An Apology, Excuse Included

Having read this morning my last few blog entries, I find that I owe an apology to whatever readers there may be out there.

You see, I have had a very bad cold (no, not swine flu), and this, on top of the usual MS brain challenges, apparently brought on a temporary fit of delirium.

It would seem that at some juncture my brain (what there is of it anyway) became inextricably tangled with a science news report about a mysterious blob near the dawn of time. As it happens, my thought processes, already blob-like where focus and distinction are concerned, were in some way activated by the light of this mysterious space blob--a gigantic star (apparently) which (apparently) had exploded just after the advent of the Big Bang,

It is theorized, moreover, that at the center of this giant mysterious blob is a gigantic black hole. Near the dawn of time. An un-blob, one might say, as a black hole is a negation, an antithesis.

But let me stop before I get started. In Indonesian the word is maaf, in French it is pardonez moi. In short, and in English, I apologize.

Sincerely.

The Missing Link

The mysterious blob which scientists recently discovered near the dawn of time is now suspected of being the cause of multiple sclerosis, a disease process which has long been a mystery as confounding as that of the blob.

No one knows exactly how multiple sclerosis originated, and by the same token no one really knows where the blob near the dawn of time came from. We only know where it is, roughly. It is for this reason that professionals in the fields of astronomy, science, and medicine have linked the two entities.

“It’s a first step,” one researcher commented, “and it’s major! Is there a cure in it? We don’t know. What we’re looking at now is questions, more and more questions, while the answers remain somewhat blurry.”

One might have said blob-like.

Although the indistinct discovery was originally given the name Himiko, after an equally obscure ancient Japanese Queen, it is felt now that whoever came up with this name jumped the gun. Given the relation of the blob to a known disease, by virtue, as has been said, of their common indistinctness, most who now study the phenomena feel that a set of initials would have been more suitable.

“We thought of TB (for The Blob),” one doctor said, “but of course those letters are already taken (tuberculosis). Himiko is unsuitable—the Japanese have nothing to do with it. We, after all, discovered the thing. And the fact that there are very few Japanese people who have multiple sclerosis removes them even further from being pertinent.” At this the doctor shook his head and shrugged a shoulder. “It’s something we’re working on,” he added, “and we will certainly keep the public up to date.”

Since the phenomenon that scientists are describing is being observed through a depth of space billions of light years from earth, it is readily admitted that the picture may remain a bit out of focus for some time to come. The disease multiple sclerosis also remains stubbornly out of focus, and so its link to the blob becomes more obvious yet.

Additionally, since the blob is billions of years old, it is believed now that multiple sclerosis, having clearly arisen from the inception of the blob, is also of a similar antiquity.

“It’s exciting,” said a spokesman at the Kennedy Space Center. “To think that we have all but proven that disease, that MS in particular, has been with us since the very beginning of time. The possibilities for research and discovery are almost endless. What about the dinosaurs? How about Cro-Magnon Man? How about primordial soup?”

No thanks, we might answer. I’ve already eaten!