Time OUT!
by Your Diva, Robin Pastorio-Newman

We all have days we don't want to do what we should. Today's - and by today we mean Sunday, 26 October, and we're time traveling - task is to wrote an Altrok column because at the time Your Darling, Your Diva, Your One True Love usually writes these bon mots she'll be standing in The Saint listening to a Dutch band. Will be. Was. Thus the cause for hesitation is clear: what verb tense nails down this ridiculous time sense? Let's…move on. Sure. Where? Anywhere else. Why? Because there's no time like the present, so let's go there. Then. Now.
 
Currently, the funniest show on TV may be Discovery's Mythbusters. Two special effects guys, a lab full of great gadgets, outlandish science projects and stuff blows up all over the place. Your Café au Lait wouldn't dream of leaving the house on Friday nights until after this show's over and the jet fuel's settled.
 
Currently, some New Brunswick addresses are more convenient than others. Yesterday, Your Mocha Frappe peered out her kitchen window as a protest against domestic violence marched by. The protest drew a fair-sized crowd of supporters, complete with bullhorns and well-worn chants. Interesting, interesting, and far more understandable than the weekend morning Your Sparkling Water threw open the same window and found a full-blown parade on the same street corner. Colorful costumes, a marching band, a parade float, cars draped with the flag of a Latin American country, more costumed marchers - which was great, but nobody with a head out a window had any idea what occasion was being celebrated. Perhaps it was just an unusually festive Saturday?
 
Currently, one's disorientation may be due to gaining an hour this morning after changing the clocks back before bed last night. This activity, when one has a regrettably early appointment on a Sunday morning, is full of peril. It's late, you've had a full day of being You, and you want You to hit the hay two hours ago, but you can't until you've had your semi-annual wrestling match with the Time Set button.
 
You: What time is it now?
 
Your Heart's Desire: It's 1 a.m.
 
You: And what time should it be?
 
YHD: It should be 1 a.m.
 
You: Okay, when we wake up, what time will it be?
 
YHD: It'll be 9:30.
 
You: Now-time or then-time?
 
YHD: What?
 
You: What?
 
YHD: Good thing we're sexy because we are dumb bunnies in Dr. Dentin's.
 
No matter what you do, you're going to wake up in a panic. It's all Ben Franklin's fault. How does a man who's been dead for 200 years continue to outwit us?
 
That's enough about time. While there's still some weekend left in this day, Your Frosty Lemonade plans to - well it doesn't matter because it happened days ago, didn't it? Let's hope whatever it was is still clean, orderly and April-fresh. Here, kitty kitty kitty...
 

©2003 Robin Pastorio-Newman