'll just go back to the day when Future/Past/Present Me was first posting on my blog so I can just ask myself right as I was giving the warning, right?

You will have been informed.

10 Unknown Facts About: Philip K. Dick

Ladies and Gentlemen, I love a good read, especially if it involves robots or space or things of that nature, so when I saw that today was Philip K. Dick's birthday, I had to learn more about him. He may be the author of numerous science fiction novels, several of them became movies (Minority Report, Blade Runner, Total Recall, and A Scanner Darkly). but here are a few things you probably didn't know.

10 Unknown Facts about Philip K. Dick:

1. After writing Do Andriods Dream of Electric Sheep? he decided, in fact, that no, they shouldn't since real people don't dream about real sheep. So he built a robot to have dreams about flying gravy boats like the rest of us.
2. Philip K. Dick's first name was originally spelled Phillip, but the other l was shot off in the war and doctors were unable to reattach it.
3. Philip K. Dick could grow his beard at will, hence its impressive bushiness.
4. Philip K. Dick took on a part-time job as a temporal conduit through which time traveling tourists could experience life in our days by mentally possessing his body from time to time. In return, he was able to visit their times (similar to Quantum Leap). This was often mistaken as mental illness.
5. There have been so many adaptations of Philip K. Dick's books and stories that some scientists believe they spontaneously adapt themselves to film, television, and radio if left unattended for too long.
6. Philip K. Dick was a pastamancer who could summon a plate of spaghetti five times a day.
7. Philip K. Dick knew how to fly an interstellar space shuttle. His greatest sorrow was that they didn't exist yet for him to fly.
8. The K stands for "kick a-- and take names," which made it difficult for him to fill out forms.
9. Philip K. Dick was able to punch through walls no thicker pi inches thick, regardless of what material it was built out of.
10. The scene in Back to the Future where Marty McFly plays the song at the dance and Chuck Barry's cousin calls Chuck and lets him hear it was based on an incident from Philip K. Dick's life (again due to the Temporal Conduit job), except the song was "Stars and Stripes Forever" and John Phillip Souza's cousin Cindy Souza passed the song along.

You have been informed.

What I learned in my Absence

Ladies and Gentlemen, I apologize for my absence. Yesterday was the first day since starting this blog that I was unable to share a little truth with you. My internet was down all day and nothing I did would change it's mind and make it cooperate. I even tried water-boarding, and while it was fun to hit the beach for a while, I seriously do not understand how that's supposed to make someone spill a secret. Maybe the idea is you keep them in prison for a long time, and then you say, "Hey buddy. Me and some of the guys were gonna go hit up the beach. You know, have some barbeque, play some volley ball. Maybe surf some waves. You wanna grab a board and come along?" And then after having such a fun day after years of torture, they're like, "You know, you cats aren't so bad. Tell you what. The secret plans are buried under my basement." I guess. My router, however, sucked on the surfboard, so I had to break up with it and get a new one.

But I did learn some truths in my absence.

1. Leonardo da Vinci started painting the "Mona Lisa" in 1400 B.C. (or B.C.E. if that's how you get your archaeological jollies off). No, he isn't an immortal like Duncan McLeod or Dorian Gray or fruit cake. He's a time traveller, as any well educated child of the 1990s can tell you. The fact of the matter is that da Vinci really wanted to capture an accurate representation of the natural beauty upon which he would later canvas his subject and its contrast to the invasion of "modern conveniences" like roads. Using his time machine, he went back in time to before that road in the background was constructed and painted the flora and fauna first. Then he painted the road atop the initial landscape to exemplify the invading nature of society on the countryside. Then he painted a woman in front of it because he "really mucked up the middle bit."
2. Ninjas attacked me at work. I didn't see them, but that's because they are ninja. I am, however, feeling rather battered and bruised and don't recall being assaulted by tables or chairs, so I am forced to conclude that it was done by a clan of meeting-hating ninja. I hate meetings. Maybe I can be a ninja too.
3. Oliver Cromwell is still a jerk. Stop breaking my technology.

You have been informed, albeit somewhat late.

I should have listened...

Ladies and Gentlemen, I should have listened to myself...

Stepping back in time to see my future self post created horrors I shall never forget. So what did I do? I went back in time afterward to post a warning to my past self telling me not to do what I was currently doing, thus inspiring me to do it to find out what I shouldn't do. I created a time loop. The strange part is, knowing the horrors that would happen, I couldn't bring myself to be more specific in the post because I lacked the mental strength to dwell on the moment long enough to describe what had/would happened to past me. And so I wrote the words I'd already read, knowing full well that I would only end up investigating and causing it all to happen anyway.

And knowing in some strange way that this horror I brought upon myself was only possible because I did it only made the nightmare worse. Man was never meant to witness his future self in the past. The strain is too much on the space time continuum having two Mr. Truths who should neither be there chronologically. Reality rippled and I could see the Lovecraftian horrors that lay beyond the veil of our feeble perceptions of what is and is not real. I shall never sleep again... such nightmares, such horrors shall haunt me.

I have no choice but to wipe this event from my memory or I shall surely go mad and end my life to save myself.

Let this be a warning to you. Never travel through time to visit yourself traveling through a different time.

You have been informed.

The Machine is finished!

Ladies and Gentlemen, using plans found on the internet, I am proud to say the Time Machine is complete! I'll let you know what I found out.

You have been and will be informed.

Retroactive Success

Ladies and Gentlemen, I was making a character for Dungeons and Dragons (3.5) last night and I learned that increasing your Con bonus retroactively increases your hit points. In theory, this should work with skill points as well, since if you're going to allow say, a level 15 person to bump their hit points by 15 (one additional HP per level) as well as their level up hit die, then it should apply for skills as well, since the two function pretty much the same in terms of offering an additional bonus at the time of level up. Perhaps this too would apply for spells. One could retroactively have learned substantially more spells in the past, having just become a little smarter in the present. In theory, this could retroactively turn a past failure into a past success because you would have retroactively had those hit points which would have kept you from dying, right?

The reason why I say this is because we all know that Dungeons and Dragons is the epitome of a realistic system whose complexity clearly aligns perfectly with the complexity of the laws of time and space and physics here in our world. Therefore, I've decided to put myself on a regimented system of physical and mental workout. If I can bulk up a little, I will be able to win that fight that I lost in seventh grade. Likewise, if I can make myself just a little bit smarter, history will reshape itself and give me the teaching job I applied for last year because I will have retroactively become the most qualified candidate. I can make my life better without time travel! (though I'm still going to build that time machine to figure out what terrible thing is coming)

Ladies and Gentlemen, let's all begin a mass program of self improvement. If we can get our grandparents to join in, who knows? Maybe we can prevent World War II. Think of all of the jobs we will have always had if we just work that much harder now, after the fact!

Self-Improvement: Changing your present to better your past.

You have been informed.

Something strange

Ladies and Gentlemen, I just noticed a post I don't recall making. I'm fairly certain no one has the password to my blog, but clearly someone does or else that post from yesterday wouldn't be there. I need to have a talk with future me about my vagueness in dire warnings. The only problem is how am I to know when specifically in the future I should talk with myself? If I go too soon into my future, then future me won't know what the problem is that I'm supposed to avoid. If I wait too long, said event I should avoid will happen anyway, defeating the purpose of the warning. That or future me will have completely forgotten what the problem was and then it still won't help me any.

Hmmm... why can't I be more specific?

I should build a time machine to find out what's up.

You have been informed.

WARNING to future-past me!

Me from your future/my past:

Don't do it! I know you and you're just going to want to learn what happened, but don't! The horror! The terrors! The nightmares! Oh the humanity! Leave it alone! Don't do it! Just stay where you are!

I have been informed.

4) Not a Time Traveller

Ladies and Gentlemen, the next explanation from the list.

4) Contrary to the Trekkie popular belief, Wil Wheaton cannot travel around time. However, when he desires it, time will travel around him.

Wil and Father Time got into a fight a long time ago. You know how it goes when you talk politics. They say the older you get, the more stubborn and conservative you get, and Father Time is really old. So they had a big battle of words about whether or not it's cool to make prisoners fight to the death for our entertainment. I can't really remember the specifics, but Wil ended up winning the battle, so now when Wil is walking down the street or what not, Time will yield to Wil and usually go to the other side of the street.

You have been informed.