Beam me up, Scottie

It's been one of those weeks.

You know, the kind where everything seems to be circling the drain and you feel powerless, powerless, powerless to stop it.

It's times like this I find myself looking for Astronomy programming on TV; I need to keep my mind on the bigger picture. And since I am an agnostic, the bigger picture for me is nature, in particular the stars and galaxies and the universe. I might geek out a bit here. Bear with me...

I love the scale of things; the age of things; how precious our time is.

It's important to be reminded of that as often as possible.

Sometimes, tho', when I watch those Astronomy shows (especially The Universe on History Channel) I wish that aliens would just come to Earth to help humanity get it that we are in this shit together. And also that we're not alone.

Of course, these aliens would be perfectly friendly like the Vulcans when they first contact humans on Earth after the nuclear holocaust (without the nuclear holocaust part) or E.T. and his appetite for Reese's Pieces and gentle, non-aggressive love of botany. (M & Ms are still kicking themselves in the ass over that one.)

I saw a show on the Nazca Lines; that is some seriously freaky stuff right there. Gigantic geoglyphs that are visible only from the air built by Nazca Indians over 2000 years ago. There's over 70 of them and most of them represent things in nature, like spiders or condors:



Some of them even look like airport runways:

If you get a chance to watch it, it's a History Channel documentary called "Ancient Aliens".

Yeah, I know, I'm a geek.

I guess it's part of my need to believe that somewhere "out there" there is a civilization that has survived all of the bull shit and who are explorers of the last frontier.

One thing about being married to a physicist; he's an atheist and thinks the chance that there are other planets with any kind of "recognizable" life (distance between planet and star, duration of civilizations, the perfect confluence of solar arrangement, etc.) is slim to none (mostly none according to him).

I have to hold onto that sliver of chance tho' when times get like this.

And not watch movies like Alien or Predator or Supernova (okay, Supernova was just plain weird). Because in my little space fantasy, the aliens don't want to breed parasitically in our torsos, hunt us for sport, or blow up the universe.

Yeah, I know my naivete is showing. But it's Friday and we're all still here despite our best efforts to f*ck things up. I just hope we are still around when the aliens finally arrive.

How sad would it be if they found nothing but crumbling buildings and overgrown yards? Who'd be there with the beer and the handshakes and the how-do-you-dos?

I call dibs on shotgun if any ever come and offer us a ride...


PS: Have any of you seen Watchmen? I am curious to know what other people thought of it...