Something else

Let me get this out right now:

I'm incredibly depressed about the ecological disaster occurring off the coast of Louisiana. Yes, I'm talking about the BP oil spill, which is currently still spilling as I write this. BP still can't "plug the hole," and the oil continues to gush.

Which leads me to something else that has been in the news this week. Stephen Hawking, in a Discovery Channel documentary, warns against trying to make contact with extraterrestrials. He's concerned that extraterrestrials may not have the best interests of Earth in mind. It was such a big deal apparently (the world's preeminent mathematician/scientist weighing in on such cosmic matters) that NPR's "On Point" program devoted an entire hour to the subject. (Don't know if it was worth a whole hour). All I've got to say is that if we can't even get our shit together on Earth, why do we really need to contact E.T.s? Just a thought (from a mind not nearly as brilliant as Mr. Hawking).

(Dont't get me wrong, though. For what it's worth, the thought of extraterrestrial contact is very exciting to me).

Speaking of Stephen Hawking. My five-year old, Devon, watched part of the Discovery Channel documentary with us. Was he freaked out by the portrayal of alien life forms? No, he was freaked out by the strange sight of a motionless, slumped Hawking in his wheelchair. The poor little guy couldn't sleep that night and was obsessed with Hawking for days afterwards. We (his parents) did our best to explain that Stephen Hawking is an extremely intelligent man with a good sense of humor who had the misfortune of being struck down with something called Lou Gehrig's disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). Thankfully, Devon seems to be fully recovered now from his emotional trauma.

Been in a Black Sabbath mood the last several days. I'm pretty mercurial when it comes to what music I happen to want to listen to, so by next week I will have probably moved to something else. How is it that I wrote off Sabbath for so long. My, did those guys rock. (Was that just the most obvious, "duh, no shit Sherlock" statement ever uttered?). I've been cranking Paranoid and Master of Reality in my car stereo the last few days. Turned on my son Avery to "Iron Man." He has declared it a "cool song." I suppose for too long I either associated Ozzy and crew with the lunkheads I went to high school with and just wrote them off, or else just thought of Ozzy as a former bat head chomping ignoramus. His reality show on MTV didn't help his standing with me much, either. I now realize I was being entirely unfair to Ozzy, as well as Tony Iommi and the rest of Sabbath.

Ozzy's solo album, Blizzard of Oz, was on heavy rotation my freshman year in college. Truth is I have really good memories of that album. Maybe it's just nostalgia for those days of yore? I remember there was this guy who lived in the quad (4 person room) on ground floor East Shaw Hall ("Nads" was the name of our floor--you've got to love the witty humor of college-age males). Anyway, this guy looked like the "Stroh Man" mascot of Stroh's Beer (and was able to drink his fair share of brewski). People called this guy Stroh Man and his theme song was Ozzy's "Goodbye to Romance" from the Blizzard of Oz album. However, when he was serenaded with this song, the lyrics were changed from "goodbye to romance" to "goodbye to Stroh Man." Ah, college...

Anyway, I guess my point is that I'm thinking of picking up Blizzard of Oz next. I can be a (pathetic?) 42 year old pretending he's 18 again!

Well, that's all I got for now. Peace.