The Weak In Rock

And you need to be unsettled. Seriously.

If your life is going well and you’re happy then you’re very, very lucky. I don’t think that people who are content and satisfied with their lives really understand how fortunate they really are. Most people aren’t very happy. I’ve spent more of my life under the heading of “Damn, this sucks pretty hard” than my current heading of “Wheeeee!” I’m profoundly happy. Happier than I’ve ever been or ever hoped I would be. I’m very lucky.

So, gentle readers, about now you’re saying something like, “what’s he on about?” Let me introduce you to Erik, via his blog, .David Duchovny is my Lord & Savior. Erik and I were inseparable from the end of 6th grade until we graduated from high school in 1985. We were such close friends that without even trying when we went shopping for school clothes prior to the start of 8th grade we bought the same shirt and then proceded to wear our embarassingly matching shirts on picture day. Erik was mad at me for a month after that one. I just thought it was funny.

In that crucial time of life where you’re trying to figure out what’s up and what’s down in the world Erik and I spent hour after hour watching Planet of the Apes movies in his parents’ basement, did unspeakable things to Star Trek action figures with rudimentary explosives, concocted schemes for dealing out righteous vengeance upon our neighborhood foes and got as close as two uptight, suburban teenage boys can.

He went to one college and I went to another. He got into ska, skinny trousers, Vespa scooters and hanging out in clubs in San Francisco while I got into Goth and punk, dying/growing my hair (you should see the pictures, that much hair had to be considered a hobby) and hanging out in warehouses in Oakland and Berkeley. He drummed for the Dancehall Crashers, I played guitar for the Wynona Riders.

For years we lived only a few miles from one another in Alameda, but we lost touch. Apart from running into each other at the occassional big punk rock show we had no contact at all. Somewhere along the line his life took a few bad turns. Since we’ve been back in touch over the last year or so I’ve been impressed with the way that Erik is trying to come to terms with how he got where he is. We keep threatening to meet up at Juanita’s for lunch or dinner one of these days but it somehow doesn’t happen. It needs to.

Read his blog. It might offend the hell out of you. It might shock you. At the very least you need to read it because you need to. You need to know why you’re happy.

Erik, I love you man. Don’t forget that.

Technorati Tags: Planet of the Apes, Star Trek, ska, Vespa scooters, Dancehall Crashers, Wynona Riders

As of this morning Pluto is no longer a planet. The International Astronomical Union has voted to demote Pluto from planet to dwarf planet, a new classification that was developed by the IAU earlier this month. Pluto lost its designation as a full-fledged planet because its orbit is extremely elliptical and takes it across the path of Neptune’s orbit.

Now if I were an evangelical, fundamentalist Christian I’d probably be using this as a reason to cast into doubt the existence of planets altogether. Much in the same way those folks argue that because evolutionary scientists disagree and changes their minds about the exact mechanisms of evolution that they don’t really know what they’re talking about and therefore evolution must not really exist.

Sad as I am to see Pluto demoted - what with having lived my entire life so far in a solar system with 9 instead of 8 planets - reading up on the debates and discussions at this year’s IAU meeting in Prague has been a wonderful window into the way that science works. It’s great to see the collaborative nature of scientific inquiry out in the open like this.

Unfortunately I’m quite sure some nitwit school district in Kansas or Georgia will rebel and insist on retaining Pluto as a planet in their textbooks out of some misplaced, moronic notion of tradition. I can just hear it now:

Cletus: Didja hear about how Pluto ain’t a planet no more?

Billy-Jack: What in tarnation?

Cletus: That’s right. Some Yooropein’ science guys say Pluto ain’t a planet no more.

Billy-Jack: Was there French scientists there?

Cletus: I es’pec there were.

Billy-Jack: Damn those cheese-eating surrender monkeys. Well we ain’t gonna stand fer no Yooro queers messin’ up our solar system.

And so on. Mark my words, Dubya will speak out against this “travesty” soon. America - each scientific step forward is an opportunity to show how stupid we really are.

Technorati Tags: Pluto, International Astronomical Union

Ok, so the Onion managed to make the point I was trying to make yesterday and be a lot funnier doing it.

Read it and snicker in a superior fashion.

Technorati Tags: the Onion