Unplanned humor is usually the best. I was out with some friends last night watching the Perseid meteor shower, after reading a lot of #Meteorwatch Tweets during the day. One particularly keen astronomer (whom I follow) goes by the Twitter name "Zarquil".
Not everyone knows their way around the sky, and I had been pointing out some key spots to my friends: Perseus, the Great Dark Rift, star clusters in Sagittarius, and the center of the the galaxy. Just around midnight, we saw a couple of really bright fireballs, and I made the comment "I must tell my friend Zarquil about this". There was a moment of silence, while we all realized how odd that sounded. And then a bit of laughter when I explained it,
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Yes, yes you must tell Zarquil about it right away. I'm pretty certain he'll bust a gut laughing.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure he'll talk your ear off about how cool it was to introduce so many other people to the night sky and how awesome it is that you shared that experience. He may, in a moment of weakness, even tell you he rarely gets out and sees much of the stars these days because of the city's light pollution. Perhaps you could give him a lesson or three along the way.
And maybe, just perhaps, he might actually explain where the name Zarquil came from, and the early days when it was an online character in Calgary BBSes (the precursor to the internet). That character, of course, a short, fuzzy, incredibly cute little alien. The comedy continues anew. :-)
- Mark Zaugg