The great beyond.

Pumbaa: Hey, Timon, ever wonder what those sparkly dots are up there?
Timon: Pumbaa, I don't wonder; I know.
Pumbaa: Oh. What are they?
Timon: They're fireflies. Fireflies that, uh... got stuck up on that big bluish-black thing.
Pumbaa: Oh, gee. I always thought they were balls of gas burning billions of miles away.
Timon: Pumbaa, with you, everything's gas.

My weeknights in Munich pretty much look like this: eat dinner, pick up the apartment, go for a run, shower, read part of a good book, and go out on the balcony to look at the stars. Even though I live really close to the altstadt and the light pollution that comes with living in a big city, I can still see the stars. There was one particularly shiny one out last night that I looked at for a bit before realizing it was the North Star. I found the Big Dipper, Orion's Belt, and a number of constellations that look nothing like their namesakes.

Whenever we went on camping retreats in middle school, Emily and I usually found ourselves laying on the dock at night and looking up at the stars. This activity inevitably brought up the questions "why are we here?", "are we alone in the universe?", and "what the hell am I doing with my life?" For some reason looking at the stars filled us with the need to try and tackle these profound matters. For me, instead of pondering the reason for human existence, looking at the stars is relaxing. Their twinkling reminds me of a flash in a friend's eye when they're thinking something particularly mischievous. Their pattern is fixed - from Minnesota to Munich we could look at the same constellations forming the same connect-the-dots patter across the sky. I can't really explain it, but it's just nice.

Some people apparently get very stressed about what happens in outer space beyond the range of our spacecraft. Recently on Larry King Live, they had a debate about what happened at Area 51, do aliens exist, have they visited earth, etc. The theories that some people came up with were ridiculous! One woman spent five minutes discussing her belief that "aliens" were really us, from the future, coming back to the past to prevent Earth from fucking up. I'm surprised Larry King didn't burst out laughing. The people that swore on their lives that they have had contact with aliens usually start out their stories with "well... I had been drinking" and "well I don't remember but my cousin Bubba said..." They also usually have a thick Texas accent and often bring religion into the debate - mostly saying that God is punishing us for... not drilling for offshore oil? Wait no, that's not right. Whooops Bets, stay away from the political jabs...

And now I must take my head out of the stars and return to land... especially because I was late to work today and have a ton of shit to do.


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