Mr. Astronomy Guy

Since April 2003: Stories from a man who spends most of his time in a dark room.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

This happened a while ago, but I just stumbled across the evidence on my desk, and I haven't made an entry in a while, so I thought I'd jot it down. It made me laugh, but most of the other people I let in on this are shocked and horrified. You be the judge!

A couple weeks ago I had a group of third graders here. It was a good group, and this report actually has nothing to do with the show itself. It was after the show, when I was drifting around the Planetarium hoping to find some dropped money to offset rising gas prices. (Current money collected over 6.3 years: $53.25... $52 of that all at once in a wallet. Which I DID turn into Lost and Found, but after 60 days of no claimant, posession got turned over to me!) Cash found this time: exactly $0.00. I did, however, find a partially crumbled piece of paper with kid writing on it. A note! Cool! Maybe it'll be something I can turn over to Found Magazine.

I smoothed out the paper. On one end it said, in third grade quality handwriting:

to michelle

Good start... I glanced at the other end, which had simply the following:

oscar likes girls boobs and so does matt

I thought it quite hysterical. But whenever I relay the story to anyone else, at the part where I expect laughter I just get, "THIRD graders!? Oh, that just too young to be thinking about boobs.

I don't care. It's still funny.

.: posted by Chris 4:07 PM

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

I had a group from a place called "Metro Church Summer Camp" this morning. It was an odd start to the day.

First of all, and I don't mean to sound judgy in this next little bit, in the spot on the reservation form where it asks what I should cover in my Planetarium show, they stated the following: "Focus on God's creation of the sun, moon, and planets." Where do I begin with the problems here...?

Let's see: first of all, this is a public Planetarium. Sure, it's a private show for their group, BUT I would imagine they can assume I steer a little clear of topics like that. Folks who chose a career in the astronomical arts RARELY are tied to creationism. Second, and perhaps, more important, even if I DID decide to talk about that, wouldn't that show be rather short?! "Yep, kiddies, God created the sun. And the moon. Planets, too. I guess he chucked those stars up there while he was at it." Long pause. "Isn't that nifty?" What would I do for other 58 minutes??

So when they got here, I figured I'd try to get a handle on what they'd talked about. I should let you know these kids were SMALL. 3 and 4 years old. I found someone who looked to be the adult leader of the group, and watched her settle in to the middle of the group. Once they were all seated I asked her, "So, have you been talking about anything related to space?"

She actually answered: "Oh, yes: Creation." (Geez, she's stuck on this thing. Maybe you could talk about something that happened AFTER that!) And then she said, in what can only be described as a loud whisper, "We're creationists!" She said that last word in such an odd way -- as if she didn't like the taste of it. It's a lot like people who are trying not to sound racist, so when they describe a race they do it in a sort of hushed tone, and it always makes them sound ultra-racist: "He was so helpful to me in the store. And he was a black person."

I asked if they evere thought of mentioning aspects of the moon, stars or planets to her students. She said, "Oh, yeah, we mention those." I decided I'd better just 0start talking rather than ask what was mentioned about them. I imagine it would sound something like: "We tell them they were created by god. We're creationists."

So I talked about the moon. They seemed about as engaged as 3 year olds could be. I moved on and talked about some constellations. I describe Cygnus the Swan, and put his image of a big white swan soaring across the sky up on the dome.

One kid's immediate reaction to that image was: "I wanna eat it!"

"Eat it?" I asked.

"Yeah. Eat it," he said. He said it in kind of a vicious way, like he was actually angry at the bird.

"But it's a swan," I said. "Not like a chicken or a turkey. We don't usually eat swans."

"Don't care!" he said back, still sounding angry. "I wanna eat it!"

I figured I'd better move on.

I showed them Taurus the Bull. Guess what happened when his picture went up? You guessed it: "I wanna eat it!" the kid said again. I asked the adults if the children had skipped snack time today. I was just trying to be funny. There was no response.

For a creationist, this kid was rather hell-bent on destruction.

So I moved on to Orion the Hunter. His image pops up, "I wanna eat him!"

"But that's a PERSON!" I was slightly horrified.

"Don't care. I'll eat him." He was less angry this time, oddly. More matter-of-fact.

Now, I always figured CANNIBALISM was quite against a creationist's ethics. ENOUGH SO that an adult would correct a child expression an interest in eating a human. I was wrong. No one said a thing.

I got a little freaked out as I now imagine I was speaking to a room full of Creationist Carnivorous Cannibalistic Children. I expected them to listen quietly until they were sick of my lecture, and then all rise up as a single horde and devour me, zombie-style on the spot, while the adults looked on with approval.

I mean, as long as they don't suggest that the universe was more that a few thousand years old...! THAT would be disturbing...
( ^--- REALLY obvious sarcasm... )

(My brain can be a scary place...)

.: posted by Chris 6:20 PM

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

For me?! Thanks! (sarcastically)

It has been forever since I've updated. Some great stuff has happened, too. I have made notes, and will likely jot down some of the fun stories when I get the chance in the next couple of weeks.

But... just now I had a moment I must write about IMMEDIATELY. I had a group of ECO Explorers stop by. This group comes every year in early summer, and they are always pretty cool. Between seven and nine years old, well-prepared, great chaperons -- basically all the ingredients for a good show. And today was no different. They were laughing at all the right places. They shouted some stuff out, but mostly it was appropriate stuff, and when it wasn't it made me laugh anyway, so it was no big deal.

At the end of the show, as they were filing out, one girl, among the younger ones in the group, and who probably laughed harder during the show than anyone else, came up and stood right next to me...

"Excuse me?" she asked.

"Yes?" I said.

"Can I hug you?"

Now, I am not one to suffer from being touched by anything cute, but she was a cute kid, and just wanted to show her appreciation for the show, so I told her, "Sure!" And she did dive right in and clasp me around my legs (she was quite a bit shorter than me). It was very sweet. I gave her a little pat on the back. (Those who know me will be impressed by my incredibly generous response to the hug. Usually I am shrinking back in terror when the kids get a little too close...)

She released me and stepped back to the very same spot she was in before the embrace and looked at me again.

"Can I give you this?" she stretched a fist, holding something, up towards me.

"Sure!" I told her and held out my hand. Cool! I thought. Free toy or something!

She gently placed, in the center of my palm, a greyish-beige ball sized somewhere between a marble and a grape. It had little wrinkly folds in it. I had no idea what it could be. Looked like some kind of clay, maybe.

"What is it?" I asked with an air of wonder, marveling at whatever generous gift I had been given.

"It's a model of Pluto...!" she said proudly.

I nodded. I supposed it could be just that.

"That I made...!" she beamed with pride.

Oh. Cool. Homemade little toy. For me! It was a rather rewarding feeling that I had inspired this child to create something.

She continued, "...from GUM!"

That's when the unmistakable scent of classic Juicy Fruit gum hit my nostrils. This thing had to have been made with at least 3 sticks of it, fully chewed, and now balled up in my palm. ABC* gum. In my hand. Freshly chewed, by the smell of it.

I'm hoping she didn't think I was unappreciative as I reacted to her very generous gift with a high-pitched shriek and a dash for the hall garbage can. I turned my palm over and began thrusting in down towards the garbage. My suspicions of chew-freshness were confirmed by the fact that the Pluto model remained adhered to my palm.

With a little increase of speed and ferocity, I felt the chewed gum let go and heard it plop into the bottom of the garbage bag. With a relieved sigh, I headed back towards the exiting children.

"Did you like it? Wasn't it cool?" the gift-giving girl asked.

"It was cool. But also a little icky..." I told her.

She just nodded and moved on.

The girl behind her came up to me and asked, "Can I hug you, too?"

"OK," I told her, "but no gifts."

* - in case you don't remember from grade school: Already Been Chewed.

.: posted by Chris 12:58 PM

Monday, April 14, 2008

OK, Ok, this is not Planetarium related, but it IS space related, and it is a question that does come up on a random basis in shows.

So, for all of you out there wondering this very, very important fact...

Created by OnePlusYou

And if you are wondering how long you could do the same, you can find out by clicking on the image above or, right here. By the way, that page is kind of wonky. If you get there and it is blank, refresh it a time or two.

(Note: I'm not sure how scientifically accuarate that thing is...)

.: posted by Chris 12:08 PM

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Pampered and Pampered

It's been so long once again since I've posted. There has been lots of excitement, but the shows have had the standard sorts of things going on.

I just had a group of what I only knew going in as "special ed kids". Those are my favorites. This group was between the ages of 15 and 18, and they were a little less functioning than I am used to having in the Planetarium. I will give an example to try to show how...

When my reservationist/greeter person asked if, before the show began, anyone needed to use the bathroom, one of the teachers replied, "Oh, no, they're fine. We made sure they were all double diapered before we left school."

DOUBLE diapered.

We actually did have a very fun time. Not sure if the double diapering was a factor in that, but you never know...

.: posted by Chris 12:00 PM

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Some kind of gnome or something...

At some point in every Planetarium show I spin the sky overhead. I try to warn them a little bit beforehand, because it can get a little disorienting, for sure. As it happens I remind them that this is what the sky would actually look like if the Earth spun faster. "You'd be dizzy all the time!" I like to tell them. They usually chuckle.

The group I had yesterday had a boy who reacted a bit differently. "That'll be cool," he said. "I'm already dizzy all the time."

"That's kind of unfortunate," I said.

"Eh," he just kind of shrugged. No big deal.

Later in the show I had showed all the planets. I just got to Pluto and was about to mention it's less-than-planet status. I said, "If you guys were here last year I would have talked about another planet..."

At this point they usually realize I am talking about Pluto and shout that out.

In case you're living under a large rock, and don't know it, we have decided to call Pluto a Dwarf Planet (turns out I hate that term -- makes it sound that Pluto is too small to be a planet, not true, just turns out we found out Pluto is part of a crowd, b basically another asteroid belt. If we want to call Pluto a planet still, we'd also have to add dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of planets to the list).

Anyway, dwarf planet. Sheesh.

As I was introduced Pluto one kid yelled out, "It's not a planet, it's an elf planet!"

Ooh. So close, dude. So close.

.: posted by Chris 2:01 PM

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

[Read previous blog entry before this one.]

I responded to the e-mail below, and mentioned I couldn't understand a freaking word she said.

Maybe, just maybe, this explains it... Her response, cut-and-pasted:

Thts right cohen hall! Cool my keys on this blackberry r goin down down down! Thanks see ya friday!

I'm not sure exactly what that means. I guess her e-mailing device is not working properly.

I know my brain pain is not going down down down.

.: posted by Chris 10:31 AM

I'd like to buy a vowel...

This is one (probably the final one) of a series of e-mails that I have received from someone headed to the Planetarium this Friday night. I just had to blog it, I've taken as much as I can! Wish I saved the others so I could show you how long and atrociously this has been going on.

Cut-and-pasted:

Hey chris... Where is entrance for plnetarium again? Hwhich blding do I enter? It's been a while. Sorry! Also, I received a bill from the college re: this event what shld I do with tht? Lmk when u get. Chance and looking forwrd to seeing u 7:30 sharp!

Now, I know my own blog is riddled with typos. I really don't think this is a case of pot-and-kettle, though. I swear to you I am at least TRYING. This, I think, is typed by a person recovering from heroin.

This is an adult! A PARENT!! I know she has her own small business as an American Sign Language interpreter!!!

What the hell could the sentence "Lmk when u get." even possibly mean?!

My brain hurts.

.: posted by Chris 10:20 AM

Thursday, October 11, 2007

I had a high school group in today. The show was supposed to be about navigation. I can do that, but not for the whole hour... "There's the North Star. You use it to find North. The higher up it is the more North you are." What do I do for the other 59 minutes and 37 seconds?

Well, I talked about how the sky has been used for lots of reference... map, compass, calendar, illustrated storybook. AND we went on lots of tangents of stuff the kids seemed interested in. I thought it went well. It was actually a fun and interesting show. The kids seemed happy -- however, teachers did not seem thrilled. It's OK, I can't win them all. Or maybe they were happy, and just don't show it much.

It was a small group and a lot of questions came up during the show. I can deal with this in a group this size, and it worked great. We were talking about Betelgeuse a little, and the kids were wondering if, when it goes supernova, it would hurt us here on Earth. I assured them it would not. One kid had a follow-up question: "I was wondering... are penguins immune to radiation?"

Just when I think I've heard every possible question, somebody chucks me a curveball like that!

.: posted by Chris 12:46 PM

Friday, August 03, 2007

The Ancient Astronomer

At the end of a show, kids often ask if I built the Planetarium projector in the middle of the room.

This happened this morning, and this is how it went...

Kid: "Did you build that machine?"

Me: "Well, I was one year old when that was installed, so I was no help at all in building it!"

This NORMALLY gets a little chuckle. Not this time. This time the kid's eyes just got all wide... "WOW! That thing must be OLD!"

I got kind of quiet and said, "*-sigh-* Yup. Really, really old."

One of the teachers thought that was hilarious.

.: posted by Chris 11:19 AM

PLANETARIUM VISITOR QUOTE OF THE MOMENT:

"You are a lot funnier than I thought you were going to be."

OLD QUOTES:

"I have balls like that!"

"Are we all gonna die?"

"Eddie!! Just because it's dark in here doesn't mean your supposed to be naked!"

"This was cooler than myself!"

Me: "There's something missing on the moon which makes it so we can't live there. What is it?"
Pause.
A four year old: "Bathrooms...?"

"Parlez vous 'shut the hell up'?!"

I put up a profile, in the highly unlikely event that anyone is interested in knowing about the "man behind the planetarium".

Feel free to check out my other blog: Haiku Review. It's a little review and/or opinion and/or story about anything.

If you want to send me a note, you can do that WITH THIS LINK.

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