"They should have sent a poet"

My brother and I had unusual childhoods. While we were devoted to metal from an early age, we were also pretty nerdy kids. That word, "nerd" is highly overused these days. Everyone is a "nerd" now, but this was back when it meant something. You see, our idea of fun was watching re-runs of Carl Sagan's Cosmos over and over again. If you're not familiar with Cosmos, it was a TV series devoted to astrophysics, exobiology, physics, astronomy, chemistry and science in general...topics that are usually like kryptonite to kids. Sagan was a Ph D in astronomy and astrophysics. He taught at Cornell. Makes me wonder if he ever met or hung out with Alex Perialas while living in Ithica NY. As I've told you before, Alex lives there, and teaches at Ithica college (Cornell's retarded brother).



What a meeting of the minds of minds that would have been! Can you imagine? Sagan would discuss his work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, while Perialas would go on and on about how he recorded the snare drum in Pro-Pain's album, versus his early work with Flotsam and Jetsam. My god...to be a fly on the wall!

But back to Sagan. anyone that knows me well will tell you that if you speak to me about a serious topic for more than ten minutes, I will end up quoting Cosmos sooner than later. I'm not necessarily proud of this, but as always, I try to be honest with our beloved readers. Actually, a few years ago, my brother bought the entire Cosmos series...and we watched the whole thing in one sitting. That's 13 hours in one sitting. Now that you know this about me, it should come as no surprise that from the moment I heard Nocturnus and their pseudo-scientific lyrical content I was hooked. You know that Death song "Cosmic Sea"? I love it.

Time travel? Droids entering? Sign me up!

Why am I telling you all this? Well...because I simply just wanted to. But also because I want to explain the title of this post. It's a line from the movie Contact, which Sagan wrote. In that movie, Jodi Foster's character is chosen from all of humanity to travel aboard a spaceship, so she can get back and tell the whole world what she saw. She travels and sees either outer space, or heaven or something..it's unclear. Whatever it is, she feels she's ill-prepared to describe it to the rest of the world, because of its unbelievable beauty...since she's just a scientist. Her response to seeing such beauty and feeling like she's unable to describe it, as you can probably guess is:

"They should have sent a poet."

Sometimes, I see great metal-related clips or pictures online...and I am just as humbled as Foster's character was in the movie Contact. I too, wish they would have sent a poet, since I am unable to describe such beauty to all of you. If you feel I oversold this clip...so be it. Enjoy.



If you want even more, check out the remix.





*Closing note: Credit goes to comedian Artie Lange, from the Howard Stern show. He reminded me of this quote, when he dropped it during the show, as he watched ex-Death and Iced Earth drummer Richard Christy get his balls and asshole waxed.