Sunday February 11th,1996 Vol. 3, issue 8 "If you torture the data enough, it will confess." Warning,Achtung,Attenzionne: the ambient randomness and bizarre nonreferences contained herein grossly exceed any and all prerequisites for a contiguous and linear literary experience; you 'ave been warned. You rush from your room to class, from class to class, from class to go eat, from eating to your room, and your day is over in a blink. Soon it's your week, month and quarter gone the same way. In four years you look back and you simply can not figure out where the time went. So where does all of your time go? Of course you must know by now that we have been thinking hard about this very topic (and no, your time does not travel through a vortex straight to us. We simply maintain rock steady grade point averages of 1.2 while coming up with random thoughts to amuse ourselves). We figure there are some pretty obvious culprits who until now have eluded the larger public's detection. Here's the Most Wanted List: Santa Claus ("..you have a very nasty habit of surviving"). We can buy the fact that he can make toys for all the world's children in one year (hooray for non-existent North Pole labor laws!), but delivering all the goods in one night? Forget about it. He must suck up some of everyone's free time and use it all on his midnight run. Think of losing your time as a trade-off for one magical, feel-good day (maybe he uses quantum physics; after all, if you believe in Santa, it's no great stretch to believe in quantum physics). What's that you say? Your time evaporates like toluene on a hot plate and you don't even celebrate Christ-x? Well, start! It doesn't matter what religion you are! We just took the "mas" out of it for you! The Inventors of Stupid Things. No one is immune from the plague of infomercials congesting our airwaves, and actual people have to invent these damn things to be sold en masse (just think of all the "harmless" infomercial radio waves that pass through your body every day, not to mention the horrible influence radio waves shot into space are having on the Zxqtvpl battle fleet as they decide whether or not to enslave the third planet from Sol or just steal all of their "I Love Lucy" memorabilia). And we're not talking about "Formula P-38 Car Protectant (Restore the shine after a nuclear holocaust!)". At least there's some schmoe in a lab somewhere putting time into developing that stuff. We mean the things that obviously no one would ever, ever think of buying until it comes on TV with the promise of making your life even less laborious than it already is! The Shiwala, in case a cinder-block sized car sponge takes too much time. The little foot pump for raising the toilet seat so you don't actually have to bend down to lift it. The Vacuum Sealer, that pumps excess air out of potato chip bags to keep them (the chips, not the bags) fresh. Like potato chips last long enough to become stale anyway. The Salad Shooter. The Salad Shooter?!? When did the knife become obsolete, and why, in the name of god, would someone want to go around shooting poor innocent vegetables? I wonder if there is a waiting period to buy the Salad Shooter.... We're willing to concede that the ideas come to these inventors in sudden flashes of insight (This microwave bacon rack will solve domestic kitchen problems forever!). Your time gets taken in the mass production and rapid marketing of this stuff. And these products don't leave you with more time, just with less money. The Government, using alien technology to steal the time out of your existence. They could use it to come up with a budget plan, but it probably ends up in some dinky bureaucratic corner like The Federal Moose Surveying Center. Maybe we should lay off X-Philes for a while. Computers. Computers save time like kudzu stops soil erosion. `Nuff said. Childbirth. Any woman in labor (or baboon, or what ever else they happen to be using as surrogate (the next huge political scandal...right up there with...oh, I forget the name of it. Happened at that hotel, with the guy who was a crook and died....) mothers these days) can tell you that it seems like it lasts forever (especially since western medical practitioners insist on having women lie down instead of squatting, like they should). It doesn't take forever, but can, potentially, absorb it. As the child is born, the inevitable stretch marks almost instantly form, and capture time. The space-time continuum has been compared to a trampoline, where any large mass warps it. It fact, the space-time continuum is more analogous to mother's bellies. Those stretch marks are actually time capacitors (as are those mysterious tire marks found on back roads that look as though a car going 70mph suddenly slammed into reverse and somehow drove sideways (so the tires don't roll, but flip. Come on guys, keep up with me here). These are the crop circles of high populated areas (which also appear, rarely, as burnt rubber in your underwear. I have no idea why this is, though entire philosophies have come and gone, attempting to answer this critical question); spot welds in reality, absorbing all the time you waste when saving time using your computer (see above suspect)). That's why, to men, women always seem to have more time, and are expected to cook, clean, raise kids, have an outside job (as long as she isn't making more money than he is), dote on her mate, do his laundry, and essentially make her life revolve around him. And why shouldn't she? She potentially has all the time in the world§. §Hey, look! No footnotes¥! ¥Doh!