Place your order early 'cause you know I'm in a hurry

Before talking about breakthroughs in door slamming it's important to review the history of door slamming, since door slam researchers thought this was next week and, well, you know demonstrations. They're hoping this door will compile without problems, but they've been hoping that since 1988. Last year they tried a demonstration of door-slamming and it turned into a method of applying paint to cow statuary. They can have a few minutes. We don't know where they got the statues. It turns out you paint it on.

It's not possible to say which came first, the door or the door slam. If you say door-slamming you signal to all that you're insane, possibly in the harmless funny way eccentric sitcom relatives are on cue. If you say the door came first you signal you're a very uninteresting person. But you might still get marked as crazy if you go announcing this without provocation. There's no winning. But it seems likely someone imaged doors before they there were doors, unless the first door formed by sheer chance.

Even if it did, what are the chances it formed on a building? A random-chance door might appear anywhere, on rock faces, strung between two trees, strung between two other trees, on the side of a naturally-occurring train station, anything. Maybe it wasn't recognized as a door, out of context. It might be taken for a thin, non-functioning vending machine. One such candidate door found in Babylonian ruins had its lock full of half-minas and kick marks where copies of Gilgamesh II: The Wrath Of Whatever They Were Doing In That Forest Stuff was expected.

Still, it's a small conceptual leap from kicking a vending machine to slamming a door, compared to the conceptual leap between ``reading an analog clock'' and ``why don't pigs, after all?'' Ah, and here's a note from the research team: ``Why don't pigs WHAT after all?'' Yes, that's exactly the question, except for that superfluous ``what''. Probably that goes into the next question, which is about riboflavin. You need it, and it's mostly on our side.

Once doors found their way to homes, slamming became indispensable. Without slamming doors roommates would have no way of expressing mutual irritation except by actually speaking, which is too perilous to consider. Subsidiary door products like cabinets and refrigerators gave additional revenue and expressed subtler emotions from ``I am annoyed'' to ``I am annoyed at you'' to ``I just want you to be annoyed''. Door slamming was unmatched as a way to irritate people until the Internet. Few realize the Internet's very first service was a gopher server digitally slamming doors, because nobody has ever found a gopher server actually working.

The most controversial recent development was the silent slam. This was expected to increase door-slamming rates; laboratory tests found silent door slams could be done over four times a minute. Despite careful experiments published in the prestigious Journal of Advanced Bam proving this superiority, customers rejected them, most insisting they slam doors because they want to inspire homicidal tendencies in their roommates. This is under advisement and we're looking into getting less stupidy wrong-headed stupid wrong wrong wrong customers.

But we've recovered from a Job-like year by selling after-market noisy door slams, and we're hoping to offer after-market noise silencers, trusting the roommate situation will simmer. Just to make sure we're sneaking in and rearranging kitchen stuff, which might work if anyone had any idea what drawer the spatulas and comically oversized spoons were supposed to go in. Frankly, none of them has the faintest idea how to organize kitchen stuff.

Ah, now they're ready. The newest door-slamming breakthrough is slamming the doorless door, liberating us from carrying around a door, doorframe, hinges, mallets, and drywall to slam doors anywhere. No longer will we have to rectify inadequate door setups by putting up our drywall, bashing a hole out of the drywall, putting in a frame, fitting the door in, and finally slamming it. We'll just have door slams as ubiquitous and as location-independent as text messages and attack shrubs. Finally the whole world can be your annoying roommate.

Trivia: Alexander Graham Bell refused to take a salary as chair of the Aerial Experiment Association, founded September 1907. Glenn H Curtiss, director of experiments and chief executive officer, was to receive $5,000 per year (at half-pay when not at headquarters or at the operational scene). Source: Over Land And Sea: The Dramatic Story Of The Great Aviation Pioneer Glenn H Curtiss, Robert Scharff, Walter S Taylor.

Currently Reading: Clowns And Pantomime, M Willson Disher.