As I may have mentioned before, I edit the weekly newsletter of the Penn State Monty Python Society. I also write most of the silly little articles and stories that fill up its two pages. Eventually (that is, hopefully before the end of the month), I plan to update the Society website and upload this semester’s fourteen issues. In the meantime, since I’m always interested to hear what other people have to think (translation: I am needy and take no great pains to hide it), I’ve decided to post some of the strange columns I’ve been writing lately under the name Stuart J. Trousers, called, appropriately enough, “Trousers Talk”. Make of them what you will.
You know something? I think it’s a shame that science hasn’t discovered another use for that gunk that forms in the corner of your eye every morning. I think that if we could harness its power and use it as, say, a cheap and effective rocket fuel, or as a weapon against the onslaught of alien invaders that would inevitably follow, then ending world hunger and insuring world peace couldn’t be too far behind. But science isn’t interested in that. It’s all we’ve got to cure cancer this, and hey, we’ve mapped the human genome that. Big deal. Scientists are too hung up on celebrity. All they care about anymore is getting their names in the paper, being photographed at trendy restaurants, having wild and sloppy sex with throngs of nubile groupies. The gunk that forms in the corner of your eye every morning is the last thing they’re thinking about, I can assure you. And that’s a shame. A lowdown dirty, rotten shame.
Personally, I blame Albert Einstein, the first celebrity scientist. Before him and his precious theory of relativity, if you were trying to unlock the secrets of the universe and create a better, brighter future for our children, most likely nobody gave a rat’s ass. You’d be lucky if you could get arrested, much less published in a reputable journal. And that’s how it was supposed to be. Science was supposed to be difficult.
But now National Geographic or Scientific America and its paparazzi are everywhere, and engineers are wined and dined regularly by Hollywood’s elite. Everywhere you look, science is tossing away thousands of dollars each year on frivolous pursuits like missions to Mars and curing disease. It’s a sad and sorry state of affairs. Meanwhile that gunk in the corner of your eye continues to form until eventually you can’t see straight and start walking into doors, bumping into people, and getting told to watch where you’re going, asshole, until eventually you trip over and die.
But the truth is, science doesn’t care. You could trip over and die a thousand times, and if there isn’t a movie deal, beach house, or big-breasted lingerie model in it for them, they’re going to tell you and that gunk in the corner of your eye to go to hell. And, in my book, that’s just wrong.
I should also probably add, since I know some former Society members read this weblog now and then, that I am always looking for submissions to the newsletter, specifically memories of your time with the club or any history you might be able to share. If you’re at all interested, please let me know.