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| "When you at?" |
The mystery of the lady in the black and white footage from the 1928 movie premiere of Charlie Chaplin’s The Circus, who appears to be talking on a cell phone that was posted on YouTube by George Clarke, has apparently been solved, at least to the satisfaction of a group of students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
A small enclave of undergraduate student at the university known worldwide for its accomplishments in the fields of science and technology subjected the grainy images to a battery of tests. Including an atomic spectrographic meter that measures the amount of radiation an item is giving off, even in a photograph or film.
“It’s much like the way we measure the amount of radiation from a distant star,” said James P. Macarthur, one of the MIT students closely involved in the testing, majoring in quantum mechanics with a minor in mythology.
Of course, James and his fellow students had to make some negligible adjustments to the device as they were analyzing a digital rather than an analogue image.
“But still, it yielded the expected results, which confirmed our collective hypothesis,” said James.
After careful scientific scrutiny, the students came to a starling conclusion:
“It’s undeniable,” announced James on YouTube. “The radioactive readings from the flux capacitor located in the cell phone’s micro processor chip were off the scale, generating a quantum wave signature consistent with a device that is able to traverse the continuum and anyone holding it close to their ear at the time.”
In laymen’s terms, the lady in the Charlie Chaplin footage from 1928 is (or was) a time traveler at the time the film was shot.
“Oh yeah, I almost forgot,” added James. “The lady in the grainy black and white film that’s talking on a cell phone, she’s no lady. She’s a dude.”
James went on to claim that only three persons in the known universe that are capable of time travel.
“I don’t know about you, but my time traveler list is a short one,” said James. “And they are: Dr. Who, ‘Q’ from Star Trek -- The Next Generation, and theoretical physicist and mathematician, Professor Stephen Hawking. All dudes.”
James concludes that since all time travelers are male that the lady on the cell phone must be someone on his short list, dressed in drag.
“Now, I wouldn’t rule out Professor Stephen Hawking as the cross dressing time traveler just because he’s confined to a wheelchair,” said James. “After all, he is British, you know. And we all know how much British men like dressing up like women from watching episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.”
And since Dr. Who is British too, James logically deduced that, that makes him the leading candidate as the cross dressing time traveler in the grainy footage from 1928.
“You have to take into account that we are dealing with the future here,” James continued. “It makes sense that Dr. Who would have upgraded from using blue telephone police exchanges to travel through time, opting to use a handheld device instead. Just think of the convenience.”
As for the reason why Dr. Who resorted to becoming the first-time traveling cross dressing/drag queen, James would not speculate, except to say:
“Perhaps that’s the only place he could find shelter from our judgmental society,” said James. “Or perhaps, he took comfort in the style and sensibility of handcrafted, high ankle support women’s shoes that the early Twentieth Century provided.”
At first, James ruled out any possibility of “Q” being the cross dressing time traveler because “Q’ is a part of the Continuum, but later he reconsidered.
“He is ‘Q’. He doesn’t need a cell phone to travel through time,” said James. “He just snaps his fingers and he’s there. And by there, I mean anywhere, anytime…Unless ‘Q’ was in disguise as a woman, which he is known to do from time to time, fooling Captain Jean-Luc Picard…I’ll have to present that dilemma to the Think Tank when we reconvene next week. I’ll get back you on that. Okay?”
Copyright © 2008-2010 by Robert W. Armijo
