Just for fun

I’ve had the lyrics, “When life gets you down Mrs. Brown, and things seem hard or tough, and people are stupid, obnoxious or daft, and you feel that you’ve had quite enough, just remember…”  on my mind all morning.  So I’m going to share.

If you’ve never heard The Galaxy Song before, its definitely worth a listen.  Naturally, Monty Python’s version is my favorite.

Monty Python
Galaxy Song lyrics

Songwriters: IDLE, ERIC/DU PREZ, JOHN

Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown,
And things seem hard or tough,
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft,
And you feel that you’ve had quite eno-o-o-o-o-ough,

Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour.
Thas orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it’s reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun, and you and me, and all the stars that we can see,
Are moving at a million miles a day,
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of a galaxy we call the Milky Way.

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars;
It’s a hundred thousand light-years side to side;
It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light-years thick,
But out by us it’s just three thousand light-years wide.
We’re thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point,
We go ’round every two hundred million years;
And our galaxy itself is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
In all of the directions it can whiz;
As fast as it can go, the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute and that’s the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you’re feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth;
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere out in space,
‘Cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth!

You can watch the You Tube video here.  But, if you’re not a Monty Python fan and accustomed to their brand of raunchy humor, just a warning, they get a bit, well, um, graphic one might say, in the musical interlude.

Task Mistress Day 47: Task 3 of 101/1001

3.  Visit the planetarium and see a sky show for my astronomy class paper. (4/28/12; 4/30/12)

Well, this task was not as much fun as I had anticipated it to be.  I went to campus for Astronomy Day anticipating seeing some exciting shy shows.  Unfortunately the “shows” were just mini lectures given by my astronomy class professor in the sky dome.  Because it was free, and Astronomy Day, everyone in town read: Bring your screaming crying children out to annoy those who are paying for a babysitter to watch theirs so they can have a peaceful afternoon out.

Besides from the show being a disappointment, I never got any feedback on my report and I have a sneaky suspicion the professor never looked at it.

Oh, well.  At least I got to cross something off my list!

Heh! I knew it!

So, I just checked, and for what it’s worth, it’s true.  We are 3 days-ish from a full moon.

To borrow with improper citation the words of an acquaintance from way long ago, “coincidence?  Yeah probably.”

But there are indeed times when I feel like many of the bizarre and crappy things that happen are coinciding with a waxing moon.  Ah, I know what you’re all saying, “Geesh, Janie, that’s sooo looney.”

Well, perhaps it is.  But, this has been a truly hellacious (spellcheck doesn’t like the word hellacious, it suggests fallacious or salacious instead…perhaps it’s not really a word?) week.  And I couldn’t even blog about it because my modem went kaput (oddly spellcheck is okay with kaput, but I was fairly certain that it wasn’t a real word) and I had no internet at home for over 24 hours.  Ahhhh!  The inhumanity!  I nearly had to go and use a public internet facility for my school work and personal enjoyment (ie bitching about being sans internet).  Luckily, I was able to purchase a new modem and Leif was able to get it running last night.  Unfortunately, Netflix now seems determined not to play.  Coincidence?  Yeah probably.

But, Janie just has to ask, how many coincidences can one have at one point in time and not have a correlation?

You know, I need a research paper topic for my writing class.  I was going to try to default to something about Jane Austen, because I know most of her mainstream works by heart, and would love a good reason to forgo the traditional boring homework reading for some comforting ol’ Jane Austen reading, but now perhaps I think I may well be on to something; perhaps I should write about the effects of the moon on human behavior.

By the way, my dictionary informs me that I probably want to use hellish instead of hellacious.  I don’t know.  Hellacious just sounds more descriptively negative than hellish.  Maybe it’s the extra syllables.

Normally, I’d say this with a bit more enthusiasm, happy Friday.  Hope you don’t catch Zombie Full Moon Fever.

Is it May 8th yet?

So, that’s the date we’re aiming for.  On or before May 8th I will be finished with Spanish.  While I don’t absolutely loathe the class, I am getting a bit tired of it already and we’re only 3 weeks into the semester.  We are studying indirect pronouns, preterite verb tenses and, because it’s so important to appreciate other cultures, Cuba.  I have to write an essay about what a santero would advise his client.  Now, all I have to go on is a video, all in Spanish of course, to figure out what’s going on.  I infer that a santero is like a fortune teller.  So, I imagine the conversation would go something like this (only in Spanish, of which mine still sucks despite my good grades, and most of you wouldn’t be able to understand anyway):

Client:  Oh, santero, can you tell me the winning lottery numbers for Saturday’s drawing?

Santero:  Honey, if I could do that kind of voo-doo I wouldn’t be playing this charlatan’s game.

Of course, I’ve probably just been extremely insensitive to the Cuban culture.  But seriously I’m getting really tired of this class.  I’d much rather be doing almost anything else.  I have a hard enough time with my English grammar, and now I’m supposed to be managing grammar in a foreign language.  *Shudder*  I have a test on Tuesday.  No fun at all.

Which leads me to realize that I have been so hung up in the SOPA crap that I haven’t regaled you all with tales of my educational adventure.

So, the important details you’ve long been pining for:

My writing teacher is hot, for what that’s worth.  So far the first two weeks have been dull, and I hope that it stays that way.  However, I’m pretty sure that she has never seen the movie 2001, which would make more sense to all ya’ll if you were in my class.  Also, I said that Nicolas Carr, the author of “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” for which the whole movie reference is key, needed to get over himself and grow a pair.  Yes, I actually said that out loud in class.  Everyone laughed.  It sort of popped out before I realized what I was saying.  But, I think most of the kids in my class are young enough to be my children so they probably were just shocked to hear an “old person” say a pair in reference to testicles.

My astronomy professor, who called himself gibbous, is a horrible lecturer.  I cannot vouch for his personal attributes as it’s an online class and I’ve never seen the professor in the flesh, gibbous or no.  I spend a great deal of time saying much more colorful things than grow a pair at him, but as I just have to listen to recordings of his lectures it’s not likely to get me any attention.  It is unfortunate that he’s such a miserable lecturer because the subject itself is fascinating.

My Pre-historic Anthropology professor is pretty personable and interesting.  His class, despite being crammed cheek to jowl in one of the amphitheater rooms with tiny little seats smaller than movie theater seating and itty-bitty drop down table tops that aren’t even as big as a 8×11 notebook, is pretty engaging.  However, by the time class is over I’m stiff and sore, and wanting to holler to the students around me, “Get up a half hour earlier dammit and take a freakin bath before you come to class!”  Although yesterday a young co-ed apparently had sensed my vibe and, in effort to be well groomed, experimented with the other end of the stinky spectrum and came off smelling like she’d bathed in a vat of vanilla and magnolia fragrance then topped it off with a pound of baby powder.  It was both clean smelling and sickly-sweet vomit inducing stinky at the same time.

And, lastly there’s my biology class, which is online and so far rather low pressure.  However, things appear in the homework that weren’t in the lessons.  Curious and curiouser.  Like a lot of statistics and chemistry stuff.  Luckily I did well in chemistry so I was able to fill in those blanks.  Enough people complained about the statistics bit that we got three points of extra credit to make up for the 3 statistics questions.  Beyond that it’s been pretty unremarkable.

So far, besides being a bit ready to be done with Spanish, the work load and courses haven’t been too bad.  Well, except Wednesday when I had so many assignments due on Thursday that I worked about 10 hours straight on homework.  But I don’t think things will be bad like that all the time.  Which is good.  Which is way better than last semester.  Way.

Still, is it May 8th yet?  I’ll be really glad to be done with Spanish.