Absolute shower
And so, to Devil’s Dyke yestereve to witness The Perseids, the annual meteor shower created by the Earth passing through the tail of the comet, Swift-Tuttle.
The shower’s unalloyed cosmic joy and beauty was somewhat tempered by the accompanying shower of idiots on the ground. There was the berk who thought it a sensible idea to set up his motorised telescope using a torch that blazed with the power of a thousand suns. He took an age and then it turned out the telescope’s batteries were flat. Then there was the stupid guitar-toting hippy who nearly trampled us because he was walking across the ground with his eyes shut.
Lying on our backs, as the majestic arc of the Milky Way wheeled above us and the shooting stars leapt through the sky like tigers defying the laws of gravity, the soundtrack to the spectacle was provided by the man some way off to our left who complained incessantly. His stiff neck, the evening’s temperature and the fact that he was only getting a mere one meteor a minute as opposed to, presumably, an aaargh-my-eyes Day of the Triffids style spectacular.
When we got back to the car we found that, in the darkness, we’d laid the blanket on top of a massive dog egg. Never before had I longed so hard for the heat death of the universe.
Posted on August 13th, 2007 at 9:28 am
| See also • The Levy Lark • Getting real • Sheer Bliss |
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Filed under Miscellaneous misanthropy, Pooterism, Science and progress |
Luckier than me. We had 6 - 7 octets cloud and that was pretty much that.
Look on the bright side of things.
‘Devil, dyke, lying on our backs, stiff, laid, majestic arc,’ and finally, ’so hard.’
Maybe even ‘motorised telescope.’
Think of the extra visitors via Google.
I hope I haven’t compounded the problem.
I never thought of that. Is it too late to add a naked co-ed or two, do you think?
Anyone who needs to follow a Wikipedia link to find out what happens in The Day of the Triffids does not deserve to know. O tempora, o bloggers.
well at least it wasn;t as bad as the time a billion people all flocked to the same beach in Cornwall to watch the total solar eclipse through a layer of impenetrable cloud. I suspect the only person celebrating that day was whoever takes the bookings for Rick Stein’s restaurants.
At least the folk in Cornwall all got to see a great white shark……
Thanks for including the link to The Day of the Triffids. I am not well read in 50 year old British science fiction. Not everyone who reads your blog is an ardent sci-fi fan.
Vesela
Minneapolis, MN
U.S.A.
How typical it is of the self-hating left to long for the heat death of the universe.
You forgot Labour-apologist ring licker.
And person than whom Neil Clark is only marginally more of a twat.