Miss Universe? I think not

I've been thinking about something amidst all this hullabaloo (Fact: I have never before used that word) around the Miss Universe pageant. And by "hullabaloo," I mean, "I didn't even know the Miss Universe pageant was going on until Lacey started tweeting about Heidi Montag's performance, at which point I immediately Youtubed it and GOOD GOD will someone off that girl already?" Jeez.

Anyway, to preface this story, I will tell another story.

A few weeks ago, some lovely friends and I were driving to the Hamptons. During our ride there, I started wondering aloud about some things I think about probably way too frequently, such as what kinds of life forms exist in other galaxies, and if we ever met them how on Earth (pun intended) we would communicate with them seeing as they're probably not human and don't do things like nod or smile and they might not even have hands to gesture with in the first place. My friends indulged me in the way that you indulge people with whom you're stuck in a car for a long time because you either have to talk WITH them or listen to them talk aloud to no one in particular. That is to say, they joined in my conversation somewhat unwillingly because they, like my sophomore year roommate who listened to me pontificate on multiple occasions about the possible existence of giants, are normal and I am not (and if you think I didn't also bring up giants in this car ride, you are wrong).

The point is, I think there is crazy life millions of light years away and we will never know about it.

And now, back to Miss Universe (did you forget that, for once, there was a point to all this rambling?).

I think it's rather shortsighted to crown a Miss Universe seeing as we have no idea who or what else is out there. I understand that "Miss Planet Earth" doesn't have a great ring to it, but I hate for these bimbos scholarship pageant contestants to think that they're reigning over something they really aren't. Our solar system, let alone this lovely planet we inhabit, is but a miniscule portion of the overall universe and somewhere, quite far away, is a being that is quite possibly being denied his/her/its true title.

One day, many years in the future, assuming the world doesn't end in 2012 or whenever those crazy Mayans said it would, when we have mastered the art of somehow traveling across the universe without it taking thousands of years, we will have the opportunity to crown the REAL Miss Universe. The contestant pool will probably be a crazy mix of human/alien/other being that possibly has tentacles or 600 eyes, but we will have developed some standard by which we can judge all of them (bye bye, swimsuit competition). I wish I were going to be around to see that crazy day.

And also, hopefully there won't be crap like Heidi "my whole body is fake and I can't sing or dance" Montag performing. Vom.