I’m not sure if anyone’s told you, but there are only a few days left in 2017. This is, generally, the time of year when your various news and entertainment venues like to present you with looks back on the year that was. But we at TTLA have more respect for you than that. We think you already know what happened in the past year. You were there, for crying out loud!
So instead we thought we’d yield our year-end summation time to CNN, and FOX News, so that they can tell you what you already know from the exact opposite point of view, and instead ponder some important issues, issues that are timeless, and not at all dependent upon a year coming to a close.
Let’s start with an item that should resonate with people who live in the little town of my birth, New York City.
The Tri-State Area
I don’t know if anyone other than advertisers really think of this little slice of heaven as being part of the “Tri-State Area.” But if you watch any of the New York-based television stations, specifically sports-related channels, you will see ads for your Tri-State Honda dealer. You’ll get to know about the best brick-face and stucco contractor in the Tri-State area. And you’ll learn that your Republican elected official is ranked #1 among givers of unwelcomed vagina gropings in the Tri-State region.
Yes, all of this will be familiar to fans of the Knicks, Nets, Rangers, Islanders, Mets, and Yankees. But here’s a little-known fact that not even most people in Metro New York and Northern New Jersey are aware of. The third state in the Tri-State area is not actually a state at all. It is, in fact, war-torn Bosnia.
Bananas
Can anyone explain to me the fact that no matter how green your bunch of bananas is when you purchase them at your neighborhood grocers, by the time you get them home their skin already has more freckles on it than little nine-year-old Jerry Mathers face?
You intentionally buy them in a state that appears to be months from being edible and after a fifteen-minute drive home, they are good for little more than making muffins or perhaps giving to your pet capuchin monkey, Sir Reginald.
On a related note has anyone ever said anything funnier than little 42-year-old Barbara Billingsly, when, with a deadpan expression she spoke these words into a 1950’s era telephone handset: “Ward, you need to come home right away. There’s something wrong with the Beaver.”
And they say television today is racy!
And Finally… Science Fiction
Scientists will tell you, and if you don’t stop them they will keep telling you, that space is a really big place. It is enormously, mind-bogglingly huge. Imagine the biggest thing you can think of, say Alaska or perhaps your Aunt Phyllis. Space is way bigger than that, even on those days when Aunt Phyllis is feeling bloated.
What’s more, even though space is filled with billions of galaxies, which are in turn filled with billions of stars, around which most likely there are billions of planets, the distance between all this crap is brain-bashingly gargantuan. Everything is so far apart that in the distant future when our galaxy, depressingly called the Milky Way, (seriously? No wonder the other galaxies mock us), and our closest galactic neighbor, the Great Spiral Andromeda, (now there’s a cool galaxy name. I bet the girl galaxies all sigh when they think that maybe Andromeda looked at them at the pep rally), collide…
Wait. Did he just say our nerd galaxy is going to collide with the popular galaxy? Yes. Yes, he did. But don’t freak. Because everything is so cerebellum-mooshingly far from everything else, almost nothing will actually collide with anything. You’ll be fine! You’ll have been dead for 3.75 billion years, but aside from that, you won’t notice anything untoward. If your long-returned-to-dust head still had hair on it you wouldn’t even feel it get messed up. Certainly not like when Aunt Phyllis is around, that big old fat hair-messing bitch.
So if everything is so far apart that there are stars we are looking at in the sky whose light left there a billion years ago and is just now reaching us, and if light is the fastest thing we know of, faster even than you heading out the back door as Aunt Phyllis waddles in through the front door, then how long would it take for an alien from a planet orbiting around that star to get to us?
It is impossible to travel at or above the speed of light. Unless you’re light, which you are not, and neither is E.T. Therefore the likelihood of extraterrestrial beings of reaching the Earth is pretty much zilch. I’m not saying they’re not out there. I’m just saying they’re not coming here. Especially not if they find out about Aunt You-Know-Who.
Having said all that, I love science-fiction. I love to read it, I love to write it, I love to watch the movies, and if it was a casserole, I’d even love to eat it.
It’s just not real, folks. So stop the nonsense. No one is being abducted, nor have they ever been. Anuses are being probed, but not by aliens… unless you count your proctologist from Bombay. Nothing was built by ancient aliens, except maybe that dude’s hair. (Because there is only one other explanation for hair that messed-up, and that would be Aunt Phyllis. And even that seems beyond the boundaries of plausibility.) No spaceships are going to blow up the White House, no matter how much I implore. Crop circles are formed by wise-ass kids, not Uncle Martin, wonderfully played by Ray Walston. Stonehenge was built by very intelligent people a long time ago with no help from the Great Gazoo, (which happens to be the title of a really great science-fiction story by S.J. Varengo, featured in his book Welcome Home. You should read it.)
In Summary…
I hope you’ve enjoyed these crucial ponderings, and have maybe had your eyes opened, ever so slightly, to the wonders of our world, and of the universe. And remember, we’ll be back in 2018 to bring you more intelligent humor… gack… cough…
Sorry. Choked a little bit there on the word “intelligent.” Occupational hazard.
But for real…
Things To Laugh About 