Sunday, March 27, 2005

11:43 PM - long distance charges may apply

for a good time, call Earth!

I was excited to read this story about Craigslist being beamed into space because not only do I read Craigslist, but somewhere inside I am still an astronomy and science fantasy geek. I am not as interested in the content of the transmission (I'm sure the first thing the aliens want to know is all about gay men having sex on public transportation) as I am enthralled by the idea that there could be sentient civilizations out there at all, and that those civilizations might be interested in us.

Part of me thinks it is extremely stupid and unstrategic to advertise our location in Space. I mean, what more could a hostile Alien Aggressor hope for than a message which states, "Here we are, here is some information about our feeble technology, come get us!" I'm sure the Rock-people of Ningmar 5 could use some more fleshies to do their household chores. I think the best (and really only) defense we have in the face of a genuinely imperialistic Alien contact is that, feeble though our defenses might be, if all the aliens want are our minerals, it would be much easier to mine the resources they need from completely undefended planets than to try to get them from Earth. If the Aliens are hungry or want to tap-dance on our abdomens, we are screwed.

Carl Sagan postulated that humans are now in a "technological adolescence", which is basically a time when a species has the technological power to destroy itself but is still learning the wisdom needed to use the technology non-destructively. On a species-wide level, it's really stupid to wage a war over localized resources when that war could eliminate our entire species, or even the entire concept of Life that has bloomed here in the last 5 billion years. Sagan believes that any civilization with the technological capability to visit us after receiving our radio transmissions would have passed successfully through its technological adolescence and have the wisdom not to come in violence or to squabble over resources (which are pretty darn abundant anyway if you have a whole universe to work with). There is a reasonable hope that any Aliens who -do- come to visit are doing so because they want to connect us to a larger galactic or universal community of sentient beings. Unless they are giant bugs.

An extraterrestrial encounter (and I am trying so hard not to make a joke about abductions or anal probes) would do some very good things for our species as a whole. For starters, people who watch too many movies might distrust or fear the Aliens. We would be united as never before in the face of a truly different kind of creature, and our religious antagonisms, racism, and homophobia would mostly evaporate in the face of a new kind of ignorance: xenophobia. I think that would be a very big step for our people, because our hatreds, our racism, our homophobia, these things are all just xenophobia anyway. Let's call them by their true name. New places are scary, new people are scary, doing something that you've never done before is scary, but it's a fear that can be faced and overcome. New experiences are the way to learn and grow, and it will be a proud day when Alien-hating and xenophobia itself becomes taboo, and some of the steadfastly ignorant people of the world are forced to do something new and find out it's not that bad.

You see, xenophobic people? It's not that bad after all. The benefits packages on Ningmar 5 are excellent, press reports of carnivorous tap-dancing abdomen bugs are mostly sensationalist journalism, and who can resist a good anal probe from time to time?

Saturday, March 26, 2005

3:10 AM - but who has my cleansing moisturizer?

fortune favors the bold

Sometimes I forget what it's like to have a complicated existence, but thankfully living near college students reminds me that life can have trials and tribulations. This afternoon a young woman's voice came in through my window, as she was yelling, "YOU FUCKING BITCH! I FUCKING HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!! I HATE YOU!!!"

She paused, as if deep in thought. "I'm going to use all your products!! ALL YOUR PRODUCTS!!"

I can only wonder what the initial transgression was to deserve such terrible vengeance.

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

12:23 PM - well, I wanted an audience...

cell phone justice

Last Monday night I was a bit late to trapeze class. I was embarrassed to be late because Terry is retiring in May, and this is a very special class, and I want to make the most out of it that I can. Everyone was already laying on the ground, eyes closed, and Terry was leading some stretching, warm-ups, and visualizations when I came in. She had me sit right in the middle of the room :-P Anyway, I had forgotten to turn my cell phone off, and 2 minutes further into our meditative, yoga-like warmup my phone starts blasting a song from Mega Man. I'm frightfully embarrassed but trying to hope it will go away-- and when it finally stops, it starts playing the theme from Kid Icarus (which is what it does when I have a message). Augh!! It was a humiliating 2 minutes that one of my classmates later described as "a rock opera". Of course, no one in the class was retro-gamer enough to recognize Mega Man or Kid Icarus. I've learned that, at the very least, my "you've got a message" sound needs to be short and recognizable.

At the end of that same class, two of my classmates asked me to perform in events that they have coming up. I will most likely only do one of them, but it was really nice positive feedback that people like my stuff enough to want me to perform it somewhere. Yay!

I had composed some kind of scathing rant about the media and freedom and our country and religion this morning as I got ready for work, but now that I've sat down and am typing, I have forgotten most of it. Consider yourself spared, at least for the moment! :-D

As one other note-- I think I am going to skip this year's Aerial Dance Festival. I wanted to go, but my friends are getting married on the weekend in between the two weeks of the festival. I'd either have to be in Colorado and just fly back into town for the day of the wedding, or only go to one week of the festival (but still have to fly the night of or morning after the wedding...), and I just can't seem to get enthused about doing that. I'm a bit more slothful than that. Flying itself doesn't bother me too terribly much, but scurrying around frantically is somewhat against my nature.

Monday, March 14, 2005

2:42 PM - the forces of good

yay!

Hooray for San Francisco!! (SF judge declares ban on same-sex marriages unconstitutional)

In other news, I've spent way too much time playing World of Warcraft, and I am waiting on a registration code for MIDI software so I can continue making cell phone ringtones out of old 8-bit Nintendo game songs. So fun!

I had a really beautful trapeze class last week where we did these improvisational performances while people read poetry that they wrote while watching us perform. The experience was very touching and motivational and fun all at the same time. I actually got some good confidence back from that... so I am looking forward to tonight's class. Lots!

There are a lot of things that I'm waiting on replies for... so if I sent you e-mail and you didn't write me back, write back! I'm bored.