Theory of Everything ???

Hi there ... Was just reading "Theory of Everything" by Stephen Hawkings for the nth time. Of course I like it, mostly because of the way it teaches the basics to nearly everyone ! But there are two things that really made me think !

At nearly two points in the book, it is mentioned that the series of events that happened before the Big Bang (if at all there was a big bang) was not of much significance. Now I thought & thought, but I still don't want to believe it. If all there was a big bang, then definitely the events before it WERE important, since they led to the point of Big Bang. Can somebody help me clarify myself more?

Next thing is the assumed living about people in the BCs. How can they be living backwards - I mean the way the book says - they remembered the future & awaited the past, it really sounds odd. The way I see it is that it is US who have designed our timescale the way it is i.e. BC--->ZERO--->AD. So how is it that our way of measuring things make such big changes? 

If anyone has something to add in, please do. 

Gnome Chaos Theory

Chaos, or entropy, is a physical phenomenon caused by the absence of gnomes, a condition known as agnomie (pronounced a-gnome-ee). In gnome-based string theory, chaos or entropy is the result of the state called "no strings attached".

According to theory and recent data, the universe is expanding. Despite the implications of chaos theory and entropy, this universal expansion is being caused by all gnomes exhaling in unison. Furthermore, on the level of relatively localized (i.e., two-body) systems, gravity is the natural result of steady-state gnome respiration, such that the gnomes on one body inhale while facing toward and exhale while facing away from the gnomes on the second body, and conversely. By induction, this gravitation process generalizes completely consistently to the many-body case and thus accounts for the phenomenon we recognize as universal gravitation! 

- Larry S Solanch