Star Bright

On the radio each morning as I drive to work there is this stupid and pretentious advertisement for starregistry.com that tries to convince me that there would be nothing more romantic, more eternal, more symbolic than naming a star after my special someone. Birthday? Mother's Day? Christmas even? This is the gift.

I'm sorry but, this is pretty much like walking along the beach with your girl, picking up a grain of sand and saying,

"Baby, this grain of sand I call Christy. Happy Anniversiary!"

"Really? Wow, I didn't know how much you cared. By the way, you'll be sleeping on the couch tonight."

There are upwards of about 400 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy alone and there are billions of galaxies. Whoever invented this star-naming scheme was onto something. Think about it. You get to pay between $54 and $135 (depending on your level of foolishness) to attach some arbitrary name to a heavenly body and in turn you will recieve the telescope coordinates, and a genuine certificate authenticating your gift. Just hope that none of the other billions upon billions of planets with intelligent life don't have star registries of their own, otherwise somewhere down the road there is going to be a huge mess, not to mention a lot of confusion. Just imagine, alien beings visiting Earth for the first time publicly and declaring to a worldwide audience:

"Thank you for welcoming us. We come in peace. My wife and I were just visiting Rodger and couldn't resist stopping by."

"Pardon? Rodger? We don't follow?"

"Yes, the star around which you orbit?"

"Oh, you mean the Sun."

"No, actually, its called Rodger. Twelve-thousand years ago it was named on our star registry by a woman for her husband as a late Lunar Day present."