"Ladies and gentlemen, and I assume that covers most of you, let me begin my remarks today with an anecdote..." And so began my report to the Bored Of Elders of the All John All The Time World Church, for which I am the Pope and spiritual leader, as well as, occasionally, the guy who cleans out the Men's room here at the headquarters of the AJATTWC, which is located in the sunny and vastly overrated San Fernando Valley area of LA (pronounced LAH).
(You know, like the words to that repulsively cheerful song from the movie "The Sound Of Muslix": "Doe, a deer, a female deer, ray, a drop of golden sun, me, a name I call myself, fa, a long, long way to run. So, a needle pulling thread, LA, A CITY IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA..." and so forth.)
You will recall, or maybe you won't, in our last episode (I always wanted to write that line), your fearless explorers, yours truly, the Pope Dude, and my erstwhile companion, sidekick and all around BFF, the Harley Dog, were set to "blast-off" (another term I've always wanted to use in a story) for places and planets unknown, to seek out strange, new civilizations, to boldly...whoa, got a little carried away on the Star Trek gig, there. Anyway, me and HD (okay, for all you English majors and teachers, as well as all you good folks who, like myself, strive for proper language usage at all times, I know the phrase "me and HD" is grammatically incorrect, and I apologize if, by using it, I have offended anyone; I just like how it sounds) were sent off on a "missionary tour", not just a trip this time, to a number of places all over the globe, ostensibly to meet/greet local officials, to promote good relations between the Church and various secular leaders and organizations.
Our underlying mission on this trip, a task set forth for us by the Bored, was to, after we had discharged our official duties, get out and investigate a number of stories that the Bored had been monitoring recently. And we were to go "incognito", as much as that was possible for, well, pardon my lack of humility here, media stars like the HD and I.
What a dumb idea.
But, like good soldiers, we went and did what we were asked to do by the Bored, and now we're home, and now it's time for me to tell the BOE just what we learned while we were on the road.
Our first stop was in Geneva, Switzerland, home of European Organization For Nuclear Research, better known as CERN. (I'm pretty sure they speak French in Switzerland, although you would think they would speak "Switzer", which is how you get C-E-R-N out of European Organization for Nuclear Research; one of my favorite stand-up comics, Steve Martin, once remarked in a concert of his that the word for "cheese" in French was "fromage"; "...those French people," he gushed, "they've got a word for EVERYTHING!")
Anyway, we went to Geneva to meet with Dr. Warren Peace, who is currently working on an experiment at CERN that would, after many years and many failed attempts, isolate the "smallest particle of matter, the Higgs boson." Isolating the Higgs boson would "produce the final piece of evidence needed to prove that the Standard Model of particle physics, which explains the behavior of sub-atomic particles, is correct."
Dr. Peace and his staff accelerate "beams of protons" to almost the speed of light (which is considerably greater than the Speed Of Aroma) along the 17-mile long Large Hadron Collider, a machine/facility that was built "to create exotic particles that physicists believe existed in the moments after the Big Bang," to study these various particles that form the building blocks of matter.
Oh, so this is a "Creation" matter, huh? That explains the interest from the Bored. Now I'm beginning to understand the purpose of this trip.
I asked Dr. Peace if he were a religious man. He chuckled to himself as he answered. "Do you mean, do I believe in God? Or more to the point, if I am a believer, how do I reconcile science with the story of Creation?"
He paused and shook his head. "There's no reconciliation necessary. Science and belief in a Supreme Being have always been mutually compatible. What surprises me is that there's a doubt in some people's minds as to the complementary nature of these two ideas."
"You know, even though "science" (and you could hear the parentheses in his tone) has gotten a bad reputation in some instances, and admittedly science, by it's very nature, is often intrusive into the discovery process, for all of that, research and study will go on, because I believe it's Man's destiny to do so. We cannot sit still, we must seek out the unknown. It is who we are as a race."
We left Geneva, after gathering all the info we felt was appropriate, and headed for our next stop, the remote mountainous region of Northwest China, where we would meet with the local governor, and then head out into the field to confer with the local administrator of science, Dr. Bang Agong, who would lead us to a remarkable recent scientific find in that country, a massive, 7-1/2-feet long, 25-ton iron meteorite, which was found by miners in the Altai Mountains in China's Xinjiang Uygur province.
(If one of these babies had dropped out of the sky onto Carrie White's house in Stephen King's bestseller, "Carrie", as he describes it in the book, it would have been a much shorter story.)
"Dr. Agong, what is the significance of this discovery?" I asked, as we walked around the huge boulder. It was the size of a mattress, and a very ugly brownish-gray color; it reminded me of an ex-girlfriend.
"Oh, Pope," he says in response, "this very big deal in world of science. It come from outside solar system, probably formed 4 billion years ago, at Big Bang."
Oh, another Big Bang issue, huh? Once again, it wasn't hard to see from where the Bored's interest in these stories was coming.
Dr. Agong went on to explain that, "any newly discovered meteorites (regardless of size) have potential to provide scientists with unique insights into formation and earliest history of solar system." ("Hey," he says, "you and dog like Chinese food? Big special on "pork"-fried rice at commissary. Well, we call "pork".")
Since I was reasonably sure that Dr. Agong probably was not a God-fearing Christian, I didn't bother to ask him about his feelings on Creation, God and why MLB officials still continue to allow the Chicago Cubs to stay in the league; I was pretty sure I already knew his answer to all those questions.
We had a bunch more stops to make on our "tour", but only one more of any significance, and I'll tell you about that one, and the rest of my report to the Bored, in my next post.
Hey, I'm the Pope, I can make you guys wait if I want. Besides, it's almost lunchtime and I'm hungry, so I'm going to go beat Harley, make myself a sandwich (abracadabra, poof, I'm a sandwich), and then go goof off the rest of the day. (Just teasing about the Harley beating.)
Hey, it's a backbreaking schedule, but somebody has to do it, okay?
(Fox Sports here in LA does a thing at the beginning of each of their broadcasts; they flash these two CGI's on the screen, coming right at you; the first one says "WE ARE" and the next one says "FOX SPORTS", and as the images are shown, a bunch of what sound like testosterone-pumped, beer-upped sports-bar guys yell the words at you. You know, (real loud and forceful), WE ARE...FOX SPORTS.
And I keep waiting for them to go..."AND YOU...ARE NOT!", just like the old Chevy Chase opening to SNL's Weekend Update back in the 70's.
Hey, it's funnier my way. Until next time...
Love and quarks,
PJTT
copyright 2011 Krissongs, Inc.
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