MG Sports Cars

If you're here I assume you have no problems with journeys beyond. Beyond what? Well, you decide.

Anyway, have you ever had problems with tools or other small items disappearing, or is it just me? Sometimes they come back to the exact same spot as soon as I don't need them anymore, sometimes they stay gone for days, sometimes they never come back at all, and sometimes they move. The first time that this happened and I knew with an absolute certainty that something was seriously amiss was a number of years back when I was lubricating a brand new motorcycle chain. I carefully unpackaged the chain, coiled it into a round cake tin, dropped the master link in the center of the coil and covered the works with some brown 'super grease' that I got from a local specialist and put it on the stove. I heated it to simmering, let it cool overnight, and then extracted the chain (By the way I do not recommend this practice, a grease fire would be nasty business indeed.) but the master link was no place to be found. Just to be absolutely sure I scoured the entire area, the box, you name it, and ran the grease through a strainer, but there was never any question, the master link was right there in the center and afterwards it was gone with the grease undisturbed. I had no explanation for it. So to make light of an unexplainable abnormality I just told my buddies that the grease ate it. Obviously they didn't buy it, grease isn't known for eating steel even if it is hot grease. But there was no other explanation. Until now.

In the dozen odd years since then I've noticed things going missing without any explanation. All the silverware for instance. And I've noticed that it usually is consistent with the conditions I first mentioned and eventually it dawned on me.

By now we all know about the existance of big invisible holes in the universe, big enough to swallow stars whole.That's one monster of a gigantic hole and It took an astronomer to find them. Up until a few years back nobody knew they existed at all. Now I've seen where one scientist thinks there may be holes that go from one side of the planet to the other. I guess that explains falling through to China. Obviously this is a perfect explanation for tools and such that vanish without a trace, we've just got a bunch of itty bitty invisible holes that we run afoul of every now and then. They take whatever is nearby and it vanishes without a trace, sometimes reappearing moments later, sometimes moving to a different location, sometimes staying gone for a longer time and sometimes not coming back at all. Those last ones I suspect reappear inside a wall, because I've personally torn walls apart and found tools inside.

So somewhere inside a wall in that apartment in Clifton is a brand new pristine master link sitting in a glob of grease. At least that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Jim

Jim,
Whatever it is that you're smoking, please bring some to Ted's next weekend.
Sillyness to be sure! but I think we've all experienced this phenomena.

Jim, after spending a career spanning over 30 years working on electronics equipment I've experienced that phenomina all too often. I've finally discovered the source of it, "IIDI" or instant inter-dimensional instability. What occurs is a small hole in our universe that usually appears under a workbench, car, machine, or what ever you happen to be working on which swallows any object dropped into it. Since the atomic structure of items from our dimension are not compatable with other dimensions eventually they're " puked up" back into our dimension. That explains why you can't find the screw you dropped and rolled under the bench when it happens, but two weeks later when you don't need it anymore it appears right there while you're looking for something else. I'm a firm beliver that the opening and closing of these "holes" causes some type of transformation of a small amount of matter from both areas which combine and form a "cotton" type material which is truely the source of the dust bunnies we find under our stationary objects.
By the way, this is a phenomina of physics, not anything metaphysical, so incantations like "Oh S*** ! " don't help, but may make you feel better anyway so are not discouraged. Basically I find that when the floor is eating things it's usually time to kick back and have a brew until the warp closes. Sometimes they will be puked back by then and you can continue your work.

OK Bill,
Then why does the object always return after you have bought a new one?

John, I think it's because we're just too impatient to wait until it comes back on it's own. Sometimes it takes quite a while. I once dropped a wrench while working on my Corvair and it didn't return for over a year, then when I dropped the engine/trans to replace the clutch, there it was, a nice 1/2" box end just like it had never left my tool box. Some folks might think it just lodged on top of the transaxle, but I know that it was just it's time to come back from beyond. I'd looked on top the transaxle when I dropped it and I know it wasn't there. ;-)
Now when I'm working on a customer's electronic equipment I've learned to carry a box of extra fasteners just in case. Those folks don't seem to have a sense of humor if I tell them I have to wait for the screw to come back while their machine is still down. It would of course, but they just can't wait, and frankly neither can I most of the time.

Last night the History channel had a feature where scientists are now blaming the Bermuda triangle on a black hole. Personally I can see a few problems with that idea. Like, if the event horizon is underwater, what happens to the water it sucks in? And if they get bigger from the stuff they suck in, why hasn't it swallowed the earth already? I don't think it's a black hole we're dealing with here. Maybe a worm hole though, I read where there's a similar area in the Pacific Ocean somewhere near China. So maybe stuff from Bermuda goes there and stuff from China goes to Bermuda. That'd make sense because all the shipwrecks would just sink to the bottom anyway and there'd be no net change in the ocean depth. Plus it might sometimes be there and sometimes not, where a black hole is always there so it seems to make more sense. Maybe worm holes sometimes get clogged up and turn into black holes, who knows? Drains do that. Anyway the tiny ones that steal tools seem more like that. No reason both ends can't be in the same place, or like Bill says, in different dimensions. Seems to me there have been times when driving that I may have narrowly escaped one of these little buggers. Ever go along a nice smooth road, not a blemish in sight, when all of a sudden it feels like one wheel dropped off the edge of the earth? But nothing shows up in the rearview mirror. That's what I'm talking about.

Jim

A narrow escape for sure Jim. Must have something to do with the variations in the Earth's magnatism because of those Kentucky hills or such. Don't see much of that type stuff here in KC, just good old fashioned pot holes that can swallow an entire Midget if you're not careful. They do show up in the mirror once you get your teeth back in your head and the mirror retrained correctly.

In West Virginia we call those Jay-holes because they Rockafeller. When Jay was running for a second term as Governor he had the road crews go out to the secondary roads and wherever they could see a main road put down fresh new blacktop. Made the whole state look brand new. Until you got off the highway and went around a turn out of sight. Then you had to watch or you'd get rocked, and good.

Jim

How does all of this explain that there is only regular tip screw drivers in the tool box when you need a Philips or vice-versa?

If you draw a one inch circle in the middle of your shop floor and then accidently drop a small valuable part off your workbench, the odds of it landing in that circle are virtually zero. If, however, you drill a one inch hole in the same spot and then drop that same part, it's almost a certainity that it will fall into that hole. The deeper and more inaccesable the space under the floor, and the more valuable and irreplacable the part, the more certainly it will fall into the hole.

If you don't have a hole in the floor, the part will bounce around and hide in the most inaccesable place in the shop, behind something that is hard to see behind or move.

Ask me how I know, and how I just spent about an hour of valuable shop time yesterday.

What I hate about the IIDI is that dropped parts have the capability of changing color and form. They just don't look the same on the floor as they did on the workbench.

Dan, I think there must be some property associated with small and valuable items which attracts these invisible holes. There seems to be a direct relationship to value and an inverse one to size. This could also explain the problem with the screwdrivers if you accept that the instantaneous value of the object goes up exponentially when you need it and then diminishes in the same way once you have found something else to use in it's place. That could be the cause of the item or tool being burped back out right after you don't need it anymore. In the case of Bill's 1/2" wrench, it had a spike in instantaneous value but it also retained value for a long time as a good, desirable and much used tool and it wasn't until it was long forgotten that its value had dropped low enough for it to be released. I'm not sure how shape and color fits in, unless the vortex itself is shifting the light spectrum but that could certainly account for it. But all of this theory suggests that there could be some sort of intelligence behind these things because how else could they detect instantaneous value and act on it quickly enough to snatch the item away precisely when we're least likely to see it happen? That may be taking things a bit too far I guess, but if it were the case, I'd bet there's some connection there with the dust bunny residue.

Jim