HEAVENLY BODIES (NOT RAQUEL WELCH)

by Cynthia MacGregor

The science of astronomy (a meat similar to corned beef) takes on the study of planets, so called because the astronomers have to planet ahead of time. This is necessary in order to be sure of having a telescope to use. Some scopes are busy keeping mouths minty fresh, but enough are left over for signtists to peer at the heavens. They’re called signtists because while studying the heavens they look for not only astronomical discoveries but also astrological signs. Since signtists are notoriously underpaid, many earn extra money on the side by writing horoscopes. On Halloween they write Horrorscopes. In Hollywood they write Cinemascopes.

Here are some things we know from their studies: We know nobody has ever visited Virgo because it’s a virgin territory, hence its name, but a famous author proved that men live on Mars and women live on Venus. Juno lives on Jupiter, and anything they say about Taurus is a lot of bull, but that leaves plenty of stars and planets to learn more about. Saturn has a lot of rings, which proves it’s a woman, despite claims from some people that it’s a car. Pluto, of course, is a dog, even though Sirius is known as the dog star, which sounds to me like the scientists aren’t taking their studies very siriusly.

There isn’t any cat star (Garfield doesn’t count), and I have a feline that soon we’ll be hearing from cat people demanding equal time. Sirius is also a kind of cloud, sometimes spelled cirrus, which should not be confused with circus. There are no clowns in the sky, even if it does seem to have a big top. Scientists are very cirrus, or sirius, about their studies of this formation.

Another type of cloud is nimbus, as in “Jack be nimbus, Jack be quick.” Nimbus clouds do sometimes move quickly, and accumulated nimbus clouds bring thunder. Thunder is not really the sound of clouds bumping into stars, as they are actually not in the same layer of sky. (Rhode Island Reds are good layers, but that is another subject—and besides, let’s not talk about Reds, now that Communism is dead except in Cuba, so called because it’s a square country.)

Stars (such as The Artist Formally Known as The Artist Formerly Known as Prince—here, Prince…here, Prince!) are miles higher than the clouds. The proof is that you can look out the window of a jet and see you’re in a cloud (usually just when you are trying to look at the Grand Canyon or the Mrs. Sippy River), but have you ever flown through a star? Planes regularly fly through clouds and land without cotton candy sticking to them, thus dispelling that myth. (Spelling “myth” is easy; it’s spelling “Mythythyppi” that’s difficult.)

Clouds and planets and stars are all found in the sky, but they are studied by different groups of scientists. The weather is studied by meteorologists, who wanted to confuse the government into believing they studied meteors, as there are more grants given for that, but the government took it for grant that the weathermen were just trying to pull the wool over their eyes (and feeling kinda sheepish about it), as that is what weathermen do best anyhow. They are called weathermen because everyone wonders weather they’ll ever get a forecast right. There is a report of a weatherman in the midwest somewhere who got a forecast right one day, but that may be another urban legend. The internet is full of them.

And the sky is full of heavenly bodies. So is the local gym, but that is a subject for another day. Right now we are talking about meteor showers (some prefer taking baths, but either way they are all clean) and other things to be found in the sky.

Some heavenly objects are versatile. Take Venus. Sometimes it is the evening star, sometimes it’s the morning star, and the rest of the time it changes back to a planet again. Then there is our sun, which is not only a sun but also a star as well. Yet stars shine by night and suns shine by day. When it disappears behind the horizon, it hurries off into the sky to occupy a place as one of the billions and billions of stars out there, sneaking back to reappear as a sun the next morning. The Enquirer is sending an investigative reporter to check on this double life the sun is leading. If Venus is a woman and Mars is a man, we know the sun is a man; if it were a woman it wouldn’t be a sun but a daughter.

Another planet that, like Saturn, is sometimes mistaken for a car is Mercury. Mercury is a small planet. The reason it is small is that people have been stealing chunks of it for years to put into thermometers. In the morning, Mercury rises. In the morning, it grows warmer. As you can tell from looking at your thermometer, Mercury always rises when it gets warmer. This is logic. Science is a very logical discipline, and all scientists are disciplined. Some are disciplined by being sent to their rooms without supper but if so they can always grab a candy snack…a bite of Milky Way.

(cont'd tomw)