A Scientific Explanation of Shit Creek Time

A New Scientific Explanation

Inattentive readers, as well the general run of members of the Shit Creek Society for the Suppression of Civilised Customs, have reported having trouble understanding the concept of Shit Creek Time (see also Cook Islands Time, Cthulhian Time).

Shit Creek Time (SCT) is a very complex yet fundamentally simple process. In the final analysis the concept is meaningless. For example, when a Shit Creeker says 'Issue 6 of SCR will be online in January' he or she is uttering a verbal construct that has no intrinsic meaning whatsoever. Shit Creekers are incapable of deploying or even engaging on the most superficial level with notions of time, sequence, seriality, cause, effect, estimation, planning, predictvity, analepsis, prolepsis, synchronicity, diachronicity, before, after, during, when, then, big hand and little hand, and so forth. Simply put, this is because of the presence of a huge number of psychic, psychotic and metaphysical variables which constantly disrupt the Shit Creek cognitive continuum.

One recent manifestation of this is the abduction of the Shit Creek Webmaster away from his coding duties by a band of rogue Elves and Fairies. He is literally 'Off with the Pixies', which in turn has led to his total loss of the concept of 'January'. In layman's terms, 'January' has become for him 'February' or even 'Late April'—a temporal-cognitive aberration that might only be rectified by repeated application of low-level electrical shocks to his cerebral cortex, accompanied by highly-loaded doses of Mogadon administered intravenously.

The Shit Creek Crew are working around the clock (a concept they have no hope of grasping) to temporally or temporarily rehabilitate the Pixilated Webmaster, and hope for a positive outcome in the Foulness of Time—perhaps early next week. Or something.

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Works Consulted

Anon., Enuma Elish.

Anon., 'Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Time'.

Geoffrey Chaucer, Treatise on the Astrolabe.

J.W. Dunne, An Experiment with Time.

Albert Einstein, Relativity: The Special and General Theory.

T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets.

Hugo Gernsback et al, Amazing Stories 1926-2006.

Robert Graves, The White Goddess.

Stephen Hawkings, A Brief History of Time.

Hesiod. Works and Days

Hesiod, Theogony.

H. Hupfeld, 'As Time Goes By'.

Rob Hyman and Cyndi Lauper, 'Time After Time'.

James Jones, From Here to Eternity.

Limbourg brothers et al., Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry.

Ti. Lucretius Carus, De Rerum Narura.

Andrew Marvell, 'To His Coy Mistress'.

P. Ovidius Naso, Fasti.

P. Ovidius Naso, Metamorphoses.

Marcel Proust, À la Recherche du Temps Perdu.

Richard Pynson (trans), The Sheapheards Kalendar.

Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek.

St. Augustine, Confessions.

Wililiam Shakespeare, Macbeth.

William Shakespeare, Shake-speares Sonnets.

Kenneth Slessor, 'Five Visions of Captain Cook'.

Edmund Spenser, The Shepheardes Calendar.

Time Warner Communications, TIME Magazine.

U.S. Navy Astronomical Applications Department, Phases of the Moon.

H.G. Wells, The Time Machine.

Various, The Bhagavad Gita.

W.B. Yeats, A Vision.

W.B. Yeats, 'Phases of the Moon'.


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