Life, the Universe and Everything

I can write fast. That's how I'm able to post so much content here on the blog. People always comment on how long my film reviews can run, but I probably get them done faster than a lot of critics can finish their paragraph-long capsule reviews. That may sound like pomposity or exaggeration, but I assure you, it's not. I'm just a fast writer. Not necccessarily the best writer, but a fast one.

I make up for this useful ability, as well as being able to read pretty quickly and an excellent typist, by being very, very bad at certain types of thinking. Namely, everything having to do with the Sciences. Back in junior high and high school, my father (who was something of a math and science whiz coming up, and like George Constanza, dreamt of one day becoming a marine biologist) used to try and tutor me in subjects like Chemistry and Biology. Oh, how I remember those lovely times...

"What's Planck's Constant?"
"It's a way of describing momentum."
"But, what's a 'constant'?"
"A property."
"What's a property?"
"I don't...A thing. A thing every scientist knows."
"Constant's not even a noun. It's an adjective. You know, like 'Why must I be irritated by these constant physics assignments?' In that sentence, 'constant' is modifying the object, the physics assignments."
"It's just a unit that's useful in equations."
"Then why isn't it 'Planck's Unit'? I mean, aside from the obvious reason."
"It' s just not. The value of Planck's Constant is [consulting physics textbook] right here, 6.626 0693(11) x 10-34 Joules per second."
"What's a joule?"
"If you'd just listen and let me finish, I'll explain it to you."
"Well, your explanations make no sense. They rely largely on nonsense words like 'joule'!"
"Are you finished? Are you ready to listen?"
"I've been listening, but you're just rattling numbers off the top of your head!"
"That's it! I'm done!"

And so forth.

So, anyway, this stuff is all French to me. No, actually, that's inaccurate. I'd probably have a decent chance at understanding at least a few words in a paragraph of Basic French. I know no French, but I know some Spanish, and they're similar enough languages, after all. Physics is like Aramaic or Sanskrit. I'd have about the same chance understanding a lecture in particle physics as I would the screeching of your basic Howler Monkey.

"So, what you're saying is, whoot whoot blarb, and then toss some feces...Interesting..."

You get the idea. I'm useless when it comes to the Sciences. I'll take The Humanities, any time.

That's why it makes little sense that I accepted a job doing research on astrophysics for a planned documentary TV show. I thought, because the show would be on the History Channel, and because my prospective employer assured me that no hard science background was neccessary, there would be little to no problem adjusting to the position. I showed up this morning relaxed, confident and ready to work.

And then they explained to me the job...

Sit down in a cubicle in an office for 9 hours and find out about the universe.

The Universe? Like...the whole thing?

Yeah, the Universe, or what Joss Whedon has colorfully renamed "The Verse."

How does one research The Universe? Where do you begin? At around 10:45 or so this morning, I realized that my new job was like a Douglas Adams novel. And, worse yet, I wasn't exactly Ford Prefect.

I made an unfortunate discovery right away...Any time you try to learn about something in "the universe," even something that seems really superficial and easy-to-understand, some scientist will have devised a complicated, theoretical way to talk about it involving a lot of bizarre fictional words like "leptons."

Seriously. I was really trying. Let's say I looked up "volcanoes on Mars." That sounds easy, right? I get volcanoes - they're little spouts from which the liquid-hot magma that lies under the planet's crust vents out on occasion for some reason.

But then, it turns out, no one's ever really seen a volcano on Mars, we just think there's one there because the Berriman-Hoffstadler-Schlessenhoffenfoffner Semi-Integrated Singularity Theorum demonstrates that fermions collide with blue-hot supersymmetric oolfs to create positively-charged prilotans. Duh.

Imagine pages and pages and pages of that. It was like Alice trying to catalog all the flora and fauna in Wonderland for a school report. Every time I got close to actually having a coherent idea, I just fell down another rabbit hole.

So, long story short...not gonna work there any more. It's a combination of a few things.

1. Not understanding astrophysics
2. Not liking astrophysics
3. Not liking offices
4. Not liking working in offices
5. Not liking work
6. Not liking driving to Woodland Hills
7. Not liking Woodland Hills
8. Liking not driving to Woodland Hills to read about astrophysics

It's just the latest stop on my Extremely Short-Lived Los Angeles Employment tour. The resume's not exactly getting more impressive as time goes by, but it is definitely getting more colorful. I wonder if any Fortune 500 companies take that into consideration...