Comedy and Tragedy on Da-da's Main Stage

Some artist's idea of Homer. If you rubbed his nose, he told you a story.

Prologue
 
Hello, and welcome to rambling long-form Post #1464! Great to be here. Onward.

Few of you know -- how could you? -- that Da-da was unlucky enough to endure benefit from an extensive education in not only Science and Technology, but also the Classics and Humanities, History in general -- and about a zillion other subjects. Such books always seemed to be inside Da-da's cage.

Believe it or not, this curriculum mirrors what's happening today, but with less wigs and robes and more unprotected sex, and also shows you how long it took Da-da to get out of college; however, in terms of blood and cruelty, we seem to have exceeded our ancient counterparts, we just hide it better. 

Misinterpretation of the Ancient Greek Chorus brought you: OPERA! If you're into that kinda thing.

The Players

Ah, Classics and Humanities: they makes the average hominid's eyes turn to opaque glass. But wait! Bright shiny thing!

The Humanities are, "The Best-of the Human Race," if that's possible, which includes: Art, Literature, Philosophy, World Religion, History, Theater History, Archaeology, Languages, etc. Wait... Theater History? Yup. Waitforit.

The Classics explore the earliest complete writings from Ancient Greece and Rome, on through their re-discovery and interpretation from the Middle Ages to The Renaissance to doric fast food joints all over North Hollywood, encompassing a bunch of other epochs that are making your eyes glaze over again.

Best of all were, The NAKED MAGICIANS.

Letters From a Lost Uncle Found Frozen Inside a Giant Peach?

"I say, what book do you have there?"

Da-da's not seen this anywhere, so consider this a scoop!

Letters From a Lost Uncle (1948) is a wonderfully obscure book by a wonderfully obscure author and illustrator, Mervyn Peake (1911-1968) -- though he's getting some traction these days from his Gormenghast books being made into films (Gordon Sumn-... er, Sting has purchased the rights). Anyway, Da-da was chatting books with a bookseller friend recently about Peake when the subject of Roald Dahl's, James and the Giant Peach came up. Da-da's friend then mentioned something quite interesting and Da-da checked it out, securing a fresh copy of Tim Burton's, "James and the Giant Peach" to check his observation.

Clearly, someone should alert the Peake family -- those copyright owners of Mervyn Peake's works -- as the entire arctic portion of Tim Burton's movie has been ostensibly lifted directly from, Letters From a Lost Uncle. Indeed, these icy scenes stick out to anyone who's read Dahl's book, as there's nothing like that in Dahl's original work, and Uncle is nothing but. To make matters spicier, said bookseller friend of Da-da's once rented a copy of Peake's book to Tim Burton for $50! (Da-da's friend refused to sell his personal copy, so the studio offered to rent it, and he agreed; the book was returned weeks later with a check.)

So, why does Da-da care? Well, speaking as an obscure author and artist original who will one day be dead, Da-da often sees it as his duty to champion those obscure and forgotten and original, esp. when everyone and their brother is credited these days. Credit where credit's due and all that. Stiff upper lip. Mind the gap. It's only fair, as they say, whoever THEY are, not that fair has anything to do with art and literature and film -- or the world, for that matter. Oh, well. C'est la fromage.

Ra-ther.

Your Future May Vary -- A LOT

It's coming for you, Barbara.

You gotta love NASA. Turns out that one of their 20-year-old six-ton dead satellites is gonna shmear a good chunk of its kinetic energy precisely somewhere between Alaska and Tierra del Fuego (roughly the entire earth). Timeframe? Exactly sometime in September. Or October. Or maybe later. NASA has kindly informed us that their molten satellite-projectile will weigh anywhere from 6 tons to 1200 lbs when it strikes your backyard BBQ/bunker at roughly 15,000 mph, depending on how much material ablates off in the atmosphere and how many convenience stores it encounters along the way. So, either an army truck or a French Volkswagon (see above) will be hitting an elementary school near you sometime in September or October or whenever you least expect it. No problem. Halloween's coming and a good scare is just as important as a concrete bunker.

6 tons x 15000 mph = enough kinetic energy to wake even Da-da. Jeez, even at 1200 lbs x 15,000 mph, this thing's gonna sting (but not THE Sting)... wait, if it hits Sting, then Da-da's the next Nostradamus. Be afraid.

The odds maker.

What's really fun is that NASA bookies say that there's only a 3200 to 1 chance that you or your kids or your family dog will be cratered by their friendly zombie satellite. Doesn't seem like very good odds to Da-da, but how does their odds prediction stack up against other outcomes?

Odds of bowling a 300 game: 11,500 to 1
Odds of getting a hole in one: 5,000 to 1
Odds of getting canonized: 20,000,000 to 1
Odds of being an astronaut: 13,200,000 to 1
Odds of winning an Olympic medal: 662,000 to 1
Odds of injury from mowing the lawn: 3,623 to 1
Odds of fatally slipping in bath or shower: 2,232 to 1
Odds of being killed in the next year in a transportation accident: 77 to 1
Odds of being killed in any sort of non-transportation accident: 69 to 1
Odds of being struck by lightning: 576,000 to 1
Odds of being killed by lightning: 2,320,000 to 1
Odds of being murdered: 18,000 to 1
Odds of being on plane with a drunken pilot: 117 to 1
Chance of dying in an airplane accident: 1 in 354,319 
Odds of catching a ball at a major league ballgame: 563 to 1
Odds of becoming a pro athlete: 22,000 to 1
Odds of a meteor landing on your house: 182,138,880,000,000 to 1 
[source: funny2]

While we're on the topic, has anyone in the all of world's multifarious space programs considered putting an "expiration rocket" on these multi-ton chunks of metal they keep sending up? Basically a small, solid fuel propellant and a touch of code that would send all future dead/dying satellites into the sun, or the IRS? C'mon, the sun (and the IRS) LOVES eating things. It really does. It wants to eat you right now. Like the IRS, it's currently waiting in a dark alley to go CHOMP on your hominid butt.

Watch your butt, Linus.