Michelle Obama’s Wig Vs. Life on Mars

I wish news websites would stop listing their “most popular stories”. It’s depressing. I was just reading an article and I couldn’t help but notice the “trending stories” sidebar. The number one, highest trending news article? “President Obama Likes Michelle’s New Bangs”. The number five, much less popular story? “Scientists Discover ‘Strongest Evidence Yet’ of Life on Mars.”

On one hand we have …a woman’s fancy new wig. On the other, we have astronomers on the precipice of a discovery that could drastically revolutionize our understanding of the cosmos and challenge our conceptions about the nature and pervasiveness of life on the galactic scale. Again, over here we’ve got hair follicles hanging over some lady’s forehead. Over there we have the potential to enlighten our notions of the universe while at the same time profoundly deepening its eternal beauty.

Hmmmmm. Yeah. YAWN. Now tell me more about those bangs.

Can you imagine how frustrated God must be? He put us in this endlessly fascinating realm filled to the brim with mysteries and miracles but we’re too busy looking at crotch shots on TMZ and gossiping about celebrity hairstyles to notice it. Look, I’m not an astronomer. I understand very little about the subject. But I still gobble up every bit of information and read every single article about it because it’s freaking fascinating. I can’t comprehend 98 percent of what I read but it’s still amazing.

Think about it this way. These scientists might be able to find microbes buried miles deep under the frozen surface of an alien planet. Meanwhile, it takes me 90 minutes to find a double A battery in the junk drawer in the kitchen.

It’s incredible.

I’ll tell you one thing, if my kids ever come to me and tell me they’re “bored” and there’s “nothing to do”, I will drag them outside in the middle of the night and force them to look up at the sky. “You see those? They’re called stars. They’re giant balls of hellish gas trillions of miles away from us. There are TRILLIONS OF THEM. AND THEY EACH HAVE THEIR OWN PLANETS ORBITING THEM. THERE ARE LITERALLY TRILLIONS OF OTHER WORLDS OUT THERE. AND YOU’RE LOOKING AT THEM. YOU ARE RIGHT NOW STARING AT LIGHT THAT HAS BEEN TRAVELING FOR BILLIONS OF YEARS JUST TO HIT YOUR EYEBALLS. YOU ARE LOOKING INTO THE PAST AT ANCIENT GALAXIES FULL OF STARS AND PLANETS AND ALL KINDS OF CRAP YOU CAN BARELY WRAP YOUR PUNY MORTAL MIND AROUND. AND YOU’RE BORED?!”

And then the neighbors will call social services and report me for an extremely nerdy form of verbal abuse.