ok, people, I'll admit. I have a closet, well... obsession. Last year whilst living with my folks for a few weeks after college, I got into the habit of waking up around nine, stumbling out into the living room, flopping down on the sofa, and turning on the TV. I had lived without a TV for months prior, and have not had one for the better part of a year since. However, at this time, I was unemployed, living off the fat of the land, and well, didn't have that much better to do. Ok, excuses aside- I got hooked on Xena: Warrior Princess. I know! I know. It's dumb, it's campy, it's poorly written TV schlack. But it started to be so funny to me. The way they played with timelines, my intense hatred of Joxer, and Gabrielle's clumsiness in early episodes would leave me rolling. Add in a beautiful New Zealand background in the hour-long show, Renee O'Connor's fantastic acting, and chicks beating up guys, and I was totally hooked. After I moved out of my parents' place, it started with an innocent rental of season one on DVD from my local Blockbuster. Soon this was not enough. I needed more! People, I needed more.
Feed me, said the Xena plant inside me, that I had created by simply not changing the TV off of the Oxygen channel.
Dang it.
So now I own all six seasons on DVD. Cringe! When I think how many Ramen packets I could have bought with that money... oh well. I will be poor and feminist and happy. So, friends, you can not believe my surprise when I discovered news, news about a tenth planet. That has been named Xena. And she has a moon! OH, wait for it, wait for it- the moon is named Gabrielle. What a weird feeling, when suddenly the object of an obsession you desperately try to keep private is suddenly exposed to the world. But I secretly wonder- who would do this?
Taken from http://www.tenthplanet.info:
Dr [Michael] Brown and his team have christened the planet, Xena, after the warrior princess in the old television series, "...because we always wanted to name something Xena."
[On a side note, whilst looking for quoteable quotes from Dr. Brown, I discovered he has a new daughter named Lilah. Xena fans everywhere already know this, but to you lay people I inform: Lilah was Gabrielle's younger sister on the show. We must have quite the fanatic here. How exciting!]
Dr. Brown, I applaud you. Thank you for having the courage, as a male astronomer, to choose the name of a feminist, butt-kicking, often ridiculed television character, as the name of our tenth planet. Of course she would have Gabrielle, twirling along by her side. Perhaps we can expand this whole thing, an annoying asteroid charging in and messing things up could be Joxer. A second moon might be Argo, Xena's faithful horse. Perhaps major areas of debris in the Kuiper belt (where Xena was discovered) might be nicknamed the Amazons.
I'm not sure where this current trend is heading, folks, and being a Xena fan myself, I'm going to bend on this one. But if they name the next planet Buffy, I'm going to emigrate to another solar system.
For actual, credible news on this, check out http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/10/01/new.planet.moon.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest
No comments:
Post a Comment