Words and Thoughts — August 17, 2023

Hello again, alleged readers. I know I’ve been promising everyone a comprehensive list of my favorite integers for some time now. And while I swear that I’ve started my list, it’s just not ready to share yet. Just yesterday I thought I had the list completed, but then someone said to me, “Stav, I don’t see 280 on this list, don’t you love 280?” I do love 280. It was not on the list. I added it, and then realized I had also left off 4, as well as the super-awesome 527. Obviously, I have some more work to do before I can share my list with you all.

I appreciate your patience.

In the meantime though, there is a very urgent, pertinent, and current matter to attend to: Aliens. The LeBron James Flamin’ Hot Ruffles Potato Chips have been out for a little over a year now. And I figure that’s just about enough time for our intergalactic neighbors to have grown just curious enough to stop by to purchase bags of them by the gross. While yes, clearly aliens have been visiting since the invention of the pager, this is the first time they’re going to be coming specifically for potato chips, and that’s really something I tell you what.

The obvious next question is, “Where will these cosmic Ned Flanderses, Wilsons, Freds & Ethels, Julio Fuenteses, and Kramers arrive to purchase their not-so-limited edition LeBron chips?” While, despite never having been in a library, I’m sure entire rooms within at least seven libraries have been filled with scholarly research attempting to answer that specific question. Well, wonder no more! Cease your posits, and halt your suppositions. I have your answer!

The three Arby’s Restaurants in Billings, Montana are arranged in an almost perfectly straight line, about 7.2 miles in length, just a few degrees off a precisely southwest to northeast orientation (the middle Arby’s is only about 800 feet north from falling exactly on the line). The southwest Arby’s is 2.7 miles from the middle Arby’s. The middle Arby’s is 4.5 miles from the northwest Arby’s. These distances scale up in ratio to the Fibonacci Sequence, and as such these Arby’s Restaurants can be plotted on a Golden Spiral to within a few feet! This geometric alignment can NOT be a coincidence.

“But why Arby’s?” you’re almost certainly wondering. Look, I’ve spent enough time in Arby’s dumpsters to know that the ONLY reason that Arby’s exists is aliens. Basically, the only place for aliens to purchase alien urinal cakes is off the Arby’s menu.

And do you, dear listener, know what practically intersects this magical arrangement of Arby’s in Billings, to form an “X-marks-the-spot” presumably visible from space? If you guessed a spiritual ley line, you’re wrong (and you can keep that hippie dippy conspiracy stuff off my lawn, thank you very much). If, however, you guessed the main runway at Billings-Logan International Airport, you’d be very correct.

As far as my research tells me, those chip hungry ETs are fixin’ to plop themselves right down at the start of Runway 28R at Billings Airport, then stumble their way clear on into the Montana State University Billings Campus Store just across the street from the airport to start buying all the LeBron chips they can find; and probably some Yellowjackets gear.  Most likely this will happen in the next couple of months because those are the months that end in “R”, just like Runway 28 “R”.

Also, they might go to Arby’s.