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Meteorites and Kitchen Windows: Together Again!
You must try my fireballs and spaghetti.
By Ed Goldman
🎵 “Chances are, ’cause I wear a silly grin/Â
As flaming rocks burst through my walls.”
(With apologies to Johnny Mathis)
A meteorite chunk estimated to be 4.5 billion years old recently crashed through someone’s bedroom window—and all I could think was, Why didn’t I lay down a bet on this happening sooner or later?
Can you imagine what the odds would have been? Let’s do the math (which for once, really means “Let’s do the math”): One chance in 100 billion. This is according to wired.com, the website where I go to for all my physics updates.
I come in pieces
Here are 15 similar long-shot occurrences:
- That I’ll win the California Lottery—though I’m told my chances would increase dramatically were I to buy a ticket.
- That I’ll win a Nobel Prize for peace, chemistry or economics.
- That a deadlocked presidential nominating convention will turn to me in desperation—largely because I have neither personal nor criminal convictions—and beg me to be run. As its “Least-Favorite-Son” candidate. But still.
- That all of the look-alike/sound-alike/identical-mission nonprofits in this country will merge and actually accomplish something.
- That I will ever hum a rap tune in my car, shower or medically induced coma.
- That we won’t hear any of the following political pronouncements after the next mass shooting: (a)”Enough is enough.” (b) “Thoughts and prayers.” (c) “It’s a mental-health issue not an easily-available guns issue.”
- That the preponderance of mass shootings won’t prompt a TV executive to suggest a weekly reality show about the topic. The shootings happen frequently enough to merit a 52-week season for some lucky network. And speaking of “Network,” I think this was actually proposed in that extremely prescient film script by Paddy Chayefsky. Â
- That bloated Donald Trump’s age (77) and physical lethargy will be seen as infinitely more worrisome than lean Joe Biden’s age (80) and physical energy.
- That late-model cars from at least one major manufacturer won’t be recalled for ill-functioning (check one) brakes, GPS or cup holders too small to hold a 7-Eleven Slurpee® .
- That the next step for chain moviehouses won’t be to install Porta Potties in their La-Z-Boy recliners and attach toilet-paper rolls to the meal trays.
- That supermarkets which already have you do your own bagging and cashiering won’t install stations where you can also grow your own vegetables, cut your own pork chops and freeze your own TV dinners—and all the while, not claim they’re passing on the savings to you.Â
- Similarly, that gas stations won’t have you not only pump your own gas, wipe your own windshield and change your own oil but also won’t ask you to do your own on-site auto repairs, including, but not limited to, relining your brakes, rotating your tires and replacing your own batteries. And all the while, not claim they’re passing on the savings to you.
- That the next actor to play James Bond, agent 007—who, you may recall wincingly, was fatally irradiated in the series’ most recent installment (the character, not the actor, thanks be to God)—will be a woman, a person of color, a transgender or any of the other ideas people are hyperventilating about on social media.
- That the next James Bond movie won’t have a villain bent on world domination and explain to Bond in mind-nuking detail every detail of how he’ll carry it out, leaving Bond time to stop it (with exactly 007 seconds to spare).Â
- That the last of the final credits for the next James Bond movie will be “James Bond Theme Composed by Monty Norman.” Why this composer is always relegated to a position of such non-importance when he wrote some of the most recognizable musical notes in the history of motion pictures is, to me, as perplexing as Amelia Earhart’s disappearance; Jack the Ripper’s identity; why no one can find the Loch Ness Monster, the Abominable Snowman or my TY remote; and why “reality” shows are anything but.Â
I vow to get answers to all of these someday—though the odds are against it.
Ed Goldman's column appears almost every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. A former daily columnist for the Sacramento Business Journal, as well as monthly columnist for Sacramento Magazine and Comstock’s Business Magazine, he’s the author of five books, two plays and one musical (so far).