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Planetary Pinball

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In case you haven’t heard, we’re getting excited about the (remote) possibility that we’ll see a comet crash into Mars next year. A comet named C/2013 A1 is scheduled to come careening into our solar system in 2014, and its path has been a little difficult to track. Best guesstimate – it has a 1 in 2,000 chance of smashing into our neighbor, the Red Planet.

Yes, observers say, those chances are slim, but forget probability. Wouldn’t it be awesome?

The reasoning goes like this – we’re watching Mars closely right now with multiple mechanical eyes overhead and on the ground. A comet’s impact would be catastrophic, just as a comet or a large asteroid striking Earth would be calamitous for our environment and might possibly signal the end of human habitation of the planet.

Not something you could enjoy watching.

Having the whole thing play out on Mars, however, gives us a chance to witness armageddon at a proper distance. We get a taste of the end times with the security of knowing this isn’t really happening (in any way that will actually affect us.) As far as we know, the dinosaurs didn’t get a sneak peek at their own apocalypse. Like any good end-of-the-world movie, we get to go home and climb into in our own beds afterwards, our pants officially scared off.

But how would that experience change our worldview (or universe-view), and our planning, the next day?

Describe a time when you enjoyed the exhilaration of being frightened.

41 thoughts on “Planetary Pinball”

  1. Nope, not once. Don’t like carnival rides, horror movies, Stephen King, Michelle Bachman, or watching a Twins game.

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    2. I do enjoy riding on the Ferris wheel at a carnival and for me that is a little scary. I think I would be very scared and still have fun going on one of those giant roller coaster rides. I’ve never done that. Clyde, I am hoping that the Twins will not be as scary this year as they were last year.

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      1. Lots of luck on that one, Jim. I think the “best” we can hope for this year from the Twins is what will later be seen as a rebuilding year. I think the bullpen will be a slaughterhouse.

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  2. Good morning. It is April Fools Day. This is a good change to scare someone and to avoid being scared because I have warned you.

    I was frightened by a scene in the movie Wait Until Dark when the lights came on in that scene and the bad guy jumped up with a big knife. I don’t know if I would call that experience exhilarating. I was very frightened. Of course, I recovered very quickly since it was only a scene in a movie. It certainly was a memorable experience which I will never forget.

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  3. doing that back flip on the diving board and having the board scrape the front of your thighs then your chest then the tip of your nose on reentry.

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    2. I imagine that went by so fast the emotion didn’t have time to register until you were in the water, tim. Am I right? It’s a scary proposition, that’s for sure. Been there, don’e that.

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  4. RIse and Shine Baboons!

    I guess this morning EXHILIRATING FRIGHT applies to WordPress which just ate my first post. It was a great combination of cynicism combined with naive expectation. And I am now out of time Word Press. I must move on. May be later.

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  6. Sorry to be MIA so long, but last week I started a new assignment at a certain large St. Paul company with a very short name, and I’ve been…distracted. I’m always scared when I have to start a new job, but I wouldn’t call the feeling exhilarating. Exhausting, actually, is what I’d call it.

    What was frightening yet exhilarating was doing poetry readings as a student–I never did slams, but just getting up in front of strangers to present my work was plenty for this introvert without adding competition to the mix. Shortly afterwards, I started doing panels at science fiction conventions, which meant expressing my opinion in front of strangers and trying to convince them I was smart and interesting enough to listen to. Fortunately, I had good audiences for both. I’ll never be a true performer–not that I ever wanted to be–but I came to kind of enjoy readings and panels. Considering how much I loathed speech class in high school, that was quite the accomplishment!

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    1. When I was in high school, a few of my friends and I formed a group called “Poetry Circus”. One of our teachers took us around to various elementary schools where we read poetry to younger students. I was too young back then to know that I should be nervous!

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  7. I’m with Clyde on this topic – I do not find fear exhilirating at all. I don’t watch scarey movies, I close my eyes and/or mute the tv if it gets too intense . Don’t care for carnival rides and don’t want to spend too much time thinking about comets or asteroids hitting the earth.

    Many years ago, I went to see “Jagged Edge” with Glenn Close. Near the end there is a sudden movement in the film; there were actual screams in the movie theatre (including me). The movie was extremely unsettling and I wished that I hadn’t seen it. Then several months later, the movie showed up at The Boulevard Theatre on Lyndale. For the next few weeks, I drove another way to work because just driving by the marquee and seeing the title up there was bugging me!

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    1. I am with Clyde and Sherrilee on this. As I said earlier this week, I am a person of the prairies who doesn’t like it too high or too low, just even.

      I have been MIA this weekend, too. Busy with family for Easter, and then yesterday our internet and landline went out. I phoned the company today, and the internet tech guy who was very condescending and remote and a poor communicator, stated that there was no way that the two could be related. I then phoned the telephone section of the same company, and the nice phone support lady said, “Of course they are related. Your phone runs through your modem!” I think it so interesting that the internet guy was such a poor comminucator, and the phone lady was such a good communicator.

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  8. I despair of ever communicating to fellow baboons what the life of an outdoor sportsman is like, or at least what it was like for me. Offhand I can think of two dozen occasions when I seriously feared I would die, and with a bit more time I could maybe fetch up another dozen or two.

    One random example would be the time I accepted an invitation to fish for brown trout at iceout time in the waters of Green Bay. My host–and damn, I really should have known better–was a flake named Stuart who didn’t have the sense God gave geese. Stuart’s boat turned out to be a square-stern canoe so heavily loaded with batteries and radios and miscellaneous gear that it barely floated. That is not a craft you want to trust your life to when you fish Lake Michigan so early in the year that you are banging into ice floes. I actually know men who could manage that “boat” safely under those circumstances, but of all the men I’ve known in my life Stuart would come in dead last when it comes to doing things sensibly. When we got back to shore–still alive–I wept tears of relief. And now that I reflect, I can think of three times when I nearly died with Stuart, to say nothing of all the other misadventures on land and water that still haunt my sleep.

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    1. I was not a hunter and didn’t even do much fishing. I did terrify my Dad when I took the family car and went spear fishing in a creek with a friend who was the one who came up with the idea for this activity. My Dad said that our activity was scary to him because the family car could have been confiscated by the game warden if we were caught doing that kind of fishing. We walked in the creek at night shinning a light into the water. I didn’t know that using a light to spear fish at night was illegal. I suppose I didn’t even have a fishing license.

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    2. Very funny. What’s sad is that we live in a world that is weird enough that I actually checked to make sure this was really a prank!!

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      1. I know pet owners crazy enough to buy such a thing, that’s why I wasn’t sure whether or not it was a joke. Very funny. I love the guy’s accent.

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  10. I’m not big on fear either, and tend to behave much like vs during scary parts of movies (if I don’t avoid them altogether).

    As a child, I remember being very nervous, (not sure fear is the right word for how I felt) before piano recitals. In college, that same feeling of dread overwhelmed me during every single one of my speech classes; I just did not want to get up in front of the class and deliver a speech. That was the quarter the university was closed down half-way through the quarter as a result of the Vietnam War protests and the shooting at Kent State, so I actually managed to get a “pass” for the class without ever saying a word in class. It wasn’t until I enrolled in a Dale Carnegie Course and Toastmasters years later that I learned to teach those butterflies to fly in formation.

    But I have actually deliberately experienced the exhilaration of danger once. On March 11, 1984, the Northwestern National Bank building in downtown Minneapolis was scheduled to be imploded. At that time I worked for firm with offices on the 18, 19th and 20th floors of the IDS Building, across the street from the implosion site. Building management had notified all tenants that the IDS Center would be closed, and that no one would be able to enter the building after 6 AM. I was working for an accounting firm, and this was in the middle of tax season, so many people worked weekends to get their work done. That morning, hundreds of people, lugging blankets, picnic baskets and all sorts of cameras, entered the building prior to the 6 AM closing deadline. The atmosphere was festive as we chatted, ate our bagels with cream cheese and lox, and sipped champagne. As the implosion time neared, we all gathered by the floor-to-ceiling windows to secure the best vantage point for watching the impending explosions; that’s when it struck me: “What if something goes wrong?” Eventually my curiosity and faith in the expertise of the people hired to do this work won out and I watched, spellbound, as the Northwestern National Bank building was brought to its knees. It was a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle, and I have some amazing pictures to prove it.

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  11. My life of crime gave me lots of exhilarating fear. Combined with the fear of what I was doing was the fear of being caught. There’s no thrill like it. However, I cannot give you any details – my lips are sealed.

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  12. Afternoon-
    I had one story in mind, but then was reminded of another.
    First story was about me blowing snow for the neighbors who were on vacation. They have a large hill with canyons on both sides. About half way up their hill the tractor got off the side just a bit. I stopped, buckled the seat belt, (first thing; buckle the seat belt!) turned off the snow blower and sat there for a few minutes to assessed the situation. Then slowly drove forward and got back centered in the road. Scared me good!
    The other time… well, I was doing something I shouldn’t have been doing. Not really sure why we weren’t arrested. Really no logical reason… just luck I guess. And maybe incompetent security people.

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  13. The exhilaration I don’t mind is the kind when, say, white water rafting, or coming to the sharp turn on the Wild Mouse ride at the amusement park. These are expected and you have a clue what the outcome will be (or what you think it will be). The kind that gets my heart pounding is when I have to give someone very negative information – tell them off, or that they have to do something differently, or (this was the worst) firing them from a job. I don’t know why this is, but it’s much scarier to me than the physical kind.

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    1. I was hoping for a musical interlude somewhere along the line, just couldn’t think of what it might be. Good one, Linda.

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    2. This is one of my all-time favorite songs. It used to make me late for work. Dale always seemed to play it at 8 a.m. – right when I was supposed to be walking through the door.

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