Back Alley Internet is a recurring column in which we explore some of the weirder corners of the Internet and see what we can drudge up for your amusement and education. This week: James explores an old, extremely weird corner of the Internet, the immortal Time Cube. Where beliefs equate pornography, for they coexist on the web.
Before Time Cube, creator Gene Ray was a marbles enthusiast. You know, the game where you flick marbles at each other within a defined ring. He wasn’t just someone who played marbles like you or I would play competitive video games online and sort of care if we win or not. He is not only listed as the President and Treasurer of the World Professional Marbles Players Association with a different first name, but authored the book Mr. Marbles, Marbles for Everyone, listed on Amazon without a picture, price, and is currently unavailable. Ray’s other hobby, Time Cube, was created way back in 1997. It can only be accurately described as Ray’s personal model or description of reality. It is insane. There’s room for some kind of joke about Ray’s marbles here.
Ray calls this reality “Time Cube,” as you might’ve guessed from the name of the site. Time Cube, and thus Ray’s model of reality, is mostly contrarian to various rules and beliefs that modern society holds close: Physics, religion, the flow of time, you name it. He claims that modern physics is incorrect, that religion is evil, and that the concept of family is poisoning children.
Various excerpts from the site profess his odd ideals anywhere you jump, with most of the somewhat incoherent speech tying back into a reality of fours; Earth has four simultaneous days in the span of 24 hours, one of God is only one-fourth of God, there are four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and they “have” four days, there are four angles found on four corners, there are four stages of human metamorphosis. This obsession with fours and the theme of simultaneous days leads to one of the more frequently appearing and quotable topics on Time Cube, that of the “four corner days” that we experience on Earth.
The site also has a keen dislike for teachers, and to a lesser extent, the practice of teaching in general — mainly because Ray believes what humans people is wrong. Variations of phrases like “teachers are liars” are found throughout the site, bemoaning how teachers ignore that there are four days in one day, and believe that one day runs from midnight to midnight.
However, the insanity of the barely coherent word usage and sentence structure isn’t actually the most readily apparent aspect of Time Cube like it may seem to one who hasn’t yet visited the page. The website is bordering on visually incomprehensible. This could very well be because the site began back in 1997 when the Internet didn’t have many design standards, but it could also be because Gene Ray is either a magnificent troll, or a certifiable lunatic.
The grammatical structure of the sentences don’t follow any one set of rules, and change based on the section in which they’re contained. The font size and color change throughout the site as well, as do visual cues that indicate a section of thought has ended or begun, from lines of asterisks to line breaks. Every now and then, you’ll even encounter a picture.
Amazingly, if one looks very, very closely, one will find that these probably inane ramblings of this possibly magnificent troll or likely crazy person holds an occasional nugget of actual, useful wisdom. It’s just very difficult to find, both due to the layout of the site, and due to the staggering amount of insanity that the nuggets are lodged between. Behold:
Between classifying beliefs and pornography as the same because they can both be found within the same media delivery mechanism (in this case, the Internet), the lines “It is what you do, not utter. Without deed, word starves” make an appearance. It’s actually good advice after which to model one’s own life. Actions speak louder than words and empty promises don’t mean a thing. Weird that standard, good advice is coming from a guy who likens his power of creation to that of God’s.
Your God claimed to have created a single day rotation of Earth. I offer absolute proof that I have created 4 simultaneous 24 hour days within a single rotation of Earth.
You might be looking through the site, exhausted from scrolling and readjusting your eyes, only to find that at the bottom of the very long first page, there’s a link to another page of equal length and ridiculousness, and at the bottom of that, there are links to other equally insane pages. Including one of Ray explaining if he’s Jewish:
The site is composed of baffling and amazing ideals, and is host to a very odd journey through coherence and grammatical structure. It is so full of instantly classic one-liners, that Harmonix band Honest Bob and the Factory-to-Dealer Incentives formed a collection of the amazing gems and turned it into a coherent, catchy, funny song.
If Time Cube has somehow escaped your knowledge, you should really, really grab yourself a drink (or four), navigate on over to it, and lose yourself in Ray’s wall of nearly impenetrable absurdity. It’s nothing short of incredible, and if you don’t find it as such, you are unworthy of Earth life and deserve banishment to a barren planet — more fit for your antiNature lifestyle. That’s from midway through page 2.
Published: Jun 6, 2012 05:00 pm