(Happy Birthday, Universe!)
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This week, as a public service, we’d like to begin by sharing the results of our latest research: surefire ways to start a fight. You know, in keeping with the spirit of Joe Biden’s big ‘unity’ push … or putsch.

Here’s a partial list:

• (for scientists) Point to empirical proof that the universe was created when nothing exploded.
• (for atheists) Point to empirical proof that the universe is older than Dick Clark.
• (for Christians) Point to empirical proof that atheists don’t exist.
• (for liberals) Arrange to ship 10,000 “BIDEN PLEASE LET US IN” t-shirts to migrant caravans heading for America.
• (for conservatives) Hijack the t-shirt shipment and misspell “BIDEN.”
• Join an online guitar players group and post twenty-five consecutive questions about which strings you should use on a guitar you haven’t bought yet.
• Go to a Star Wars fan convention and argue that Jabba the Hut was Luke’s uncle.
• Walk up to the counter at Burger King, point to some guy you don’t know, and ask the cashier to give you a burger “his way.”
• When the next Jehovah’s Witness visitors ring, ask them if their pamphlets are recyclable, and then tell them to prove it. Bring a chair.
• Get in the Ten Items Or Less aisle at the grocery with ten cases of beer and one frozen burrito. Insist that the beer is one item, because it’s stacked. Then ask the checkout clerk for a price check on the burrito.
• Stomp in to a nearby Best Buy, corner an TV salesclerk, and demand to see their worst buy. Tell her it’s a gift for your ex-wife’s divorce lawyer.
• Call AT&T and insist they sell you a bundle that includes just one channel.
• For bonus points, insist the one channel is Spanish news in Hebrew.
• Rent a room on a remote barrier island and then complain that there’s no Starbucks or Netflix.
• (for gals) Promote a TED Talks seminar titled, “Yes, it’s MY body. Also, it’s MY gun.”
• (for guys) Put on a loud, plaid jacket-and-shorts outfit, walk into a Texas bar at sundown, and announce, “My name’s Thom, and I’m here to take your guns.”
• (for any gender) Last time I looked, we now have fifteen available genders. Tweet your support for a sixteenth, named lettuce.

I was nudged to develop this “how to start a fight” discussion by a book I’m trying to read about the origin of the universe – a topic practically guaranteed to be one of the best ways to start a fight. People tend to take their origin stories very seriously, and if you challenge theirs with yours, they tend to get, as my great-grandmother would say, “riled up.”

According to my book’s version, once upon a time, there was nothing at all, anywhere, when suddenly something blew up. (As a child, I used to use this excuse a lot, right after I broke something.) Some people refer to that first explosion as The Big Bang, and they claim it happened 13 billion, 800 million years ago (it was a Thursday). And that was when the Universe was born, and it’s been expanding ever since, much like Marlon Brando.

Next, not much happened. After all, nobody had invented violence or sex yet. In fact, almost nine billion years flew by before Earth formed, or cooled, or was created, or got sung into existence (another good fight-starter, that one). Imagine it – nine billion years during which nobody offended anybody.

Another billion years slipped by. (If the Universe was a movie script, no director would touch it.) Then, according to my book, life began, some 3.7 billion years ago (oddly enough, also a Thursday). The earliest, primitive forms of life on Earth were microbes, and game show hosts. Fortunately, one of those groups evolved.

If you look around a bit, you’ll find some quite diverse opinions on how life and the universe got here. The Bushongo people of central Africa claimed that a god named Bumba barfed the universe, proving that Hot Pockets existed before The Big Bang. (note: no relation to former US President, George W. Bushongo) The ancient Norse held that humans came from a god’s armpit, which pretty much describes my shop teacher in high school.

Many Australian aboriginals believe in an origin story they call The Dreamtime, as if Cheech & Chong had decided to form their own continent. And before the Hindus settled on Brahma, Vishnu, and Shemp, they held that the world was created from butter, which apparently is a natural byproduct that occurs when gods sacrificed a thousand-headed monster named Purusha, who Andrew Cuomo once hit on.

Some people think that life began with a girl named Eve who handed an apple to a guy named Adam and said, “Smell this.” Statistically, people who support this theory tend to attend the early “traditional” Sunday services, tend to discreetly ignore each other in liquor stores, and have a fondness for casseroles. (Or, as my great-grandmother would say, a “hot dish.”)

One last note: according to my book, there are one-hundred thousand quadrillion vigintillion atoms in the universe. (In America, that’s one, followed by 63 zeroes. But in Britain, it’s one, followed by 120 zeroes. This may be the largest rounding error since Enron.)

However, according to my book, the universe keeps getting larger, like our national debt, but with less zeroes. So how do you count something that won’t keep still? Hmmm?

But rather than risk starting a fight, let me put it this way: right now, there are one-hundred thousand quadrillion vigintillion atoms in the universe.

But not now.