Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
In cosmic news that is far out, a recording of a monologue from Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” will be transmitted out to the North Star on December 30 because, hey, why not? The stunt is inspired by Caesar’s line, “But I am constant as the northern star.” “It’s fortunate that Shakespeare changed the original draft,” said an important literary professor, “which had Caesar saying he is as constant as trash pickup on Tuesdays, because that would be less poetic, and harder to beam a message to.”
Caesar (center, Joseph Holland) tells a bunch of schemers, including Brutus (left, Orson Welles), "I am constant as the northern star… And we're all suspiciously dressed like it's the 1930s." (Lucas Pritchard, photographer/Wikimedia Commons)
The Derby Shakespeare Theatre Company, which spells theater wrong, is teaming up with a space tech company called Star Bottle, which allows anyone to send a message into space via an antenna and radio transmission. And just like with old radios and TV sets that used an antenna, if the message is not being sent smoothly at first, scientists will just bang on it really hard, and that will somehow fix the problem.
The North Star, also called Polaris, is about 430 light-years away, and Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” was first performed at the original Globe Theatre about 430 years ago – which, according to leading experts, “Makes for some pretty trippy symmetry, man.” And to add to the numerical coincidences, 430 years is also how long it would take a present-day high schooler to read an entire book.
The North Star is bright, almost bright enough to understand everything said in a Shakespeare play. (Morigan221/Wikimedia Commons)
“This is really exciting,” said a scientist who specializes in sending audio into outer space for the self-satisfaction of it. “The idea came to us late one night, while we were listening to Pink Floyd and ingesting silliness-inducing substances. Normally, you don’t have great ideas in that mental state, but this time we clearly struck gold.”
“This is cool,” said a guy standing on a street corner in Delaware, who likes to look at the sky a lot. “I always enjoy gazing at the stars and daydreaming, and it’s nice to know that a work by one of the great American writers will be sent out there… Wait, Shakespeare wasn’t American? Oh. Well, he still did some good stuff… I guess.”
This story is based on fully factual news, but if we got it wrong, blame these guys, we’re just here to make it funny.
