The Future: Now With Sprinkles

Once a squirrel’s time-traveled through the quantum foam it’s hard to keep ‘em down on the farm.

Or Over the Hedge.

The Suggestions of Physics

We’ve done several “universal remote” gags over the years. Way before that forgettable Adam Sandler movie. We were fast forwarding and rewinding time and space before it was cool. And after. And now that it’s cool again.*

This reminds me of the time we got our first DVR and we were watching live TV and one of my daughters (she was pretty young at the time) asked why we couldn’t skip through the commercials. I said, “Because they haven’t happened yet. We can’t fast forward into the future.”

It’s a funny story and we still tease her about it, but the truth is we live in a time shifted culture where past, present and future get jumbled up into a squishy reality where one night Clint Eastwood talks to an empty chair…

The next night the empty chair talks back…

And now Clint is set to remake Every Which Way But Loose staring opposite the empty chair.**

If you missed Clint live, you can rewind and re-watch or just skip the actual event and fast forward to events that never took place or may take place in an alternate reality of your choosing.***

Maybe as RJ and Hammy imply, the laws of physics really are just suggestions.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older
Then we wouldn’t have to wait so long
And wouldn’t it be nice to live together
In the kind of world where we belong.****

*Because I say so

**Should be true, but isn’t.

***Not the one where Clint and the empty chair remake Unforgiven.  That would be wrong.

****Where you can fast forward through commercials that haven’t happened yet.

The One That Will Make Sense After I Explain It

Pay attention.  There will be a test at the end for 20% of your grade.

1.  Future Verne goes back in time 11 days to just BEFORE future RJ, Hammy and Larry arrive back.

2.  He meets past RJ, Hammy, Larry AND PAST VERNE (T left this part out).

3.  Future Verne continues in time machine to ANYWHERE in time.

4.  Future Verne destroys time machine.

Now there are TWO Vernes annoying (and apparently being worshiped by) others in two different time lines.

Make sense?  No?

Me either.

“Wibbly Wobbly Time-y Wimey Stuff”

“People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint – it’s more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly… time-y wimey… stuff.”
― Steven Moffat, writer, executive producer of “Dr. Who”

“His older self had taught his younger self a language which the older self knew because the younger self, after being taught, grew up to be the older self and was, therefore, capable of teaching.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

Physicists often quote from T. H. White’s epic novel The Once and Future King, where a society of ants declares, “Everything not forbidden is compulsory.” In other words, if there isn’t a basic principle of physics forbidding time travel, then time travel is necessarily a physical possibility. (The reason for this is the uncertainty principle. Unless something is forbidden, quantum effects and fluctuations will eventually make it possible if we wait long enough. Thus, unless there is a law forbidding it, it will eventually occur.)

— Michio Kaku

Scotch and Mescaline and Time Travel, Oh My!

So they need to go back to the future so they can move ahead to the past?

Or are they going back to the past so they never go in the future so they’ll never have to go back to the future so they can move ahead to the past?

This all made sense when I wrote it.

High on scotch and mescaline.

The One With the Drone Strike

This one would make a lot more sense if you could read the time.  RJ goes in the time machine and comes out three hours later to avoid the Verne’s drone strike.  That’s 4:00 in dark blue unreadable numbers above RJ’s head.

Note to colorist (not T):  Dark blue? Not so good.  Yellow?  Much better.

Over the Hedge:  Painfully and regrettably having to explain the occasional unintelligible comic since 1995.

Time Lord Hammy

This isn’t exactly what I wrote, but I guess it works okay.   T just hates to draw this sort of cross panel time bendy kind of thing.  I don’t care.  It’s fun.  And strange.  And maybe doesn’t quite make sense.

Over the Hedge:  Two artists annoying each other for your amusement since 1995.

(Oo!  Speaking of Time Lords…  Dr. Who’s Karen Gilliam is on Craig Ferguson tonight (I’ve got a creepy old guy crush on her).  And Dr. Who himself Matt Smith is on Craig Ferguson on Friday.  And Craig Ferguson is on every night.  But you already knew that.)