grab a napkin 'cause we're passin' notes

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.

12+ hours: hell yes. decadence has a name and it is ME. the dream. im marrying  my bed you’re invited to the wedding. i might feel groggy and angry for the rest of the day when i actually do get up but WORTH IT. 

12+ hours (ALTERNATE): i am deeply clinically depressed and approximately three (3) inches from death at any given moment

11-10 hours: ideal. im functioning at perfect 100% capacity my body and mind are a well oiled machine. im ready to knock out all my errands and chores in under an hour, work a full day and then study that language im trying to learn

9 hours: good! i could have slept longer, but getting up was no great horrifying trauma either

8-7 hours: the “””””medically recommended amount””””” for adults, but in reality more like a “fine, i GUESS” amount. normal mild levels of angst at having to get out of bed

6 hours: silent unceasing internal groaning for at least the first hour after waking. dont expect any kind of quality conversation for the first 2 or so hours. ive got a Less Than Medically Recommended Amount Of Sleep, that means im a martyr right???

5 hours: pretty unpleasant. feels gross. expect a moderate crash during the late afternoon. this is the first number that is considered worthy of entry in a college student sleep-measuring contest. altho if you try to enter with 5 hrs dead-eyed hordes will instantly materialize from the bushes and one-up you “5 hours??? HAHA SWEET SUMMER CHILD. I HAVENT SLEPT IN 3 YEARS”

4 hours: a Very Poor Decision. deep seated, incoherent rage upon waking that persists up to several hours. consume large amounts of your stimulant of choice, but you’ll still feel like a cave troll. constant aftertaste of chemicals and regret

3 hours: half awake half walking in some astral plane haunted by the wails of the newly-dead. children and animals fear the emptiness in your vacant eyes. a very respectable entry to any sleep-measuring contest. you’ll still get beaten by the “2 hour” and “all nighter” people, but everyone knows this is Bad

2 hours: you can get up, but only by rending your soul from your physical body in a paroxysm of agony, since it will refuse to leave the bed. you are now soulless and will feel absolutely zero emotion until sometime in the late afternoon/early evening when your soul returns and ALL the emotions will hit at once, leaving you alternately sobbing or creepily hyena laughing

1 hour: you fool. you imbecile. your hubris and weakness has brought you to this point. they are coming. you cannot escape. why didnt you just stay awake. why didnt you just pull the all-nighter. the strength of your no-sleep headache threatens to stab through your skull like an ice pick. all you can taste is blood. they are comi