Where the Universe Ends!

Water on Mars? Even possible life on Mars? No big deal.
Following a tip by that intrepid researcher of human life
and folly, Lewis Black, Magellan's Log confirms
Black's discovery of the ACTUAL PLACE
WHERE EXISTENCE AS WE KNOW IT ENDS!

Pedro Bofecillos, Teleology Editor

The history of science is filled with unlikely discoveries--and even unlikelier discoverers. A milquetoast mail clerk in Switzerland works out the theory of relativity in his spare time. A crackpot astrologer in England stumbles across the law of gravity.

Who then should be surprised that it falls to a COMEDIAN to discover what generations of ambitious astonomers have been unable to find: the very place where the universe comes to an end, the place beyond which is, well, nothing. Or, given the import of this discovery, maybe we should make that uppercase: Nothing.

As discoverer Lewis Black tells it in one of his stand-up routines, one night recently he had just finished his last show at the Laff Stop on West Gray in Houston. In the wee hours, he stepped outside on the way to his car. He glanced to the right... and what he saw others had surely seen but no one had heretofore realized the profound meaning of what he saw.

On the south side of West Gray, he noticed a Starbucks. No big deal, right? But then he moved his head a bit to the right, and there, on the north side of the street, directly across from the first Starbucks, was another, even bigger, Starbucks.

At that point, Black with all modesty, says he knew he had arrived at the end of the universe. Beyond facing Starbucks could only be, well, Nothing.

When we heard Black's stand-up routine, we, along with everyone else in the audience, laughed.

Next day, though, we thought: My God, what if he's right???

We immediately dispatched a photographer to the location, who returned a couple of hours later in shaky condition. Though he'd lost the power of speech, he was able to upload one of the pictures he'd taken. Before we submit this image to Nature or Physical Review or some other prestigious, peer-reviewed journal, we present it here for the edification of our ever-curious readers.

Arrows No. 1 and 2 point of course to the two caffeine-based establishments in question. Now, no doubt, there are other places in the world where one can find two or more Starbucks within a few hundred meters of each other. But facing directly across the street??? We don't think so.

Still, it's possible.

But please, dear Reader, examine the photo more closely, and you will begin to understand why we feel this picture confirms Lewis Black's epochal discovery.

Note the two objects indicated by Arrows No. 3. Yes, those are cars, BUT THEY ARE ONLY PARTIAL CARS. Our photographer, at the cost of his speaking ability, has captured not one but TWO vehicles actually in the process of disappearing over the edge of the End of the Universe into, well, Nothing.

Still not convinced?

The clincher--and what will no doubt get Mr. Black a Nobel Prize before he can say "Milton Berle"--is Arrow No. 4.

The white object Arrow No. 4 points to, because of the lo-rez 1.3 megapixel camera our photographers use, looks like nothing much at all. What that white object actually is is a 40-story condo called The Huntingdon. Clearly this structure is ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE END OF THE UNIVERSE.

How can this be, we asked ourselves. There should be only endless light-years of Nothing out there.

Then the light dawned, so to speak.

What the "end of the universe" means for us humans is simply the end of this existence we know and love, where certain rules and laws of physics and economics and politics and religion and behavior apply. The "end of the universe" is the place where those rules and laws no longer apply.

At all.

How, you ask, does this 40-story condo called The Huntingdon in the fuzzy distance beyond the palm trees on West Gray confirm Lewis Black's discovery?

Because, dear friends, the top floor of that structure is in fact the palatial penhouse home of... (you ready?) KENNETH LAY.

Yes. There he sits, up in the clouds. Mr. Enron himself. Safe. Secure. Rich as Croesus (still). Not a worry. The guy who got off scot-free from the biggest corporate collapse in history. Where else could Kenneth Lay be living these days if not beyond the end of the universe???

END

Want to hear Lewis Black tell of his discovery?
"The End of the Universe"
takes you to amazon.com.

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