Strange

The moon shone brightly that night. For all who saw it, it was beside the point that the moon was just reflecting all the light that attacked it. But who cared? I mean, would you be really bothered if you found out that pineapples aren’t actually sweet and that the only reason they are sweet is because of sugar inside. If you do care, then you qualify to be a part of your nearest mental correctional facility. If you don’t then you are a normal person who just doesn’t care. Or you are a person who cares, but doesn’t want to declare your deepest desires.

Now that I’ve strayed away from the topic enough, it’s time to return to the story. To be politically correct, the moon was reflecting a lot of light that night. And the stars were twinkling away. However, no one could see them thanks to the spoilsport clouds, which decided that they wanted some of the limelight, or even the starlight. What they didn’t realise was that they were blocking the light of the stars so no one could see the clouds in the first place.

If the clouds ever realised the errors of their ways, they would probably go on strike and cause a lot of confusion for people who always wondered where clouds were. Those people would probably go on strike as well. And then a lot more people would go on strike and no one would give a damn. Unless, of course, they found out that monkeys were being declared more intelligent than humans, they would probably be a bit astonished to see that monkeys were becoming their bosses, although they wouldn’t notice any difference in intelligence.

Back to the story again, the moon was reflecting light, the stars were twinkling like crazy and the clouds were spoiling the party. What else could go wrong? Well, two things could. The first would be if it rained. And that is what the clouds started doing, raining. It was a very … wet rain. So one thing had gone wrong. And what was the other thing that could go wrong, you might ask. I can say that instead of raining water, the clouds rained pineapples. Unfortunately, the clouds had extinguished their supply of pineapples in the cloud party the previous night and had already rained cats and dogs. So the other thing that went wrong was … well … too strange to be counted as wrong. The rain had become … dry.

Forgive me for confusing you, but I don’t even understand what’s going on. The rain that fell from the spoilsport clouds was now … dry. I guess you’d have to be there to understand. Even then you probably wouldn’t understand. It would be like trying to understand a joke that you don’t get. The only difference here would be that even though no one else got it (like the joke), they wouldn’t be laughing right now.

But the rain was most certainly "dry". It was so dry it almost seemed as if the raindrops needed moisturizing cream. Unfortunately, there was no moisturizing cream in the stores for "raindrop complexion". Hence, the poor raindrops got no cream. So they were still dry.

Now we move away from the dry rain; actually not too far away. We just move to the place just outside the area of the rainfall. Life was interesting. It was as dry as it could be. Of course, this was partly because this was a desert. But aside from the obvious, this place was dry and in this place there was an ant. Along with the ant, there were other ants and anteaters and various other animals and germs. There were no humans around, which was fairly surprising since there was an extremely tacky taco store.

The lights in the taco store were on. There were shadows moving inside. The shadows moved eerily, with almost frightening effects, like something out of the X-Files. Interestingly enough, the shadows weren’t shadows. They were more of "no-light" areas. Scientifically, a shadow is a "no-light" area, but these were specific "no-light" areas.

A lot of strange things were happening (as usual). A short distance away a "dry" rain was falling and at the taco store, there were no shadows, but "no-light" areas. Something was definitely … not wrong! It was just different. It was so different that it seemed wrong, but didn’t win the competition to be wrong. Instead all these strange things remained classified as different instead of wrong.

The origin of these strange things begins a great distance away. A great distance away from the earth, that is. And by a great distance, I mean light years. To be more specific, I mean 10 billionth of a light year away. At this distance there is nothing. And this is where everything begins: From nothing!

So here we are … at nothing, an extremely nice place to be when you don’t want to be somewhere, anywhere or everywhere. We are 10 billionth of a light year away from earth. To be more specific, we are around 900 kilometers away from the planet earth, a nice distance for a very long car drive, if your car could travel in space, and if you could survive in a vacuum. However, in this story, we are at nothing and there are no cars around, just yet.

In case you never knew how exciting nothing was, let me tell you. At this place, where there is nothing there is actually a battle going on between the "somethings" and the "anti-somethings". More scientifically, I mean matter and anti-matter, respectively. And here we are witnessing this great battle in progress. Of course, we cannot see it, but it is still going on. A truly magnificent war is being waged and we are witnesses of it … witnesses who cannot see it.

But something was about to happen here. This was because this place is where all the strange things started (apart from humans). And this is not where they will end. This is just a place where an old Volkswagen Beetle with 5 tourists passes by.

In Tokyo, Japan, the weather was cold. It was night in one part of the world, but here it was evening. The lights were on and the city was preparing for the nightlife to awake once more and destroy it. But until then, people were walking along the streets, mostly from work. The wind blew cold in the opposite direction, like it always did. It was like an unspoken law of nature that the wind will always blow in your face, even if you turn around and walk in the other direction.

The sky was relatively beautiful. There were a few clouds in the sky. But their positions were strange. It almost seemed as if the clouds had strategically placed themselves there. And then those clouds started raining. So there was rain, in select parts of Tokyo, with distinct boundaries from the no-rain areas. And, here too, the rain was … dry. There were people here to complain, but no one cared, because they could see the no-rain areas and ran for their lives.

Apart from the rain, only one-more strange thing happened in Tokyo that night. A ninja appeared on the roof of a temple. The appearance of the ninja wasn’t very strange until you considered the ninja had a chocolate pie in one hand, an apple cake in the other and was dressed in neon pink. So you may ask how do we know that this is a ninja and not someone out of a daytime talk show. This ninja had the usual assortment of swords, knives and sais (trident-like weapons). The tips of each were covered with something red … something that looked more like tomato ketchup than blood.

On closer inspection, the swords, knives and sais were covered with tomato ketchup, tomato ketchup that looked more like blood. Unfortunately, during the closer inspection, the ninja was knocked off the roof and fell on the ground. The ninja broke 5 of his bones but the chocolate pie and the apple cake were saved. So nothing bad had happened yet. It is beside the point that the ninja went into intensive surgery and was in a coma for 6 months, until his insurance company decided to kill him by sending another ninja, who also fell off a roof and went into a coma, until the insurance company went bankrupt. All that everyone cared about was the chocolate pie and the apple cake.

If we inspect the pie and the cake at a closer level, we notice something. Of course you don’t see it, but there is a dent in both the pie and the cake. A perfect dent. A dent so perfect, it didn’t look like a dent. It looked more like someone had bit into it. O horrors of horrors, someone had already taken a bite out of the pie and the cake. This would surely mean the end of the world or that Jerry Springer was going to become the president of the United States. Either way, disaster would strike.

Back to where we were, at nothing. At nothing, nothing was happening. Nothing was going on and nothing was going off either. But it all made sense. At something, something was happening. At everywhere, everything was happening. Hence, at nothing, nothing was happening. Watching nothing in action was turning into a sheer thrill. Time magazine said, "Nothing rocks". Rolling Stone raved "Stallone is superb". USA Today applauded nothing for its "Sheer grit and power".

Unfortunately, no one got to read those reviews because they were never written (Rolling Stone has never written, "Stallone is superb"). Hence, no one ever knew about nothing. It just remained there minding its own business, until the old Volkswagen Beetle with 5 tourists appeared.

The 5 tourists jumped out and started taking pictures of nothing. They stood (or floated) around nothing and took all the pictures that their film reels could hold. And it seemed that those reels could hold more than a thousand snapshots, because that is how many pictures each had taken. They all chattered away while they took the pictures, mainly about the weather and how unfortunate it was that Johnny down the road fell down a cliff and died a very bloody death. That boy owed the Kirsten’s a thousand dollars. They all said, "Tsk, Tsk" and then went on taking pictures of nothing.

In the back of the Beetle, where the engine usually was, there was a banging sound. The reason was a physicist who was tied and gagged up. As you might have guessed, the physicist was the "engine" to the tourists coming here. By bringing a physicist, they were able to denounce and make complete nonsense of the laws of physics so that they could drive into space and take pictures of nothing. It was a devious plan and the exact reason why there was chaos on earth (apart from lawyers).

Because the physicist had been captured to denounce all the laws of physics, things were becoming so strange. Monkeys were being promoted to the positions of chairpersons of many companies. Donkeys were talking about Einstein’s childhood experiences and humans were watching TV. But that was not the complete reason why strange things were happening. It was actually something that had happened because of something even worse. Come to think of it, tourists’ going out into space to take pictures of nothing was strange. And so we move on to another place.

At anywhere, anything was happening. People were watching football games on TV and listening to the games on the radio as well. Squirrels were transporting people instead of aeroplanes. And sea lions ate pineapple pie and then did the waltz. To be more extreme, lawyers were being respected … and insulted at the same time. As I said, at anywhere, anything happened. And this is just what was happening: anything.

Away from a lot of the anything that was happening, something else was happening. Now that was strange! It was particularly strange because something else happened at somewhere else, not anywhere. But something else was still happening.

The something else that was happening was in a large courthouse. Inside the courthouse there was a buzz around, apart from the swarms of bees inside that were stinging everyone. People were murmuring and whispering of the case that was going on. It was truly a tough case for the judge and the jury to get a hold of.

Suddenly, the attendant said "All rise! Judge "Chaos" is here"

Everyone stood up, even the bees.

The judge spoke "Let the case proceed"

The lawyer for the prosecuting side stood up. She paced about and then executed a perfect kick to the chest of one of the jurors (remember anything happened). Everyone applauded the lawyer (and I mean ANYTHING). The lawyer spoke "Welcome all you lazy people who have nothing better to do than come to court to watch this case. I feel disgust when I see your sad faces and would like nothing better than to pull out a cannon and one-by-one send each of you to anywhere in heck"

The whole crowd applauded wildly and started cheering the lawyer on. The lawyer bowed in acknowledgement and continued speaking "I am here today, representing my client, "Wrong", in its fight against "Nature" on the charge of being discriminated to being too strange to be wrong and instead being classified as different"

The lawyer representing "Nature" spoke "Objection, your idiotic-honour" (remember anything) "This joke of a lawyer is promoting this case from an incorrect angle. She should be saying that "Nature" is an evil organization and that it should be banned from exercising control"

Things started going crazy. "Nature" fired the lawyer and spoke for itself. "Nature" defended itself quite competently, although it kept on straying off to advertise "Mama’s own" Apple pies. A few people even ordered some. The argument that "Wrong" was promoting was that it was being classified as different and not wrong. It was a dirty situation. "Nature" threw a few insults and "Wrong" threw some roast turkeys.

Eventually, the jury decided that they didn’t want to see much more of the case because perfectly good roast turkeys were being wasted. The decision that was reached was that "Wrong" had to stop all the things that it was doing that were being disputed as different and that "Nature" was not allowed to throw delicious roast chickens at "Wrong" anymore.

So "Wrong" and "Nature" went back to reconcile their differences and did reach a consensus on what was too strange to be declared as wrong and "Wrong" immediately stopped those activities. As a result, the rain became wet again and the shadows returned. Along with those, "The Jerry Springer Show" was yanked off the air for no reason. Lawyers became polite and courteous and didn’t rob a single penny from their clients. Physicists could not be packed into Volkswagen Beetles anymore. And the last thing that changed was that school became … fun. It became so much fun that kids loved it. Of course, that changed back to normal again, because kids loving school was too strange.