Lies, All Lies!

This week Comet Pan-STARRS is winging its way through our solar system and scientists the world over promise an awesome sky show. Just look at the handy chart above, courtesy of Science, showing you how to find it. Doesn't this mysterious visitor from space look amazing with its spectacular wispy tail? Too bad it's all a pack of filthy lies.

I stood out in my back yard in the freezing cold tonight for twenty minutes trying to spot the farkakte thing and saw bupkiss. Well, that and the fact that the next door neighbors apparently don't bother to close the blinds on the back side of their house. But the point is, I didn't see a majestic comet with a long flowing tail as promised. You a dirty, filthy liar, Science!

This happens every single time a comet trespasses in our solar system. Science starts trumpeting its arrival, saying it'll be visible in daylight, brighter than the full moon, so bright it'll keep everyone up at night and on and on. And every time it ends up being a monumental fizzle.

It happened in 1973 with Comet Kohoutek. Brightest comet ever, said Science! It'll be so bright it'll cast shadows on the ground! You'll have to close your bedroom curtains it'll be so bright! God forbid you should look directly at it, they warned, or you'll go blind and the Triffids will attack! 

I remember shivering in the cold (do comets ever have the common decency to appear in warm weather?) eagerly scanning the heavens with my gullible science-believing eyes and was rewarded with heaping helping of absolutely nothing.

Even with my little telescope all I could find was an extremely dim, gray blob in the sky that I talked myself into believing was the comet, but in reality was probably just a smudge on the lens.

Then in 1986 Halley's Comet came around as it does every 75 years. Once again Science got the population all riled up, saying it would be extremely bright and visible. And once again it was a gargantuan and utterly disappointing no-show, apparently having shot its wad around the time Mark Twain died.

To add insult to injury, Science also told us that everyone had been pronouncing Halley wrong for the past hundred years. It's apprently HALL-ee, not HAIL-ee as we'd all been taught in school. As if we weren't feeling stupid enough already.

And now this ridiculously named Comet Pawn Stars or whatever it's called is following the same damn pattern. Is it so much to ask I should see one goddamned decent comet in my lifetime?

What the hell, Science? Why do you keep doing this to us? Why do you keep promising us cool bright comets when you know they're going to be duds? Do you get some kind of sick satisfaction from it?

You're such a big liar, Science! Next you'll try to tell me that Adam and Eve didn't really share the Garden of Eden with dinosaurs!