Infinitely differentiable.

Long luxurious curves.

A flow over smoothed river rock with no particle passing another.

Colors blending seamlessly into each other.

The line maintained. The football never fumbled.

Proceeding by increments to the ends of the universe and finding it wrapped back upon itself.

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It was proven long time ago that every infinite is finite. Hail the DD's (Doogie Howser and Dougie Adams)

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It was proven long time ago that every infinite is finite. Hail the DD's (Doogie Howser and Dougie Adams)




All in all not a bad pair of double Ds /images/_common/forums/emoticons/' }

The Universe, our universe, for the moment no need to focus on another, brought Life forth and set it on a spindle. The vast distances, the wildly varying conditions, mattered not to the thread of continuity running through all. The advance of all the clocks, running in their locally dependent rates, rush all beings along that thread ne'er to return. Archetypes strut their moment on the Stage and then exit to the right... never to arise in such a primitive way again. The whispers of the accumulated knowledge of all the space faring species permeate in growing, steady abundance the living vacuum of interstellar medium even as some shoots peter out in some unfortunate local neighborhood.

It is so easy to fall into the crags and storms of the chaotic microscopic neighborhood instead of sailing on the thermodynamic mean through the longer trend. Climbing so high that only 2nd order statistics, if not full determination, need apply. The butterfly may flit his wings all he likes but contingency vanishes at this scale and outcomes are reassuringly certain.

Yea, jump off that mental pier and lurch only a little before finding the complex plane, nothing fancier, that will bring to all your reasoning the graceful folding flow of analytic delight. Find your soul mate in the perfect arcs, ideal maps, and well converging line integrals there.

why, it's better than a safari up your sister's nose!
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Joe was smooth, baby. No doubt about it.

From his nicely greased pompadour to his velvet shoes. The man didn't walk into a room, baby, he slid in like a figure skater. Or for you with the more depraved minds, like a very well lubed Johnson: long and flexible but not too thick. And he didn't have any unneeded shake or shimmy to his perambulation... lean and tight, shaved save for his crown, no eye distracting chains bobbing round his neck... his clothes seemed a manifestation of his skin... the whole unit moved as one... no edges, nothing for the eye to catch upon.

The women in the room noticed at a very primitive level. He was clearly unique. But they did not understand quite what it was. He didn't fit a type. There was nothing unusual about his clothes, his style, even his hairdo was considered within the norm. But at some level they noticed how the light made only specular reflection when it interacted with his clothes and skin. His garb was not just clean it was picked clean of any stray thread, certainly sans lint and stain free. When he bent a little to sample an appetizer, no wrinkle appeared. No crumbs dropped. His darting, daintily dancing tongue flicked over it like a lizard but somehow in a way that was provoking in all the right ways to the opposite sex. When he swallowed, after a perfectly appropriate amount of chewing no lump appeared in his throat, in fact you could scarcely identify the moment. Somehow for him masticated food flowed gently in a steady stream to his gullet without the stops, starts, windpipe tickles that were typical of his peers.

To a trained observer Joe stood out from all in the room more than a clown in full regalia would in a room full of criminal lawyers.


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Oh what am I to do with this generation? They insist upon wallowing in their ignorance, loving vice instead of virtue.

I have shown the Way. Made smooth the highways. De-kinked the phone cords of those not yet wireless. Have gone to the mountain top and when I return I find them engaged in idolatry.

Fixated on buying the biggest Humvee in the fleet so they can get wasted while bouncing around off road. Riding every rollercoaster in the park while shooting it up baby. Plastering themselves into bean bag chairs with joints all askew to absorb every play of every bowl game while cramming face with greasy fat filled fixins. Mewling up catch phrases and "oh yeahs" to the primitive gods of random acts. Or going neurotic on custom and cramming bag after bag with re-gifted acts of passive aggression.

While the tau of the long lemna is left uncontemplated. Missing the lesson of the stretching cat to put peanut butter on the slavering dog's lips.

I have always walked the right path no matter how solitary it is. The whisker shavings from the wrongful blade do not fall upon my unfolding path. It is enough that the wise few take up the mantle. It is all that is needed.



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Joe poured in the coffee. Then the cream. Then some more cream. And some more.

Joe liked it smooth baby.

He didn't like to wear shades because he found his natural eye graze did better things with the rays.

Joe. Smooth Joe. Natch' Joe.

Nobody was gonna call him a smoothie though. Not Joe.
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Joe was a teaching assistant... physics. He had to have office hours. Part of the whole thing.

He'd slouch into his office wearing his all suede matching outfit. Every question he'd turn into a problem involving limits. He loved limits.

But he was not prepared for a simple problem. It was a major defeat for his world view. It was the function abs(x) evaluated at zero. One student of unusual perception, a real bitch, casually pitched him this one, asking: "What's the slope Joe, what's the slope at zero honey. You wouldn't lie to me baby, would you?" Then batted her long eyelashes in mock something or other.

It was the problem that unraveled his mind... the first time... the one that sent him to Sunnybrook for four years.
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Then there was his stint as a lens grinder. At first he was happy. Making thangs smooth ya see.

But then he became obsessed. He started overgrinding. Ruining the raw materials. His boss was furious. Eventually he was fired.

But not before he came to realize that it wasn't impurities that were the enemy. Not the quality of the raw stock. It was that matter itself was discrete instead of continuous. That things were all wrong at the atomic and probably subatomic levels.

The realization made him what he is today. It was also his downfall. As plain to see as poor old MacBeth's.

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Yeah it's New Years Eve. I am getting ready to go out. You know how it is. Those last few moments before heading out the door.

I hope that I can prevail upon you to seek continuity in your New Year's resolutions. It is tempting to make some dramatic change. But have you considered vowing to smooth out the rough spots in your life? Do a little sand papering? Have you considered extending the bridges you have built?

Instead of a leap why not consider a tuck and roll? Instead of a blitz consider a steady advance.

The wheel is the invention that is remembered not the n-sided kaglunkagunker. Lineages. Streams. Gradual transitions instead of sharp boundaries.

But *sigh* I know how it is with you. Taking those big risks. Making big bets against the house. Enjoying adrenaline rush instead of the soothing joy of refined limit checking. So off you go and fare you well.

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Joe's line ran back for as long as species homo was a separate shoot on the ol' bush. Ran back in a slowly trending thread of gradualistic evolution. Punctuation was not a possibility for his pool. Their familial features ebbed and flowed in slow moderate sinusoidal variation.

You've heard of the fall of house Usher? Well, Joe's ancestors worst moment was the Somewhat Lean Time of the latter 12th century for house Crème. Yes family Crème. You were expecting maybe Custard? Cream may rise to the top but the most triumphant moment of the family Crème was the Rather Decent Age enjoyed in the 16th century.

Their gallery was crammed with a chronological series of portraits of right profiled mildly aristocratic middle government official types wearing the smug smirk of knowledge that all was clockwork and music of the spheres baby. The universe ticking to a well lubed gear mechanism that was so perfectly meshed as to give a gliding trajectory through history with no justles or jerks.

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And in another pocket of reality Athos scowled and brooded. Seeing storms tossing in his dark stout. If queried he would curtly answer: "And here too is a kind of continuity. Now begone unless you have gold, a good story, and a respectable thirst"

But none queried and so his mind conjured up familiar images and nursed old hurts. The God of Brood smiled warmly at his perfection. None had mastered the religion quite so well in all known existence./images/_common/forums/emoticons/' }

And well might he brood. Thinking of Her. Evil woman. Poor man. Poor poor man. He had given her everything. His centuries old name. All of his love. His brighter days. Now... nothing but ruin... the wreck of a derelict hulk and her bones probably long to dust for all he knew... all he cared... for all that remained... here in this Inn of Outer Reality... all that remained... was a man.. his stout... and his brood.

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The Universe knows not. The Universe cares naught. Loves neither slopes nor leaps. Existing before Time. Ending long after Life departs.

There was a restaurant built there, at the end. Life's greatest achievement some say. Showing its mastery over the Void. But is that true? That it is a testament... a victory? Does the commercialization of the event, the final end of everything show mastery? Does doing a show in a time bubble, attended by the Universe's finest, featuring the last entrance of at least one prophet, does this justify the millennia of struggle?

It may be argued that it is wrong to even raise the question. It just is. Deal with it how you may. This line of argument appeals to many it is true. The kind of people who wind up at the event and spend it getting sloshed completely, singing stupid songs and telling endless stories. Not scientific thinkers.

Then why is it, you may ask, that species produce a level of intelligence and sense of decency mostly at this level. Why aren't intelligent species brighter? Researchers who have asked this question have typically been pelted by little cubes of margarine by the crowds around them before being able to answer what is clearly an irritatingly rhetorical question.

Our advice here at Do Ride Industries is to leave the thinking to the guys with monocles. Buy our feel good stories. Cheer for our easy to identify with heroes. And tell the Universe to p1ss off.

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The sound of a plucked string is very pleasing to our ears. Even in bowed instruments composers have learned to take advantage of the plucked sound.

Now what is that we like? If you synthesize the sound on a computer you find that it is simply a sinusoid modulated with an exponentially decaying envelope. What is this signal?

It is a kind of sharp, loud discontinuity that does not persist. It dies relatively quickly in a continuous manner. A drum beat is not as nice to our melodious sides. Neither is a boring unmodulated sine wave.

In our very ears we seek a blend of extremes to get the harmony. We don't want Joe's world. We don't want the anti-Joe.

The Universe continually gives us clues as to the right path even as it coldly ushers us to our destinies.

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I've been delaying... you're right to notice gentle reader... avoiding the next bit of the tragedy that is Joe. For he is that, the embodiment of tragedy. And tragedy always has been the most important part of the Arts even as it is the most difficult to create and to devour. Shakespeare's ability in this area is part of what sets him apart from other playwrights and other artists in general. We admire both the skill displayed and the truths revealed.

Yet it takes its toll. The writer ages a bit. Something of him is stolen and never reclaimed. The stars dim a bit and he comes nearer to the end of his short mortal coil.

Yet to dally is also not without its price. For a shadow hangs over him in all his business, in all his leisure. He swears most foully at his embarking on the dark journey. He had been safely ashore. In the easy relaxed light of friends. Able to toss off comedies and write incomplete parodies. He was free to laugh at the folly of creating masterworks for unappreciative patrons and fickle masses of readers. But once his foot left shore, and he entered the dark bark, now dread Duty looms over him and goads him with skeleton fingers. His sleep is restless. His sky's clouds are clouded. The legions of past works from all writers of all worlds whisper to him through the planar intersticies. His sleepless eyes stare out and blink at shadows seen only by him and others trapped in this land of wraiths.

Joe's soul itself compels me. Caught as it is in the limbo world of the doomed. Compels the tale to lurch slowly forward.../images/_common/forums/emoticons/' }

Do you mongrels actually appreciate how hard it is to write a good tragedy these days? The problems are numerous. The devices have to change for one. You have evolved as readers to care far less about signs and portents. You are not nearly so superstitious. You don't fear witches. You aren't freaked out by curses, swearing, even graphic violence. You are well educated so we can no longer stretch the effects of mental illness, invoke new ravening species, or conceive of many reasons at all for a fall from great height other than mundane stupidity and carelessness.

Why it is even difficult to select a character that everyone will agree is truly high born and yet still feel sympathy for. The struggles of the elite are hard to identify with, seem small in comparison with the ancients, after all they are free to retire to their mansions and partake of countless healing, escapist diversions. They no longer face deadly rivals, for the most part, losing loved ones only to natural events. Those kinds of things that make us all somewhat heroic in our facing them but fall far short of tragedy as thought of by the classic writers.

So is it any wonder that writers have leapt fully into fantasy? Or played with the rules of this genre by pulling in anti-heroes to serve as the moral cannon fodder? Or lapsed into humor and irony?

We here at Do Ride Industries honor the ancient traditions. Our villains are true villains. We use zombies sparingly. When the rules demand pathos the reader gets pathos.

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All of us owe the gods one death. What in the great scheme of things would the destruction of one odd lens grinder mean? Why to the Norse a quick taking in the youth is actually a blessing. To them to make it to ripe old age was the curse. To suffer under the ailments of the elderly. To die in a cold hard bed instead of with wounds upon your front.

No only in more civilized times have we come to appreciate the joys of growing old surrounded by our progeny. Seeing the fruits of a well earned life. Basking in the love that has returned to us many times over. Let us take a moment and pity the poor Norse for living in a much harsher time. Let's thank them and our own ancestors for bringing us the better life through their suffering and cleverness.

But is there anything to this notion? Of a time in life missed from untimely death? The victim of the fate being none the wiser. Doubtless the poor choices made brought the dismal dark side of Life upon him gradually so that he scarcely perceived his worsening lot. He never experienced the hero's end of days and never experiencing a hero had no access to it. Can a loss unknown be a loss indeed?

For a villain to regret his choices as his life slowly ebbs away he must somehow know what he missed. He has to have enough contact with good people to know they fare better in the norm. He has to understand that his condition is not universal. That somehow he has been the sole author of his own sad fate.

Sadly, though he brings ruin in his contact with it, good must mingle with the villain in order for there to be Justice done. He must have had a legitimate other outcome. A possible chance. If he was foreordained to doom from the start then what matters his story to us? What kind of universe would that be? No, the whole point is that even a fool with a good heart can enjoy many blessings in life. But a villain will never escape ruin no matter how clever he is.

How does this square with a cold pitiless universe? A machine is pitiless yet it is governed by rules of operation. The universe may be pitiless but it is governed by laws of Nature. Even though it gladdens not the nonexistent heart of the fabric of reality to see a villain inevitably fail, fail he inevitably will.

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The Gyiard Jiardin stronghold is near the center of the largest galaxy in our universe. It is a region of space that is subject to immense forces. A massive black hole spins nearby. Centuries of accumulated charge have made it a generator of a powerful electric field. The irregular swirling of the stellar object induces a perpetual wave disturbance that windsurfers on earth would recognize if it were expressed in water. No particle in the region can remain unionized.

Evolution adapted this influential species to thrive in chaos. Their consciousness is attached to a collection of ions held together by inverted strong force interaction. The normally repellant close range force flips to an attractive bond in the sheared space of the galatic center. Short lived particles carry the force for ultra short distances but the misery of the sundering space results in crushing numbers of them. Far from being tenuous constructs that must hide to survive, in this region of the cosmos they are physically formidable, being able to shatter anything that hasn't already flown to bits under the pulls and rips of spacetime.

They have become fixated on randomness. On the quantum nature of reality. So much so that they spend their free time measuring the randomness of the space around them. As their power grows, the reach of their observations grows. It is a weakness of their makeup to be sure. A compulsion that drives them irrationally. They have been known to make war on some other nation if they detect some technology that increases the order of neighboring space.

Soon Joe would attract the full force of their scrutiny. Soon Joe would unleash all of their fury.

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A gloved hand scrawled a truth claim on a blank piece of paper... There was a grunt of satisfaction... and the ancient symbol of verity appeared beside.

Truth. Independent unvarnished Truth. Not tied to some particular species. Not in the least bit contextual. Free from any link to any particular universe in the span or to the inter-planar voids.

Fearless, tyrant destroying Truth.

The Mountie mind unsheathed and vigilant. Keeping aflame the torch of Reason.

True in every tongue. Right in every morality. Burning bright in the darkest hole of reality. Truth.

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