wordhole

reesetee commented on the word wordhole

See Zeitgeist, and mind the floating logonauts.

February 21, 2011

sionnach commented on the word wordhole

Right now, on Sunday February 20th (or 21st if you live in bilbyland) 2011, you can find the following on a certain leather-eared marsupial's profile:

about 3 years ago bilby said

I'll be scarce on Wordie for the rest of January 2007 ... global crossings, unbroadbanded parents, temporal dislocation and all that kind of thing. Hope to be the careless match in your box of firecrackers again too soon!

*mwah*

Note the odd discrepancy in dates. What happened to that other year? Bilbo's use of the phrase "temporal dislocation" seems oddly prescient.

This is, of course, just a very extreme instance of a previously noted phenomenon. Those of us who suffer from an addiction to words and reading are indeed subject to bizarre temporal dislocations - the sudden inexplicable loss of a whole afternoon, in extreme cases, even a three-day weekend. The vanishing of an entire year confirms my suspicion that regular users of Wordie are at a considerable elevated risk for a more severe type of temporal anomaly. My working theory is that Wordie, in its function as a portal to the great wide world of words, tempts regular users - logonauts if you will - to venture farther and farther afield in the lexiverse. This exploration is not risk-free - sometimes an intrepid logonaut may stumble, or be lured, into a wordhole. Though the phenomenon is not fully understood, a wordhole may be thought of as a type of singularity, or tear, in the fabric of the chronolexiverse, sometimes known as a vanwinklerip*. Falling into a wordhole is not necessarily fatal, but the few cases documented in the literature suggest that it is a life-transforming experience -- in addition to the time distortion experienced by survivors, glossolalia is a common side effect, as well as a baffling tendency to identify with small burrowing animals, and a need to hibernate in cold weather. Instances of distorted perception of one's own body size have also been reported (e.g. Swift, Carroll), though care should be taken to distinguish between genuine travel across the chronolexiverse and mere hallucinations following the ingestion of psychoactive agents (Coleridge, Thompson, Castaneda).

Bilby is one of the lucky ones. Regular site users should be cognizant of the risks associated with extensive, unsupervised wandering in the chronolexiverse. Logonauts beware!

* as described, e.g. in Irving, W. (1819).

(I've copied this comment over from the Zeitgeist page)

February 21, 2011

reesetee commented on the word wordhole

Thanks for reposting. :-)

February 21, 2011