Some of last year’s news was just too good to leave alone. This is the fourth in a modest series of reviews of some of 2009’s more entertaining stories. Plus, last night was the State of the Universe Address.
I understand the necessary myopia of academic and intellectual pursuits. You can’t specialize in something if you generalize in everything. But some things are more obvious than others. The folllowing piece from the BBC caught my attention — not because of its mystery — because of its absolute lack of mystery.
It seems that astronomers were baffled by seemingly inexplicable light streaming across space from Venus. Given the appearance of the light on July 19, and since astronomers speculated it would have taken four days for the light to reach Earth from Venus, that put the date of the light’s emanation at July 15. That was the date on which the always-understated Michael Savage went off on this anti-Obama screed on his nationally syndicated radio program. Are you following me? Neither were the befuddled astronomers.
If the astronomers had taken their peepers from the lenses of their telescopes even for a few minutes since January 20, 2009 — if they’d seen one news program or read one article of political commentary — they’d have realized that light emanating from Venus can be just one thing: it’s the Fortress of Solitude for Barack The Beknighted (BTB): New World Superman.
Given his super powers, and considering how royally torqued he must have been at the Savage rant, I’m sure the place was white hot. Michelle probably had to wear a welding mask around the place, just to save her delicate retinas from the intensity of the light and to keep herself from ending up like this guy.
Yes. That’s right. Founding Fathers like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson maintained their retreats at prosaic places like Mount Vernon and Monticello. Latter-day mortal men like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush owned their respective ranches at Santa Barbara and Crawford. And that feeble, Kryponite-addled piker, the first Superman, located his Fortresses of Solitude at various terrestrial locations such as the Arctic, the Antarctic (those two locations, presumably, were seasonal retreats), in the Andes, and in the Amazon rain forest. But, come on. Do we really think a guy as mighty as BTB would stick around here?
First of all, Venus is smaller than Earth. You know that appeals to BTB right off the bat, since he runs even less risk of having his power questioned there than he does here. As we’ve seen on any number of occasions, this is a fella who has some serious issues with authority, particularly questions about — or suggestions about the limits of — his. But as long as he works them out up there, under pressure the equivalent of 90 Earth atmospheres, it might help keep his blood pressure down a bit. And since the Vensusian atmospere also comprises mostly carbon dioxide, it’ll give BTB a chance to see what the Earth will be like if he and Rahm Emanuel can’t railroad their cap and trade bill through the Senate, after cakewalking it by those stalwarts of rational responsibility in the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi and Henry Waxman. Yeah. Firsthand experience is always a good thing.
Secondly, in its orbit, no other planet comes closer to Earth than Venus. At its nearest point, it’s only 23.7 million miles away, enabling BTB to hop over for a beer in the Rose Garden or to interfere in something that’s none of his business whenever he feels like it. And given its close proximity to the sun, the surface of Venus averages 870 degrees Fahrenheit, which enables BTB to work up a healthy sweat when he’s taking on entire basketball teams by himself at lunchtime. This used to be in violation of NCAA rules until … well … you know … until BTB decided it wasn’t.
But the most important consideration to BTB in choosing Venus for his Fortress of Solitude is the fact that Venus was the genesis and focal point of Mayan cosmology and mythology. Given his predilection for being worshipped — and since he’s clearly more determined to create a personal mythology than to leave a constructive Presidential legacy — BTB is sure to have noted that the Mayans created a framework of cycles for predicting the morning risings of the planet and using the framework to schedule the Sacred Day of Venus. This was a national holiday for the Mayans, a day on which union pyramid-builders knocked off — with triple-time bonuses, of course — and worshipped the planet that inspired their calendar. It’s this unbridled adulation that gives BTB the confidence and the self-granted dominion to say — any time he flies in the face of law, the Constitution, or the limits of the Executive Branch — “Look. Let me be clear. You go your way. I’ll go Mayan.”
So, when you look up at Venus tonight, you can be sure BTB is at peace in his Fortress of Solitude. As for the rest of us … not so much.
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