The Spit

Lots Of Matter Is Good

By Tracy Farr
Editor, The Daily Spittoon

I don't know about you, but I sleep a lot easier these days knowing that physicists are a little closer to understanding why the universe is filled with something rather than nothing.

For years, Stamford physicists have been slamming little bitty pieces of matter together at ungodly speeds in a multi-gazillion dollar complex to create subatomic pieces of antimatter that last for about a billionth of a second, or in layman's terms, twice as long as a hit song by NSync. At the end of the day, these physicists go home to their wives and kiddies, eat steak dinners and contemplate the existence of the universe while watching ESPN.

And what they have discovered is that there is a whole boat load of matter in the universe; which is a good thing to know because without matter the universe would be a big void -- which means no chips and hot sauce.

Before we go any further, let's look at a couple of word definitions that might make this story a bit more understandable:

Matter -- everything that is around us; computers, bananas, Fords, World Federation wrestlers who are pretty darn big and love to destroy other pieces of matter like tables, chairs, microphones and other pretty darn big wrestlers.

Antimatter -- those things that annihilate their counterparts; bosses, brothers in small cars on long trips, leftover casserole that has been in the fridge a little bit longer than it should and is now growing colonies of florescent-colored fuzz.

Physicists -- Very smart people who have made a career out of studying little bits of nothing and getting paid a whole lot of something to do it.

Now that we have the terms straight, let's discuss a subject that REALLY matters in the scheme of things -- why does looking for an item in a mega-superduper shopping complex feel like having a root canal without the pain killer? One day the bread is on aisle three next to the coffee and peanut butter, and the next day it's in the automotive section between the batteries and spark plugs.

It's a government plot, I tell you. A government plot run by physicists, dressed as ordinary managers, who are actually conducting "rat in the maze" type experiments to see if we can find the cheddar cheese. And they are watching us collide into each other in the hopes of seeing anti-shoppers created for fractions of a second, thus bringing them closer to understanding the complexities of the cosmos as it relates to shopping in mega-superduper stores.

What I really want to know is what would happen if two mothers-in-law collided together at ungodly speeds? Would you get an anti-mother-in-law who actually approves of everything you do?

And what about colliding two politicians? Would you produce an anti-politician who is truthful and keeps his hands out of the public coffers?

I dream of colliding two NSync CDs together, not to see if I could create an anti-NSync CD, but to see how many little CD chips would be splattered across the living room.

These are the questions that physicists should be studying. These are the questions that would help us find meaning in the cosmos. These are the questions that they don't want us to ask, because then we'll be as smart as they are and we'll start demanding our television networks to air programs like "Survivor in Physics" and "Reality Matters" and "Do You Want To Be An Anti-Millionaire".

Yes, friends and neighbors, they've got a lot of explaining to do. And just between you and me, the cheese is in the cold food section. Good luck!