Seed: D Motion In The Ocean
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti has left the building. Boise State doggedness triumphed over Sooner Magic. Britney Spears, as it turns out, is not just a disgusting person. She’s a disgusting person wearing no panties. But perhaps the most surprising revelation of the year was that Pluto will no longer be given planetary status. Ouch! That’s gotta hoit!
Life is strange. For twenty-five years, seven months, four days, and three seconds of your life, Pluto is a planet. You bend down to eat a Cheeto off the floor, and zap! Pluto is now a “dwarf planet,” or the galactic equivalent of Simon Birch. Now Neptune can resume the role it has always desired, the Biff to Pluto’s McFly. I can just imagine it now. Pluto, with its’ horn-rimmed glasses and ducktail, getting pushed violently against a solar locker, the sound of “Hey shorty, give me your milk money or I’ll knock yer block off!” echoing in his dwarfian mind. Perhaps I’ve gone too far with my bully metaphor. I blame myself really.
So this got me to thinking, or rather it got St. Fiacre to thinking. What else should suffer the same tragic fate as Pluto? Well for starters, let’s rid ourselves of the most useless New Kid on the Block. No, not Joey McIntyre. No, not Jonathan Knight. That’s right. Danny Wood. Ughhhh. At least Leif Garrett had a few vocal chops. This guy couldn’t sing if his life depended on it. Actually, his life did depend on it which is why the last time you heard the name Danny Wood, you were wearing a Hypercolor t-shirt, triangle patterned jams, and turquoise Converse. Quite frankly, he took away from the group’s image of innocence and teenage grace. He was a thug, a Bostonian thug no less. The worst kind.
For my second demotion, I’d like to call the Greek goddess Demeter to the stand. Do we really need a goddess of Agriculture when we have John Cougar Mellencamp and Neil Young championing the rights of the modern day farmer? That whole jazz about her being brokenhearted causing the crops to wither and a perpetual winter is just plain B-O-R-I-N-G. Give me the vengeful and sexy Hera, or at least Hermes, the messenger god. I mean that guy was useful. He delivered stuff.
And last but certainly not least, can we get rid of the Mountain Time Zone? It’s still throwing me off. I can’t stand having to account for it when traveling. I realize this may seem grossly inconsequential to the average person, but it’s just so damn tiny population wise. I propose we split it down the middle, with the left half going to the tree-hugging, closet-shunning, no-panty-wearing Pacific Time Zone, and the right half going to the gun-toting, bible-thumping, double-panty-wearing Central Time Zone. I’ve never admitted this before, but Mountain people scare me. Food gets caught in their beard when they eat and they smell like pencils. Either they release their clutches on their own time zone and join the rest of us, or I’ll sick a grizzly bear on them.
So what say you, Four Ways’ contributors? What or who else would you like to see demoted into the realm of obscurity? Just don’t Pluto me. I don’t want to end up writing on the Tecumseh Horseshoeing blog.
posted by A Contemporary Bunkshooter @ 8:03 PM,
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Response: I'm as Cold as Hell & I'm Not Going to Take It Anymore!
Jack Frost should be relegated to that spot of obscurity where all the fat 6th grade boys attending their first party (in a purple Polo t-shirt, pink & white striped shorts [vertical stripes: they're slimming], and Cole Hahns without socks) reside. We're but 13 hours into the 3rd Storm of the Century in as many years and Monsieur Frost has already worn out his welcome.
It's not completely his fault. Much of the blame lies with Big Meteorology and their powerful lobby. Rick Mitchell is more excited to promote bad weather than Van Wilder with a keg of Roofie Light at a Wellesley party. Okies are notoriously easy to whip into a frosty frenzy at the first sign of inclement weather. We're all too eager, present company included, to stock up on the exact kinds of food that will spoil once the power goes out, only to swear out loud in this realization, drawing scornful looks from a passing grandmother, as I'm pushing the grocery cart to my car.
Well I, for one, have had enough. I have decided to take a stand against Jack Frost and his Frostofascist ideals. No longer will the US and A be held hostage by Osama bin Frostin's threats of sleet and countless extra minutes of inconvenienced travel. No longer will low-pressure systems restrict the exercise of my freedom to take the trash out shirtless, in shorts, and sporting black socks with my Birkies. I have decided to meet Mr. Frost head on, armed with my magnesium chloride and salt mixture of justice. This is our Centennial, dammit, and if Oklahoma is kept from rising, then the terrorists have won.
Labels: Jack Frost Frostofascist
posted by Guy Gadbois @ 8:02 PM,
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Response: You're relegated!
Driving home a couple days ago with NPR on the radio, I heard a segment about Taylor Hicks of American Idol fame. Swear to God, if anything deserves relegation to the netherworld, it is that obnoxious tv show. Why, I ask you, why is this thing still on? I've only watched an episode here and there, and only in its first season. What killed the thrill for me was the abject misery of those rejected with a wave of the hand and a verbal kick in the pants. Sure, the contestants willingly offer themselves as up sacrifices to the biting criticism of Simon Cowell et al., and perhaps there are some who do compete as a joke, but mostly it's just cruel. Like lambs to the slaughter, contestants bound up on stage, belt out their song, and prepare for swift judgement. With every bitter word, the light dies in their eyes. They shuffle off-stage and collapse into the arms of a loved one, sobbing uncontrollably. "I still think I have talent," I heard one sniffle, wrapped in the comfortable embrace of denial. Are Americans this desperate to see their fellows humiliated? Ratchet the suffering up a couple of notches, and we're back to public hangings as entertainment. I know it's "cool" to relish this kind of humiliation, but am I the only one swimming against the tide of television popularity when I say I really want this show to die, die, die!
Ahem.
Wikipedia has left the corn crib like a rabid Labrador that menaces your wife, children, and farm animals. Time to take Old Yeller out to the cornfield and put him down. Personally, I enjoy browsing through the different entries, but what I don't like about Wikipedia is the way many people view it as the definitive source for information. That's just plain lazy, folks! It's a good way to start off when doing a little research, but for heaven's sake, don't stop there! Drag your fat ass up to the public library, crack open a volume of World Book Encyclopedia, or better yet, ask the librarian to help you find something that discusses the topic in comprehensive detail. Don't get mired in wikiality. I hate to be the one to tell you, but sometimes the information is incorrect. Sometimes, it's even been hacked.
Lastly, I'll add dysfunctional family to the list. It's been a watershed year for dysfunction in AQ's family. We've had it all: drug addiction, jail time, spousal abuse, pregnancy, depression. There are days when I don't answer the phone, just let the messages pile up and delete them when the machine is too full. Is it too much to ask that we be left out of the drama? Maybe I'm delusional, but I believe the worst that can be said about me is my obsessive gardening habits and compulsive need to read. My husband? He collects science fiction novels. The boys? They study EPL soccer stats. We're weird, but dysfunctional? I don't think so.
How can one who feels such sympathy for American Idol rejects be so cold-hearted to members of her own clan? Walk a mile in my shoes, that's all I ask of you, before you pass judgement. You might find yourself lacing up a pair of Adidas and sprinting for the nearest exit at our next family get-together.
All right, Saint. Wow me with your list of demotees.
Labels: American Idol, dysfunctional family, Wikipedia
posted by Adjective Queen @ 8:01 AM,
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Response: My Plutonic Relationship With George Harrison
I, too, was disoriented by Pluto's expulsion from the planetary Eden, Bunky. I couldn't figure what Pluto may have done to the IAU to deserve such stark punishment. It's not like Pluto ever asked to be a planet. It's been out there longer than we have and yet we yank its status before it's even had a chance to make one orbit around the sun as a planet. No farewell tour of the twelve houses for this planet.
And now everything has to be fixed. New textbooks. The tiny styrofoam balls in the nine ball kits at Hobby Lobby are now superfluous. Now Mars has to pull double duty again and rule Aries and Scorpio. Future generations will wonder what Walt Disney was thinking when he named Mickey's pup. The lyrics to "Interplanet Janet" will have to be rewritten. The weird kids will have to find a new planet to serve as their favorite (probably Uranus). And worst of all, now all the mnemonics have to be rewritten. No longer will My Very Excellent Mother Just Serve Us Nine Pizzas.
Of course, the most disturbing thing was realizing the fact that a group of people can just get together and say that the cosmological reality I have known all my life isn't. Space is hard enough to get a handle on and yet you could always count on nine planets. You knew they were there; you could see them. And now you're told you didn't see all of what you thought you were seeing. This is like Roger Maris getting an asterisk or Jim Thorpe being told those shiny things around his neck in Sweden were not gold medals.
I should be used to this. I was an anti-tobacconista and drank the no smoking kool-aid we were served at school until I was about 12. One day I was chastising a guy on our block for smoking and he fired back that my dad smoked and why didn't I go bug him. This was news to me. I always proudly raised my arm when the Lung Cancer people at school asked us if our parents smoked, smug in my superiority to those sickly-secondhand-smoke-afflicted kids across the room. I also had assumed the Berlin Wall and Soviet Russia would be there forever. I always thought Liberace was straight.
But now that I see how easy it is, I'd like to do some reality wranglin' myself. I would really like to wake up tomorrow and discover that Florida is no longer one of these United States. I admit I'm afraid to type what I really think about Florida, but the thing is, I don't really see what benefit we get out of Florida. The hurricane bail-outs (that goes for both the weather phenomenon and the Miami football team), the stolen elections, the cavernous divide between haves and havenots, the ecological devastation, and the pervasive decadence of the place outweigh any affection for the once-prisitine beaches and crumbling Spanish forts. I realize we can't physically detach it or turn it into a nature preserve and I'm not even saying anyone should have to move. Let's just make it like Puerto Rico. It can still be a vacation spot, it can still be a moral morass, we'll still bail them out, but it will be a more authentic relationship. Then we'll have 49 states - a nice square root. The stars will line up seven by seven on the flag and all will be right with the world. Welcome to the sunny Unincorporated Organized Territory of Florida!
Sticking with geography, I think the Southern Ocean is way past due for plutonization. Do we really need a fifth ocean? They tried for years to have an Antarctic Ocean and it never caught on. I spent most of my youth confused about how many oceans there were. I'd always heard the term "seven seas" and yet when my teacher asked us how many oceans there were, my hand shot up and I answered, "seven" she said, no, there are four. It's one of those things that are hard to shake once it gets into your head. Like I can never remember if Katherine Hepburn is dead. I thought she was once and then I found out she was alive and then dead again and now I can never remember if she's alive or dead. On top of that my logical brain constantly reminds me that, really, there's only one single ocean since they all connect anyway. So I'm no fan of the Southern Ocean and just because the International Hydrographic Organization says there are five, it doesn't make it so. You have to have a coastline to have a vote in the IHO, so, what, Switzerland and Malawi have no say in how many oceans there are? That's not right. The truth is that Antarctica has an inferiority complex. It's never gotten over the fact that it was named for what it is not - Arctic - and it was neglected by mankind until 1820. It's also insecure about it's continent status. Antarctica doesn't want you to know that underneath all that ice, it's really just a large archipelago and not a continental land mass at all. So now it's not enough that Antarctica is all land and the Arctic is all water; Antarctica wants both. Don't be fooled by this Southern Ocean stuff, it's just the old Antarctic Ocean wearing a new hat.
I have got to stop this long-windedness. Let me just suggest a couple more plutonization candidates:
All movies wherein Timothy Dalton portrayed James Bond are now simply movies entitled The Living Daylights and License to Kill. We can dub over the words 'James Bond' on the DVDs.
There is now no longer a movie called Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. There are no CGI critters at Mos Eisley. It's just Star Wars. That's it. That's all it ever was. All abominations aside, that is simply too much punctuation for a movie title.
Please stop trying to elevate someone to Fifth Beatle status and do the right thing. Plutonize George Harrison and just have three Beatles. He can be listed in the 'thanks' section on the liner notes from now on.
Labels: antarctica, beatles, florida, James Bond, Pluto, Star Wars
posted by St. Fiacre @ 8:00 AM,
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