It was four years, eleven months and three days ago that, unbeknownst to our neighbors (since our homeowners association would have said no), I launched into space my satellite SamanthaBee, whose five-year mission would be the flyby and Instagram photo-slam of the all-but-forgotten planet Honeydew.
I am pleased to announce that today, quietly, without all the fanfare of the Juno mission, SamanthaBee has entered the aurasphere of Honeydew and transmitted the first data ever from this sweet planet, which I am privileged to share with you on this very special day in our nation.
As it turns out, Honeydew is quite similar to the fifth planet in our solar system, Jupiter, but there are several fascinating differences (see artist’s rendition below).
First, spectrophotometers on SamanthaBee have detected a fruity aura around Honeydew, comprised of aromatic compounds that only an organic chemist or Christian Dior janitor would be able to identify. No such scent emanates from the surface of Jupiter, which some attribute to the powerful odor-fighting protection of Right Guard.™
Both Jupiter and Honeydew have outer rinds. Scientists speculate that these rinds evolved to conceal the planet’s edible (and delicious) interior from hungry interstellar predators. This adaptation has enabled the planets to survive for over five billion years, and without costly refrigeration.
Instrument readings by SamanthaBee suggest that the Edible Region of Honeydew serves only eight to ten, whereas that of Jupiter can feed several thousands. Noted astronomers and Golden Corral salad bar attendants who I consulted for this post found this surprising, because in their experience, they never seem to run out of honeydew. We will have to wait for a future mission to clear up this mystery.
Every planet — even Earth! — has icky stuff inside that it is ashamed of and wants to hide. In the case of Honeydew, SamanthaBee has discovered that the planet has a slimy glop of seeds and connective fibers in its interior, which could be the burned-out remnants of primordial supernovae or, as some recently posited, the place where pumpkins go to die. Jupiter, by contrast, does not have a well-defined locus of shame but just a brownish-gray decayed center that no explorer with any decency should probe very deeply.
Finally, the seismic data I just received from SamanthaBee has confirmed that Honeydew has no pit. This is another point of difference with Jupiter, whose pit is roughly the size of eleven hundred trillion avocados. Holy guacamole!
There are sure to be more jaw-dropping findings as SamanthaBee continues its mission. After completing its flyby of Honeydew, SamanthaBee will travel onward to the outermost reaches of the Melon System, where it will attempt to make contact with psychic Gary Spivey (press photo at right). I will keep my readers informed. In the meantime, Happy Birthday, America, from Mission Control.
There is the real world and then there is the world of television game shows.
There could be an embassy bombing. There could be a mass shooting at a rally or at a mall, or in an elementary school or at a university. There could be yet another person killed by cops for driving while black, standing while black, or breathing while black.
But in the midst of that, whatever may have transpired today, there are two things you can count on: Wheel of Fortune at 7:00 pm and Jeopardy at 7:30 pm.
Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy are recorded well in advance of their air dates, so we can hardly expect those shows to be topical. But we can and should expect our local television stations to be topical. We should expect station managers, and the owners who hire them, to be sensitive to the day’s events and substitute community-based programming for the time-slot fillers that usually air in the early evening.
But that would be a little too creative. And cost a little too much money.
Some are interested in solving puzzles and answering trivia questions in the wake of police officers being assassinated or the next black person unjustly killed. Who are the escapists who would rather watch game shows than face facts? The answer is too close to home.
Sadly, it’s not like television gets real when Jeopardy is over. Americans can maintain their privileged disconnect from reality by switching to The O’Reilly Factor at 8:00 pm.