Apropos my previous entry:

I have a time machine.

It's not a very sophisticated time machine. I built it out of sticks, mud, and a flux capacitor I found in a cornfield north of town over break, and it works all right, but only in one direction: forwards. I was hoping to use it after by birthday in March to hurl my then-21 year-old self into the past to catch any one of these fantastic shows at the Triple Rock in Minneapolis:

• The Winter Blanket, Head of Femur and Latchhook on the 6th


• Notwist, Themselves, and Cepia on the 9th


• Three acts, plus Ssion, St. Germain AND the Numbers on the 11th

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to coax the gizmo to induce a negative-polarized temporal field, so all of these fantastic shows are completely off-limits to me. Goddammit.

Having a time machine that only sends things into the future isn't all that useful, to tell you the truth. I know what you're thinking: "just take the time machine to the year 3000! By then, they'll have time machines that go both ways at every pawn shop!"

Well, I ask you: how do you know other things won't have changed between now and then, fancy-pants? Fr'instance, suppose I set up my time machine in my house, point it to 2020, and step inside. What do you suppose will, in 2020, be where my house is in 2004? What if it's a big landfill? I would materialize inside a big pile of garbage sixteen years in the future and die a rancid death, with someone's week-old pizza crusts sticking out of my brain.

That doesn't mean I can't settle a few bets with it, though. I got up early today and sent a bowl of oatmeal from my kitchen table this morning to my kitchen table next Tuesday. Monday night, I'm going to set some soup out and see if, in the morning, it really does make porridge.