For When I Need A Distraction

[ID: Detailed drawing of a sperm whale with shading, eyes, and a spout]

[ID: Wobblier drawing of a whale with no shading and no detailed features]

The soil testing equipment on Curiosity makes a buzzing noise and the pitch of the noise changes depending on what part of an experiment Curiosity is performing, this is the way Curiosity sings to itself.

So some of the finest minds currently alive decided to take incredibly expensive important scientific equipment and mess with it until they worked out how to move in just the right way to sing Happy Birthday, then someone made a cake on Curiosity’s birthday and took it into Mission control so that a room full of brilliant scientists and engineers could throw a birthday party for a non-autonomous robot 225 million kilometres away and listen to it sing the first ever song sung on Mars*, which was Happy Birthday.

This isn’t a sad story, this a happy story about the ridiculousness of humans and the way we love things. We built a little robot and called it Curiosity and flung it into the star to go and explore places we can’t get to because it’s name is in our nature and then just because we could, we taught it how to sing.

That’s not sad, that’s awesome.

ALI IMMEDIATELY LIVING UP TO THE BALLDS SUNG ABOUT HER.

The Odyssey if the suitors were competent…

...You know. Sometimes you walk right into my trap.

All of the meddling you do in my ask box. All of the absurdist conspiracy theories you send to me just KNOWING that they make my hair fall out. All of the grins and giggles that you have EXTRACTED from me in your endless crusade to get your jollies from my misery.

And then you just lay down the rake that I get to watch you walk into. With your own two hands.

Yes. Bizarro World is 100% real. Though technically it tends to go by...Htrae.

(An orbital picture of Htrae taken by Superman within its own cosmic "neighborhood")

I think we're all familiar with the creature known as Bizarro. Created by a failed experiment at the hands of Lex Luthor seeking to recreate Superman's Kryptonian abilities in a dimwitted construct that Luthor could then control either as a weapon against the Man of Steel or a doppelganger meant to discredit him. The imperfect result of this mad experiment put the kibosh on either proposition. Bizarro was "born" with chalky white skin covered in hard angles and seams. His speech patterns, thought patterns and even the expression of his superpowered were mixed up and backwards. Such as the ability to breathe fire and fire beams of intense cold from his eyes.

While he did battle with Superman originally as intended, the memories and instincts he inherited from Superman were too strong. He simply didn't have a drive to hurt others and spent most of his time confused and afraid, attempting to insert himself into what he believed was Superman's role. Smashing into the Daily Planet, kidnapping Lois Lane, and assaulting criminals with a terrifying lack of control in relation to his possible damages. Each time he was stopped by Superman, each time the Man of Steel recognized that Bizarro meant the world no harm but his heroic instincts reflected through the lens of his distorted mind left too much room for error should he remain on Earth.

So, Superman solved that problem for us. He planted the idea in Bizarro's mind that what he needed was to find a world of his own to protect. And Bizarro did just that. Flying out into space he went unseen for several years until Superman was wrapped up in a caper that showed him and the rest of us where his white skinned doppelganger had gone. Shaping a lifeless world in a distant solar system into the cubic not-Earth you see before you, and using the same scientific process that had brought him to life to create Bizarro duplicates of as many humans as he could get his hands on.

Now, far from earth in the city of Siloportem, Bizarro is the greatest champion of a world where cars stop at green lights and run through red on their cars with square shaped wheels. Where the people of Htrae celebrate their birthdays by lighting candles and giving away presents to friends and family. Where they lay down mats that say "Scram" in front of their homes where you go in through the exit and leave through the entrance. Where every Bizarro man, woman and child prizes the ugly, the chaotic and the useless as great innovations of their society.

And, as you can see by the lack of Bizarro incidents on Earth for more than the past decade this has been working EXACTLY as planned. Bizarro is out in space doing what he needs to do, protecting a world that needs his specific kind of protection, being the hero he always knew he was. The rest of the universe has been more than content to let the Bizarro World work under its own rules, that's how all cultures should be left if they're not harming anyone right?

I'm not sure if I read it in a DC tabloid or somewhere else, but it was this piece about how Superman had the ability to see via ducks, and that's how he'd pop up in seemingly impossible places to make rescues. Because he saw the situation through a duck's-eye view.