Chauncey DeVega says: There be life!

Danger Will Robinson! Danger! This post is an official black geek alert.

Respectable negroes are innovators both by nature, (because we have melanin, a magical substance which allows us to metabolize the sun's light and to generate heat and energy) and as a function of necessity (because our material limitations have forced us to be innovative, e.g. digging for cast off records in the 25 cent bin and then transforming said records into the basis for a whole genre of music).

Respectable negroes are natural multi-taskers. For example, while ruminating on the plight of the ignt's we may simultaneously:

1. find ourselves admiring the prose of Langston Hughes


2. computing the correct number of credit cards necessary to play an infinite game of credit card roulette in which we transfer balances from one card to another and never ever pay our actual credit card bills;


3. wondering if the comic book series The Walking Dead will turn a corner and return to form;


4. finding a way out of the time travel paradox presented by the Terminator movies;


5. speculating if the creators of the heretofore, and now officially "craptastic" television series Heroes, will admit they are basically lifting the X-Men and its Legacy virus storyline;


6. writing screenplays for movies that will never be made;


7. hoping that Rosario Dawson is as cool and sexy in person as she appears to be in either Clerks 2 or in Alexander--speaking of which, how did a Puerto Rican mami get to the hinterlands of asia in the 3rd century B.C.?;


8. or comparing the relative merits of that San Francisco treat, aka Rice-A-Roni, to Near East brand's rice pilaf, a rice favored for its subtlety, but one that in my opinion, lacks Rice-A-Roni's complex flavor.

In short, respectable negroes are by habit, affect, and trade, "renaissance negroes." As renaissance negroes we are also black geeks--those same geeks who gave the world afro-futurism and speculative fiction, who advanced the study of time travel and temporal mechanics, and who inaugurated the negro space program:

Today, I am having a black geek moment, a geekasm, a geek priapism, a moment of geek ecstasy and nervous release because we have additional confirmation that there are multiple Earth type planets in the galaxy, and that by inference, we are probably not alone in the universe.

Undoubtedy, there are some members of the flat earth society who don't understand the importance of this discovery (see state's evidence number one: that cabal of harpies on The View), or alternatively would reject the notion of life on other planets because it is not "biblically" correct (dumb asses). This discovery is not exciting simply because it confirms what any person with a minimum of common sense has long known, i.e. that life is probably more common than uncommon in the universe. Here, I must introduce one qualifier: as a black geek who has astrophysics journals among his pile of "droppin a deuce" reading materials in the bathroom, I do not take this discovery of earth type planets as necessarily making a strong case for alien visitation to our fair planet. Why? Because frankly, as my ace boon coon theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, and also the smartest human being I have ever met, once said, "why would aliens want to expend time, energy, and resources to visit an out of the way planet in an uninteresting solar system, a solar system that is in fact the equivalent of galactic trailer park?"

Nah, this is exciting because it is a chance to hypothesize about how given the working assumption that there is intelligent life somewhere in the universe, and that we humans have been broadcasting some 130 plus years of putrid radio and television signals out into the void of space, what perceptions and understandings would our alien brothers have about black people here on Earth? As my mom would say, if "Black" "Entertainment" Television, or mainstream media is a reference point, aliens must think all black folks do is bounce basketballs, fight a never ending battle against a plague of nooses, perform minstrel-hop, and that our women have 10 kids by 5 different men:

I would also add that extra-terrestrials would probably think we are a really happy people because all negroes do is dance and laugh when we aren't out committing crimes.

When the United States had a forward thinking space program in the 1960s and 1970s, we launched the Voyager series of deep space exploration probes--yes, the same type of probe that came back to Earth in Star Trek: The Motion Picture because it wanted to have freaky sex with the hot bald alien chick and commander Decker. These probes each contained a golden record which was encoded with all of the best that humankind had to offer. Basically, this "mixed tape for the gods" was our way of telling the universe we are here, we are intelligent, and please don't come here and lay the smackdown on on us like those those aliens from "Mr. Non-threating Happy Rapper" Will Smith's movie, Independence Day.

Zora, Gartrelle, what do you think on this one? Fellow readers, what are your thoughts? If we were to make a golden record today and send it out into space as our galactic calling card, what should it contain?

I have three suggestions. First, our probe should contain a clip of one of the greatest comedians of all time, performing one of the greatest routines of all time (we should show the aliens we are smart, funny, and appreciate irony):

Second, our probe should contain my boy Jay-Z performing Roc Boys from the American Gangster "soundtrack" because even when he is at 60%, Hova is better than 90% of those minstrel hoppers in the game, and we need to provide an antidote to some of that poison our alien brothers have been exposed to:

And just to show our alien brothers that we are tolerant of "difference":