DEEP THOUGHTS: Superman and his woman

A treatise on the possibility of Superman and Lois Lane making a Superbaby.

A couple of days ago I asked on Twitter:

Superman. Lois Lane. Can they pop a kid?

Here’s the results of the poll:

Seems decisive.

It’s the question that pubescent boys and sexually repressed men have been asking since time immemorial(ca. 1978.) Just what would happen if Supes and Ms. Lane played plug in the hair curler? It turns out that the majority of voters agree with me and have great taste in comedy.

Nine percent said “Nah, son.” These are the no-nonsense peeps. This is also probably the most realistic answer. The fact is that Superman and Lois Lane are different species. A cat and dog cannot make a cog, and a Superman and Lois Lane cannot make a… Super Lane? Anyway…

In reality, Superman may not even be humanoid, let alone a hunky piece of white male ass. Even if he WAS something cute enough (or Lois was drunk enough) to hit, the undoubtedly vast difference in physiology and DNA structure would prevent babyage.

…Except when it’s boring.

Another nine percent said “DUH!” and got their nerd rage on. This is justified. After all, the 2006 movie Superman Returns explains to us that not only did Superman and Lois crush it, but the booty call resulted in an asthmatic weakling boy with the creative name of Jason(spoilers for a thirteen-year-old movie, I guess.)

Of course, this movie also has Superman being a moody douche that abandoned everyone for a number of years. That’s not to mention that the big-bad in the film is an irradiated land mass. That, coupled with the fact that most red-blooded Americans have tried to repress the memory of this film make this weak proof at best.

The second-highest chosen response was “Sure.” They most likely just wanted to participate/see the answers. I question their commitment to the scientific rigorousness of this poll, but value their opinion nonetheless.

The 18 Percent.

The big winner this time around, with a crushing sixty-four percent of the vote, was DEATH BY SNU SNU! I mean, because duh, right? Just think about it…

You got the candles, the Warren G, the fact you’re Superman… It’s time to take dainty Lois to Pound Town. The problem is that I can only see this going one of two ways. Our superhero could be extremely careful and go extra gentle, inexorably leading to proof that not every part of Superman is bulletproof. If you get my meaning. Flaccid. His man of steel would be flaccid.

OR.

Superman would lean into his darkest, dirtiest desires and go at it faster than a speeding locomotive. At worst? A puddle of bloody mashed potatoes where there used to be an attractive naked woman. At best?

Worth it.

Follow us on Twitter.

DEEP THOUGHTS: Penguins

Deep thoughts on penguins, Adventure Time, and poop. So much poop.

A few days ago, we asked a question on Twitter:

“Do you think the little penguin in the refrigerator that turns the light off ever gets lonely?”

A poll was added, and results were calculated! Here’s where we stand:

Always Gunther. ALWAYS.

So clearly a majority are concerned for the little fella. This stands to reason as Penguins tend to be social creatures. The daddy penguins tend to hang out with each other to keep warm and discuss sporting events while keeping their unborn chicks cozy. Meanwhile, the mama penguins form cliques and go shopping (read: food hunting.)

Such is the power of the penguin pack that they leave a poop stain on earth large enough to be seen from SPACE.

Poop! From SPACE!

Your dookie party has nothing on penguins.

At least one soul was concerned about the whereabouts of Gunther, which was nice. The cute little penguin pal hung out with the Ice King on the Cartoon Network hit show Adventure Time for an impressive eight years. Now that the show is over, you could argue that Gunther would be sad as well.

However, in a um… unique twist, Gunther ended up with the Ice King’s crown at the end of the lastest episode ever. The petite penguin was granted whatever wish popped into his little head. Gunther’s wish was, apparently, to be Ice King.

GAH!

Well… as long as he’s happy? I guess? Yeah. Let’s just go with that.

Time

I AM THE BEGINNING AND THE END
Ain’t nobody got time for OH MY GOD

Time is a very curious thing. It consumes every moment of our lives, pun semi-intended. Sometimes we’re out of time, time runs short, we wonder if it’s time yet, we ain’t got time for that…

I think most people don’t really think much about time. After all, who wants to think about the inexorable drumbeat that draws us ever nearer to the veil of our own existence? We all mill about, looking to make the best of the time that we do have, but don’t consider what time really is to begin with.

Those who do consider the subject usually think of time as being the fourth dimension. You have length, width, height. Time is the fourth dimension that the three other dimensions exist within. Kind of makes sense, I suppose.

The problem is that if you ask a mathematician, they’ll call bull. It turns out that equations can be solved without time being taken into consideration. So from a mathematical perspective, time doesn’t exist.

So that brings up the question about how time runs at different speeds for different people. One of the fun facts about NASA’s Twins Study is that Mark Kelly is now another five milliseconds older than his brother Scott thanks to travelling far faster than him while he was on the space station. This is called time dilation, and no one seems to understand it very well.

That’s the most confusing thing about time. Everyone experiences it, experiences the effects of it, but it seems supremely difficult to quantify it. While it’s easy enough to mark its passing — with seconds, minutes, hours — it seems nearly impossible to accurately describe it in any meaningful way.

The confusion multiplies when you consider the mind-numbing concepts of the past and the future. Now, I know those two concepts seem simple. It’s when you start asking questions about those concepts that your brain starts hurting.

Take the past, for example. The past is what has stopped being the present. Everything that you have done is now in the past. Kindergarten stuff, right?

But what happens to the past?

OM NOM NOM
Oh shit, oh shit, OH SHIT…

Is the past still tangible? Is there someway to go back in time? (You knew that was coming.) If you went back in time, could you interact with the past? Or would it just be like a three-dimensional movie? Would it be like the Langoliers? And if it is, oh my god that’s horrible, run?

So the general consensus seems to be that it’s impossible to go back in time for a couple of reasons. One is more scientific than the other. We’ll start with that one.

As mentioned earlier, time can be slowed down for an individual if they go faster than everyone else(a gross simplification but, you know, this is an entertainment website.) This means that if you go near the speed of light, you “travel” through time faster than everyone else, therefore staying young and beautiful while everyone else turns to dust, etc. So what if you reached the speed of light?

In theory, time itself would stop. Therefore, surpassing the speed of light would result in time running backwards for you, right? But that’s not what happens on Star Trek!

The thing is, Star Trek is a work of fiction. I know, I was bummed out too. But also, as far as anyone can see, one can’t even reach the speed of light, much less surpass it. So that’s that, right?

Well, maybe… This brings in the idea of wormholes, those wonderful tears in space and time. They allow a proposed starship to travel from one end of the universe to the other before light even ties its sneakers. You’d have to take some Enterprise-sized leaps in logic for wormholes to even exist, though.

First of all, despite scientists’ best efforts, it’s like really hard to rip a hole in reality, you guys. The universe seems really keen to stitch any evident holes back together within milliseconds of their appearance. But let’s pretend that’s not an issue.

So let’s pretend they can stay open, and be large enough for a starship to navigate through. Okay, yeah, you beat light particles to your destination… So, what? You can beat your brother to your grangran’s house if you take a shortcut on the back roads, but that doesn’t mean you arrive last Tuesday, does it? So it goes for beating the light to your destination.

Alright, so what about travelling to the future, you say? The above information pretty much proves that’s a possibility, right? Yup! The end!

Okay, not really. In order to get significantly ahead of everyone else in the time game, you have to approach the speed of light. That’s no mean feat. It would also take a long time to accelerate and decelerate, if you didn’t want to turn into a greasy splatter. Thus, much of the benefits of time travel would be negated.

Speaking of benefits, what would you benefit, travelling to the future? You don’t know what the future holds, but you do know that everyone you ever knew and loved would be like, so totally dead. World War III could be raging, super-herpes could be spreading everywhere, a childlike megalomaniac that used to be a TV personality could be president… And there would be no way to return to the past, remember?

So the past might as well might not exist. We can “travel” to the future, but it’s really just like fast-forwarding. So just what the hell is time, then?

This is heavy...
Erased… from EXISTENCE.

The bottom line is… time might not even exist.

It kind of makes sense if you stop to think about it. You exist now. The future doesn’t exist yet because it’s now. The past doesn’t exist anymore because the past is no longer now.

Everything you ever do in your life you do in the present. Sure, you have pictures and memories of your fifth birthday party, but only because those memories and pictures exist… wait for it… now. You don’t have memories or pictures of the future because the future doesn’t exist yet, simply because it’s not now yet.

It’s a somewhat complex thing for humans to wrap their head around. After all, nobody wants to think that the warm memories they have of the past are lost forever. That is at the very heart of time travel theory, I think: The drive to reconnect with the things in our lives that made a difference.

If there’s a lesson to be learned in all of this, it’s to live in the moment. Remember that the past can never be changed, and the future will never truly be here. All you have is now. Make the most of it… while you still have time.