versimilitude, tangent, and sophistry

Last night, I went over to talk to meestagoat. As it was late, I feared that she might have already fallen asleep on the futon, poisoned by cthulhie as usual. Fortunately, she had turned the tables and drugged him into deep slumber first. At one point in our conversation, we had gotten to discussing the Ultimate Lemon Machine about which she dreamt the other evening. Being the budding and inquisitive academics, we theorized some about its purpose and its operation, to be sure, but we primarily deconstructed its greater social meaning in the milieu of our modern push-button society and Western cultural hegemony.

Now, for the record, I would like to state that I'm not certain that the Ultimate Lemon Machine (archival photo) is really what she was dreaming about the other night. Certainly she has no recollection of talking of it. After all, she was in that half-dazed, liminal state that is so lovely because you can say and do crazy things -- taking apart your neighbor's Volvo, for example -- and be absolved of all responsibility because, hey, you were half-asleep. So, the only documentation we have of this fabled Ultimate Lemon Machine is Cthulhie's word. And as we all know, that and a buck-twenty-five still won't get you a bus ride to Shoreline during rush-hour.

I believe she really dreamt about something similar yet entirely different, ontologically speaking. She dreamt, say, of the Ultimate Sugar Beet Machine and it is this device that is the key to harnessing the secrets of the Universe. And now, only Cthulhie knows this and is drawing up plans for such a device right now. The Ultimate Lemon Machine, then, is a decoy, something to throw us off the path - but not too far. After all, I can see how both the Ultimate Lemon Machine and the Ultimate Sugar Beet Machine would share technologies and processes, conceptually anyway. They doubtlessly share a few parts, too; I would expect both to operate on 220VAC, for example, and have 5/8-inch pipe fittings. Thus, when one of us would talk about we increased the efficiency of the x-axis transducer for the Ultimate Lemon Machine, Cthulhie would know that he could re-appropriate this technology for the Ultimate Sugar Beet Machine. And when we finally built the device, all we'd get is lemonade while, in his secret laboratory, Cthulhie would be kicking back with a tall glass of cosmic secrets, cleverly disguised as a glass of sugar beet juice.

( But I didn't come here to call Cthulhie the liar that he is. )