An Alternate Origin Story

In the beginning, there was everything already: planets, sky, bushes, people, buildings, books, drinks, musical instruments, tape recorders, ice cream cones, grass skirts, Rhode Island, telescopes, digital watches, sexy stable boys, the disowned Velvet Underground album Squeeze, cardboard cutouts of Jesus, VCR 4-heads, arugula, Thanksgiving break, plastic keychain toys for babies, the King's Quest computer game series, square colored memo cards, racism, George Burns, masturbation, internet trolls, "Hills Like White Elephants" student interpretations, fingernail clippers, photographs of dead people being sold for five cents apiece, Smurfette, stains on a Frenchman's bathroom sink, the TARDIS, children who could sing the jingle for Krazy Glue, beard dandruff, open mic karaoke, boat anchor chains, Tylenol PM, the smell of an aluminum bucket full of crayons and erasers, elephant tusk controversies, dried lily pads in a scrap book with butterflies on the cover, the Articles of the Confederation, slam dunk contests, paper airplanes made with Hello Kitty stationary, WordPerfect 5.1, tetanus, Leanna Foxxx's fake breasts, the Gladney Center for Adoption, furries, conspiracy theories, Zildjian ride cymbals, 1840s camera tripods, New Coke prototypes, alt.tv.twin-peaks, all of the lead singers for Tower of Power, Babylonian theology, Regular Scent Dry Idea underarm deodorant, teeth fillings in transit to Atlanta, the Age of Reason, adobe huts, the Acronis Secure Zone, canker sores, Lotus 123 spreadsheets, sod, Avenue Q, plankton, quilts made of T-shirts worn in elementary school, Germany, the Horsehead Nebula, Song-Poem collectors, grocery store receipts, spend the night parties, white Chiclets, dinosaur sex, Humbert Humbert, donkey rides up the Grand Canyon, The Pirate Movie, hip-hop translations of the Bible, mitral valve replacement surgery, Hüseyin Kıvrıkoğlu's great-grandmother, No Fear Shakespeare, Phillip Joll, false etymologies for the Tagalog language, the clitoris, Dave's Records of Guelph, failed recycling programs, stardust, the dropping of the letter O in the word opossum, the R65 in South Africa, gaydar, soccer trophies, foreign exchange students who pretend to not know the language, three day weekends, the Naval Battle of Awa in 1868, Scott Walker's later albums, historic gazebo tour pamphlets, the buffy-tufted marmoset, potatoes, the 2002 US Open, the WEDWay People Mover, the asteroid belt 15034 Décines, the Faisalabad Railway Station, Egyptian feminism, childhood interest in tumbling, the peak of the Hochfrottspitze, abandoned planetariums, Scarlett Johannsson nude photograph leaks, moonshine, treacle, and Dan Quayle. For starters.

Eventually everything got to be too much, so it began swirling into itself, until everything was compressed into a tight ball. This was not done by anything or anyone outside of itself, and it was not done for reasons of morality. It just happened, as one might expect. And there the tight ball sat.

And then, as one might also expect of something that contained all of these things, it finally exploded. But everything did not re-exist at once. The universe unfolded slowly, starting with hydrogen or whatever. Everything expanded, and eventually the earth was formed and all of that business happened.

And now here you are, motherfucker.