I realized there are disadvantages to being one of those ‘excitable about science and nature’ types. Also I jumped a mile when some son of a bitch started howling at the moon a couple of floors above me just as I was walking by.
But the eclipse was pretty.
as I stood in the cold wind outside my apartment at 4 am
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I knew there was to be a glorious eclipse of the moon last night. It is yet another sigh of age that I didn’t get up for it. Speaking of planetary bodies, I have developed another indication of cognitive ability, and people who send me the “Mars will look as big as the moon” hoax in all seriousness rate LOW. They are “excitable about science and nature” in the WRONG WAY, and it is likely they also have a closet full of conspiracy theories. Regrettably, everyone who has sent me this particular hoax is kin. I just send them one of the hoax site links but on the WCFields principle of never wising up a chump, I have never been thanked for hoax site links for this or any other hoax. Heavy sigh.
Nautilus3, I’ve grown tired of a lot of the forwards I receive too — most are not referenced or dated and many aren’t even interesting. What I really dislike is seeing a forward with a string of e-mail addresses — it’s amazing how few of these people can be converted to protecting the privacy of others.
I dunno, nautilus3. The best part of always wising up a chump is that eventually they get tired of what a remorseless, facts and data type of killjoy you are, and take you off the list of people to forward bushwah to. It’s not as if you respond to their “I will pray for you!” posts with “Why would a compassionate God allow the torture and murder of his only son for my benefit? God’s got SERIOUS family of origin issues. And I want a DNA recount, I think God was a teensy bit upset about Mary lying to him about who the daddy really was. After all, there’s almost a page in the Bible about Joseph’s antecedents, which is rather telling, doncha think?” No, you would never say that to your religious relatives. Neither would I, not to their faces! It would be like saying their kids are ugly. What’s the point if we’re all trying to get along?
It’s not like you’re entirely free of superstition and witchery, you’re just a lot more cheerful and upfront about it. After all, you’re still waiting for the pandas to show up and eat the bamboo.
On the matter of the bamboo and the pandas, I take my direction from the exhortation, “If you build it, they will come.” I put up bird feeders and the birds came. I grew butterfly flowers and the butterflies came. I grew bamboo, and the pandas will come. My cousin says they have come already but are very shy and come out only at night, choosing bamboo leaves and shoots that are out of sight. I cleared out the undergrowth so that they could not evade me, but I haven’t seen them yet.
I am merely complying with the people of Melanesia’s idea of sympathetic magic – you know, the Cargo Cult people. Makes sense to me. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.