So Where Do Rocks Live Anyways?

Welcome to yet another blog post with you're two favorite characters. Harv and Art. Artaxerxes has since switched his preferred nickname from Xer to Art, as it sounded more mature, and with his being a rock and all, he thought it might be better if he had a nickname that reflected his age-old wisdom... We will immediately dive into their discussions... When they had finished their staring contest, (which, incidentally, neither of them won) they finally agreed to begin educating the standard human about rocks some more...

First, they had to decide on a course of action. Thankfully for me, they were able to reduce the time it takes for them to talk, and they have been further developing their technology so that I can almost talk to them instantly, without any delay. They have also been planning their messages to a slight degree, so that we can communicate faster... So without further ado, I take you back to Harv and Art...

H: So first, let me say that we have been making some major steps in the fields of translation between different worlds. This is a very complex process, and humans can usually best understand it by relating it to a separate dimension. In fact, you might say its somewhat along the lines of a separate universe. There are certain things that must happen for rocks to survive, and this is what Art will be discussing with you...

A: Welcome back to our semi-communication form, and I am going to talk to you about how rocks survive. The first thing they need is some hard place to form. This is merely a figure of speech... Most rocks can form anywhere, its just their parents usually have hearts of stone, so they must learn to cope for themselves at early ages...

H: We actually don't abandon our young... We raise them until they can take care of themselves, and then we allow them to develop all their beliefs and feelings on their own. It is a process that has been coming under fire for the past few millennia...

A: Anyways, regardless how they develop, they are constantly fighting over real estate. There is a real shortage of prime rockland that can be used by rocks... We currently have some vacation spots in various locations around the world... Perhaps one of the most well-known one is out in the mid-west. I understand you humans have actually separated it into multiple areas. I personally prefer the area called "Arches National Park"... It is really pretty there, and the prices are rock-bottom!! Or maybe that's resort at the bottom of the ocean...

H: I personally like the vacation that takes you below the crust... Thats usually where they send people who have diseases. They specialize in what you humans call "plastic surgery." They can melt you down, and recreate you as whatever you want... It is still in the beta testing, due to the side-affects... Namely, death. They still haven't gotten the preservative drugs to keep rocks from dying before they can reform them...

A: I have thought about signing up to be a beta tester, but the risk is just too great... I think I can do more from outside the core of the earth...

At this point in time, while Harvey and Artaxerxes were both talking legibly, and I could understand them, and I was taking down everything they said, their conversations quickly disintegrated into discussions of the best vacation spots... Please join us next time as we further explore the amazing world of rocks!!

The Beginning... Of Rocks?

Welcome to the imaginary world of rocks. In this strange new place that hasn't been created, time does not exist, at least not as we understand it. You see, for a rock, it's constants are much different than those that we might take for granted. For instance, we take our surroundings, our cultures, our worldviews and ourselves for granted. Rocks are very different. Not only do they tend not to experience gradual changes, they are also immovable. The only changes that happen are instantaneous. You see, there is rock time, but it has different units. Their lives, in human time, are measured by years, decades, centuries, millenia, and really, infinity. People die, but rocks don't. Rocks will always be here, and unless they are somehow transported out of this universe by some strange cataclysmic change in the space-time continuum, they will be here for eternity. Their families are very different than ours, as there is no reproduction, but rather just splitting. This is usually caused by instantaneous (by their standards) changes that either demolish rocks, leaving only their remains to be scattered, or for the select few, they are split into future descendants, a race that is slowly dying off. As they have hearts of stone, they have few emotions. They very rarely forgive, they almost never change their minds, (i.e., set in stone) and most important of all, they are very touchy about being locked up. The most sensitive spot for them is the production of concrete, where their brothers, sisters, cousins, nephews and nieces are either killed or their lives are ended early, and their descendants are forced to spend their entire lives locked away. Having crossed the time-space carpet many times, I have had numerous conversations with them, and of all things that they wished humans to be made aware of, this was the most important. Through the course of hundreds of years, I have had several conversations with my closest rock friend, Harvey, and he made me promise that I would help humans understand exactly how they are discriminating against a separate culture. You see, his father, Eleazar McCormick made him promise, when he was on his deathbed that he would continue the fight for rocks to be granted equal rights. Harvey has continued the fight ever since that day, and he has asked me in particular to translate some rock conversations, and inform the human race of the customs and culture of the rock population of this planet. In fact, they are currently holding their first congress, to pass a rock manifesto. Unfortunately, one of the members held a filibuster for 579 years before he was demolished. They have been able to make some serious headway in the past 12 human years, and they have been sending me it bit by bit for me to pass on to the human race. Unfortunately, due to the differences in time measurement, they are uncertain if they will ever finish. So in the meantime, please enjoy these collected conversations among their peoples, and hopefully sometime in the near future, we will finally have a copy of the Rock Manifesto available to every human, and we will realize that rocks everywhere on this planet are yearning for freedom, and they are just jumping at the chance to be offered it. So please, join me in exploring the strange and exciting world of rocks. Allow me to introduce you too the two I made contact with first... Harvey and Artaxerxes...

Harvey: Hello, my name is Harvey. You can call me Harv for short. We have tried for the past 2143 years to communicate with humans, with no results, and we finally reached a combination of speeding our language up, and the slowing down of the human language, along with transliteration, transmutation, multiple Caesar cyphers, a 14 character matrix, conversions from NTFS to FAT32, html to java, manipulation of the left quark, triplication and complication of the resulting factors, divided by the sequential prime numbers, and finally subverted to several quantum physics theories that I am still unsure about before we could finally communicate. Enough about that though, allow me to introduce you to my nephew. Please forgive his slightly bad grammar, he is part of the next generation...

Artaxerxes: yo, peace, love and chicken, my name is artaxerxes. you can call me art for short. are you part of the witness protection program too?

(From this point on, I will be referring to them in the dialog with "H" and "A" respectively.)

H: Like I said, he is a tad paranoid. He tends to suspect everyone, trust only people he has just met, and recently, he has taken to trying to evolve a set of wings so he can fly.

A: uncle, you can laugh now, but when i can like, move everywhere, and you are like, stuck in one spot, at like, the mercy of like, all those human peoples, then you are going to wish that you had spent you're time developing these awesomely epic set of wings that i am going to have...

(I have taken the liberty of adding a small amount of editing, grammar and punctuation to Artaxerxes' communications, as he tends to leave almost everything out.)

H: I keep telling you Artaxerxes, for the past few hundred millenia, rocks have been the same. You're parents were the same, you're grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on all the way back to the original rock that the pilgrims landed on have all been the same.

A: first, why do you always have to keep calling me artaxerxes? that name is like, way not cool. i am so totally going by xer these days. Its like, awesome, and way easier, and it doesn't sound like something left over from when our ancestors were being drawn on; you know, back in those caves in france...

H: Fine, Xer. Why would you want to change?

A: well, i have always had this dream that i could like, maybe, i don't know, maybe one day fly. ya know? escape the clutches of the tyrannical beings that somehow move about this planet? i mean, we were here wayyyyy before them!! we beat them by like, i don't know, a whole 3 days? and wait just one rock-throwin' minute... the rock that those stinky little pilgrims landed on? isn't you're history messed up a little bit? when the first rock set foot in this country, they came across the bering strait, not on that stinky old rock that somehow got these weird symbols carved in it... seriously man, we went to look at it, like when we had a field trip, way back when... and they had these symbols carved in it.. they looked like '1620' or somethin' like that...

H: I seriously doubt any of that would happen. First, a rock changing into something else won't ever happen. Second, why do you want to fly anyways?

(At this point, all conversation ceased. Harvey and Artaxerxes then began to compete in the only way rocks know how; a staring contest.)