Quantum Physics and Gassed Cats

I’m trying to educate myself, so my mind doesn’t end up like a bowl of grits. Sometimes, I sleep at night with my hands outside the covers and find myself thinking about stuff so much that I can’t even get to sleep. Times like that, I just get up and turn on the computer and go to my favorite website, www.barelylegalbabesfordirtyoldmen.com.

Of course, looking at pictures of barely clothed babes in the middle of the night doesn’t help me get to sleep but who cares as long as I’m having fun. Since I’m retired, it ain’t like I have to get up and go to work. How do we know that looking at barely naked babes in the middle of the night ain’t my job?

Generally, I don’t go in for reading anything scientific, primarily due to the fact that there usually ain’t no photos of naked babes. Yet, for some reason, this article about quantum physics held my attention for almost forty seconds. That, I believe, makes me an expert on the subject. I’m gonna explain it to y’all so you won’t be ignorant on the subject like I was. Besides, it won’t hurt you to read something educational for a change.

But I suppose I better warn you that nothing I say about this subject or any other would hold water any more than a pregnant woman after drinking a gallon of Gatorade. I am pretty sure none of you is smart enough to know anything about quantum physics because if you did, you sure as heck wouldn’t be reading crap like this.

What is quantum physics? The term quantum is Latin for: ‘…How much of this theory is just plain B.S. It has something to do with discrete units that are assigned to specific physical quantities, such as the energy of an atom at rest. And we all know everyone, including atoms, should get plenty of rest.

Apparently, scientists wet their panties when they figured these waves could be measured in particle-like small packets of energy called ‘quanta,’ which started a bunch of grey-haired old geezers studying atomic and subatomic systems, which is now called Quantum Mechanics. These mechanics are really tiny little guys in jumpsuits running around with wrenches fixing protons.

There was something about how Newton’s laws of motion couldn’t explain something or other. Newton was never quite the same after that apple fell on his head, but he was a riot at office parties.

Most physicists believe quantum mechanics correctly describes the physical world under almost all circumstances except Hollywood. However, the effects of quantum mechanics are generally not significant when considering the observable Universe as a whole.

Dang that is some serious stuff, hey? As I read that, I could feel my sphincter muscles tightening. Frankly, I could care less if the orbit of the complex vectors gyrates around the probability of the uncertainty of the entire range of nucleus values, but what I do want to know is where do these freakin guys come from, the planet Vulcan? The deepest mystery I’ve ever thought about was how come when I eat corn, days later, I can see it clearly before I flush.

Curiosity or insomnia drove me on. I needed to know more about the kind of dudes that think this stuff up. That led me to this one guy, Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger. With a name like that, it was clear he would either grow up to be a German Physicist or a serial killer. He was born in Edberg, Vienna, in 1887. His father was a cerecloth producer. I don’t know what that was, so I’m going to just say he was a Hot Balloon Operator.

Growing up in 1887 in Austria there wasn’t very much to do. There was no TV, computers, or Soccer; not even a decent war was raging. It is easy to see now that back then if you wanted something, you had to go out and invent it. Little Erwin was a frail, sickly kid who was the youngest of his five older sisters, Erwina, Ermelda, Erlisa, Ernada, and Erma, the oldest. If, in fact, he had any sisters, I‘m sure that would be their names. They all mothered him, making him dress up like a girl and wear makeup as well as a whole bunch of other twisted, perverted stuff—probably. That’s probably why, after he grew up, all the women he dated thought he was a ‘nice guy,’ but he could never get lucky.

In 1898, he attended the Akademische’s Gymnasium, run by Mr. Akademische, but everyone called him Pops. This is where they assembled Arnold Schwarzenegger. Between 1906 and 1910, Schrödinger studied in Vienna under Franz Serafin Exner, a famous pastry chef.

Now if you haven’t already stopped reading and went to the Web looking for www.barelylegalbabesfordirtyoldmen.com, this is where the story gets weird.

He began conducting experiments in the basement of the three-story walk-up where he lived. It is unknown what he was working on, but records show that he moved suddenly, and neighbors complained that an unusual number of pets went missing around the time he lived there. In 1911, Schrödinger had gained way too much weight and decided to get out of the bakery business and started looking for something where he wouldn’t have to work weekends.

In 1914, Erwin Schrödinger achieved Habilitation (venia legendi). Okay, I’m guessing here, but I’m thinking that since he was Austrian, this must be some kind of classical piece of music he wrote. Obviously, it never made it to the top 100, and I think this is what forced him to become a commissioned officer in the Austrian Fortress Artillery. On April 6, 1920, Schrödinger married Annemarie Bertel. It was an arranged marriage. He arranged to have a cannonball dropped on his foot so he could be sent back home long enough to get hitched. In September 1921, after he had done a whole bunch of other crap, including getting married, he attained the position of full professor in Poland.

Schrödinger published in the school newspaper, ‘Quantisierung als Eigenwertproblem.’ He was supposed to be writing a funny article on the food at the cafeteria, so the editor kicked him off the staff. However, the paper he wrote is now known as the Schrödinger Equation.

By now, if there is anyone reading this anymore, you must be saying like I did, “Who gives a flying fish?”

What most people don’t know is that initially he named his paper The Gertrude Equation, after one of the waitresses at the ‘Ratskeller,’ but changed it after she married the drummer from the polka band. In this paper, he gave a ‘derivation’ of the wave equation for time-independent systems and showed that it gave the correct energy eigenvalues for the hydrogen-like atom. His paper has been universally celebrated as one of the most important achievements of the twentieth century since the invention of colored, glow-in-the-dark ribbed, flavored, latex condoms, or television if you ain’t getting some. It created a revolution in quantum mechanics. What’s really amazing was that he did it in study hall as he was looking over the shoulder of another student who was there on an athletic scholarship.

Another failing student hooked Schrödinger up with some really good drugs, and he went on to write the Quantum Harmonic Oscillator, The Rigid Rotor, (a manual for a marital aid) and The Diatomic Molecule. He never knew what was in those pills, but after that, he never wrote anything without a little toot or snort first. After he scored some more illicit substances, he wrote a new derivation of the Schrödinger Equation, a third paper in May showing the equivalence of his approach to that of Heisenberg and gave the treatment of the Stark effect.

A fourth paper in this most remarkable series showed how to treat problems in which the system changes with time, as in scattering problems. These papers were the central achievement of his career and were at once recognized as having great significance by the physics community, not to mention that he held the best fraternity parties in town.

At the University of Oxford, soon after he arrived, he received the Nobel Prize together with Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac. His position at Oxford, however, did not work out due to his unconventional personal life. Schrödinger living with two women, did not meet with acceptance. Hey, didn’t I tell you this guy was a player?

In 1934, Schrödinger lectured at Princeton University; he was offered a permanent position there but did not accept it. Again, his wish to set up house with his wife and his mistress may have posed a problem. However, he was offered a deal to make an amateur adult film. He had the prospect of a position at the University of Edinburgh, but visa delays occurred, and in the end, he took up a position at the University of Graz in Austria in 1936.

The reason I really liked this guy Schrodinger is that he left Germany because he disliked the Nazis,’ and he inspired the TV sitcom ‘Three’s Company,’ (an American weekly show about a Nobel Peace Prize recipient in Quantum Physics who shared an apartment with a sassy brunette and a dim-witted blonde but never got none).

In 1938, after Hitler occupied Austria, Schrödinger had problems because of his flight from Germany in 1933 and his known opposition to Nazism. He issued a carefully weasel-worded statement saying that if Hitler wasn’t a tyrannical dictator, held free elections, and shaved off that stupid mustache…he’d vote for him. He regretted this later when Einstein toilet-papered his house, and he had to apologize for being a wuss. However, the university had its own theory that all this amounted to a B.S. Degree, and I don’t mean a Bachelor of Science. The faculty dismissed him from his job for political unreliability. He suffered harassment and received instructions not to leave the country, but he and his wife fled to Italy, seeking asylum and a really good pizza. From there he went to temporary positions at Oxford and Ghent Universities.

In 1940, he received an invitation to help establish an Institute for female alcoholics in Dublin, Ireland. He became the Director of the School for Theoretical Physics and remained there for seventeen happy years, during which time he became a naturalized Irish citizen. He wrote about fifty publications on various topics with pictures since it was easier to get ‘lucky’ with his magical ‘charms’ in Ireland.

In 1944, he wrote “What is Life?” for Reader’s Digest (which contained Negentropy, concepts for genetic code), which wasn’t whimsical enough to get published. Schrödinger stayed in Dublin until retiring in 1955. During this time, he remained committed to his particular passion: scandalous involvements with students where he fathered two children by two different Irish women. Geez, I’m wishing now I hadn’t blown off all the science classes in college. In 1956, he returned to Vienna. At an important lecture during the World Energy Conference, he refused to speak on nuclear energy because of his skepticism about it and gave a philosophical lecture on swinging for married couples. During this period, Schrödinger turned from mainstream quantum mechanics’ definition of wave-particle duality to promote the Bose Wave Radio, and decided to buy stock in the company, causing much controversy.

Speaking of controversy, the reason I spent so much time talking about Schrödinger is—that you have to understand the man…before you can understand his theories, and hopefully, I am getting paid ‘per word’ for this article. He is most noted for his theory called Schrodinger’s Cat. Collecting cats presents a danger for the elderly. It starts with one itty-bitty kitty then grows to where old folks are up to their as…er…in cats, spending all their money on cans of tuna fish. Schrödinger must have suspected this in his later years when he tried to invent a cure. His theory went like this:

Schrödinger’s Cat is a supposedly paradoxical thought experiment devised by Erwin Schrödinger (so everyone thinks) that attempts to illustrate the incompleteness of an early interpretation of quantum mechanics when going from subatomic to macroscopic systems. I believe in the scientific community that was supposed to be funny. The experiment proposes: A cat is placed in a sealed box. Attached to the box is an apparatus containing a radioactive nucleus and a canister of poison gas. This apparatus is separated from the cat in such a way that the cat can in no way interfere with it. The experiment is set up so that there is precisely a 50% chance of the nucleus decaying in one hour. If the nucleus decays, it will emit a particle that triggers the apparatus, which opens the canister and kills the cat. If the nucleus does not decay, then the cat remains alive. According to quantum mechanics, the unobserved nucleus is described as a superposition (meaning it exists partly as each simultaneously) of a ‘decayed nucleus’ and an ‘undecayed nucleus.’ However, when the box is opened, the experimenter sees only a ‘decayed nucleus/dead cat’ or an ‘undecayed nucleus/living cat.’

This raises several questions:

• Where was he getting the cats for this experiment?
• If he was against the Nazis, why would his theory eerily be based on killing cats in a gas chamber?
• Was Schrodinger that dense or callous or just had crap for brains,’ theoretically speaking?
• The most crucial question is: ‘Where can I buy one of those devices…at Pet-smart or Pets Mart, I can never remember which it is.

In 1961, Schrödinger died and was buried in a huge crater, named Gertrude on the far side of the Moon.

I’m gonna miss him.

Grizzly G. Gus    ©    2025

GIVE ME THE SINGLE LIFE…NOT!

Somehow, I had gotten myself into one of those verbal relationships where the babe was getting a lot of “phone time” while I was developing a cauliflower ear. She made me talk on the phone until she was sure she really didn’t want to meet me. Maybe it was something I had said since she couldn’t see me cleaning my toes and preparing dinner while I talked to her. Those hands-free phones are great, aren’t they? It is absolutely indispensable when it comes to phone sex since it takes two hands to handle a ‘Whopper.’

When the next potential Misses Right called, I was more telephonically experienced and remained fully clothed during the entire conversation. I can’t recall the woman’s name, but I think it started with something like ‘uptight, domineering, demanding, squared-toed shoe-wearing Hun,’’, or maybe it was Doris. She wasted little time talking on the phone and wanted to get right down to meeting me. That should have been a tip right there that she had way more testosterone coursing through her veins than me. Wow, it just occurred to me…with people having sex changes these days, maybe Doris was originally a man.

Either that or, in a former life, this chick had been a Viking. She told me to meet her at some clandestine restaurant so far from the city there would be absolutely no possibility of anyone ever finding out whom she was meeting. The place was so remote the squirrels had to use GPS just to find their nuts. Since it was our first date, I went all out; I moved my shower up by a month and trimmed so much hair from my nose that my mustache disappeared.

Carefully following the directions she had given me, I became lost immediately, right after leaving my driveway. I called the restaurant to say I might be late. Later, I called again to say I would definitely be late. The third time, I begged them to send out a ‘Search and Rescue Team’ to find me. Even though we had never met, I was able to easily pick her out as soon as I walked into the restaurant. She was the only woman sitting at a table, looking mad enough to self-combust. As I sat down, I offered the standard apologies, quickly picking up the menu and propping it between us to block her homicidal stares.

The waitress asked my date what she would like to order.

Broad-zilla replied, “How about a cup of INSTANT coffee, some MINUTE rice, a little SHRIMP in a doggie bag to GO!” It felt like the longest date I had ever been on, though it was, in fact, the shortest. I have had more intimate dialogue with a stranger on an elevator, traveling from the first floor to the second. On the other hand, I was fascinated to be with a woman who already disliked me more than my ex-wife, though we’d just met. I was tempted to point out that I was only late due to her lousy directions. However, between the looks she was giving me and the way she was clenching her steak knife, I decided to let it pass. The one thing I knew for sure was she wouldn’t be giving me any directions to her erogenous zones that evening. When her food arrived, she escaped out the door like Houdini. I watched her peel out of the parking lot, running over a squirrel and two pigeons.

On a Sunday afternoon, with nothing better to do, I spotted a hair salon at a shopping center. I thought: What the heck, why not kill some time and get a haircut? It was a wussy, sissy-looking kind of place. Normally, I always go to the local barber shop, which looks like it has not been renovated since 1952, owned and operated by a Korean War veteran still sporting his regulation G.I. crew-cut and prosthetic leg. Anybody who came in wanting a poufy, mousey-wavy hairdo would get their butt kicked by all the old duffers sitting around all day cussing and discussing world events. They’d throw the fancy boy out the door.

Since I needed a haircut, I decided to take a chance and wandered into the salon.

Stepping up to the receptionist, whose name tag read, ‘Natasha,’ I inquired, “You cut men’s hair here?”

“Yes, and even you. The cost is $22.50.”

“Gee, that seems like a lot of money for a haircut, especially since I’m almost bald. Could you knock something off?” I stood there aging as Natasha thought about it. From the look on her face, I could see the effort was causing her a lot of pain.

“Since you’re bald, we can knock off some of the ‘time’ we would have to take with our regular customers.” She scanned her appointment book. “Debbie can do you in fifteen minutes.”

It had been so long since I’d been with a woman—I would have bet Debbie could have done me before I got unzipped! I thought it best I kept that to myself. It turned out that Josephine, not Debbie, though equally desirable, beckoned me to follow her to the back room. Once we were alone and comfy, she said, “We will start with a shampoo.”

As I began to strip down to my skivvies, I called out, “Don’t neglect to scrub my back, Honey.” By the disdain on Josephine’s face, all you get for $22.50 is a shampoo and a haircut. Obviously, this was not the same sort of establishment that I had encountered when I was in the Navy at a liberty port in ‘Betyouwanna,’ Jamaica. Josephine, seeing my look of bitter disappointment, suggested I pull up my pants, and for $8.00, I could run naked through the truck wash across the street.

The beauteous beautician had me lean back in my chair and began to wet me. Her ample bosom-ness was pressing against my cheek. Then, with her long, delicate, silky, sensuous fingers, slowly massaging, rubbing, kneading, manipulating, squeezing, caressing, stroking until she had worked up such a lather…I cried out my own name!

I wanted to give her a big tip, but Debbie came in just in time and applied an ice pack to it. They charged me double, then threw me out. It was the most uplifting haircut I’d ever had and the most intimate I’d been with a woman that entire year.

Being single, dining alone has always been especially challenging for me, unless it is a place that serves the food on a tray or has a drive-thru. Ordinarily, my idea of ‘getting dressed for dinner’ means putting on underwear before I sit down at the kitchen table.

Fed up with Soup-for-One and Hungry-Man- Dinners that never filled up this hungry man, I decided it was time I enjoyed a finer bill of fare in a more formal dining atmosphere, even if it meant going alone.

Looking for a classy place, I was pleased to see the restaurant I chose had a dress code. The sign read, ‘No shirt, No Shoes, No Service.’ I assumed it specialized in Southern Cuisine because it also stated, ‘No teeth–No problem.’

The hostess greeted me, “How many in your party?”

“Just one,” I mumbled.

“Will that be sulking or non-sulking?” Have you ever noticed when you are by yourself, you don’t get the cozy booth in the corner, but the one right in the middle of the room, under the spotlight with a neon light flashing, ‘Loser, Loser, Loser.’ Everyone there was with someone, and they were talking about me.

This place had cloth napkins that were so stiff I had to wipe my nose on my sleeve, which I would have done anyway. They were serious about silverware. They had extra knives, forks, and spoons beside my plate. It was a good thing, too, since I was out of practice and kept dropping them on the floor. After rearranging my utensils, reading the menu, cleaning my ears with a fork, clipping my fingernails, and staring blankly off into space forever, my waitress appeared.

“Hello, my name is Susie. I’ll be the only woman talking to you this evening, and since there’s no way in hell we’ll be going home together…ever…you can stop looking at me like I just hopped off the dessert cart.”

“You’ll have to excuse me,” I apologized, “I’ve never done this before.”

Susie laughed. “I can tell by the way you are gripping the table…your knuckles are turning white. Don’t worry I’m a professional server. I’ve never lost a customer yet. However, once you leave the premises, you’re on your own. Did you know you’re safer eating here than when you are driving down the expressway at seventy mph, trying to steer with your knees while eating a Big Mac in one hand, holding a bag of super-sized fries in the other, and cradling an ice-cold cup of Coke in your crotch? Judging by your girth, Slick, you’ve done that more than once. Am I right?” I nodded.

“Since there is no chance anyone will be joining you this evening, I’ll quickly remove the rest of these place settings so that you won’t get your hopes up. Please place the napkin in your lap and remain seated until your plate comes to a full stop. Thank you for dining with us tonight. While you wait, here is a basket of hot buttered buns for you to fondle…er…I mean sample.”

Just when I was about to slip into a starvation-induced coma, my food arrived. Porterhouse steak, baked potato with butter, chives, and anything else they could sweep up, a house salad with steamed broccoli on the side, obviously placed there for decoration. As I sat there counting each bite, I couldn’t help thinking that it would have tasted better if there had been someone sitting across from me.

I continue to dine alone on occasion, but now I bring my own set of crayons so I can color the placemat while waiting. One day I hope to have my own showing.

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Grizzly G. Gus    ©    2024