The Cannonball Heard Round The World

Remember that time the Mythbusters fired a 30-pound steel cannonball into a slumbering San Francisco Bay area neighborhood and no one was hurt?

I do! And praise Sagan no one was hurt, not only for the obvious reason that that would have been tragic, but because if someone had been hurt then I would not have been allowed to make the following statement: the fact that that happened is awesome! (If the incident had resulted in the suspension or cancellation of the show as some have feared, then I think we can all agree that would have made it considerably less awesome. But according to a tweet by co-host Adam Savage the reports of the show's death are greatly exaggerated.)

It's not every day that real life suddenly resembles a Wile E. Coyote cartoon. But last night, for a few surreal and glorious moments it did. I mean, this thing didn't just fly in a perfectly straight line before harmlessly embedding itself in the side of a hill. It punched a hole through the side of a house, whizzed over the heads of a sleeping couple, punched a hole out through the other side of the house, then bounced across four lanes of traffic and off the roof of another house before smashing through the passenger side window of the parked minivan where it eventually came to rest, presumably in the passenger seat, where I imagine it said something like "Follow that bird!" before doing a double take when it noticed no one was behind the wheel and then frowning into the camera while the horn section of the score went "waaaaa waaaaa waaaaa waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa."

Providing hours of entertainment to generations of lonely and socially awkward children everywhere, Mr. Coyote. That's what you're doing.

Discovery Channel has of course promised to reimburse those whose property was damaged for any necessary repairs, and when interviewed on the eleven o'clock news those people of course attempted to adopt the appropriate postures of traumatized sobriety. But you can tell just by looking at them that even they think it's awesome.

Just look at the shit-eating expression on this guy's face!

And this guy's!

You just know these guys will be telling this story at every dinner party they go to for the rest of their lives. That's because the Mythbusters did, in fact, bust a myth last night--just not the one they were attempting to. The myth that Adam and Jamie busted last night was the myth that it is impossible to fire a 30-pound steel cannonball into a slumbering San Francisco Bay area neighborhood without hurting anyone.

Just think for a moment about what that means...

For what happened to have happened the way it happened, the cannon has to have been aimed just a milometer or two too high, the concrete safety wall at the firing range has to have been just a couple of pounds too weak, the slope of the hill behind it has to have been just the right number of degrees, the cars driving along that four lane highway have to have passed at the exact moments they passed, going the exact speeds they were going, the angle of the roof (like the slope of the hill) has to have been just the right number of degrees, not to mention strong enough to withstand the force of a cannonball, and that minivan where it landed has to have been parked in the exact spot where it was parked--which, according to its owner, it only just had been.

Oh, and on top of all that, you have to consider the odds that someone would be firing a 17th century cannon in the middle of the San Francisco Bay area in the year 2011 in the first place.

Close enough.

It all feels like a metaphor for something, but for what, I don't know. The unpredictability of life, maybe, or man's inability to contain the forces of nature. Those on the Right would no doubt point to it as an example of the dangers of science, of the hubris of mere mortals who would seek to harness the laws of God's universe.

I prefer to think of it as a metaphor for those occasional moments of the absurd, of the dangerous and the fantastical and the bizarre, that serve to liven up our otherwise mundane and monotonous existences.

We could all use a cannonball through our bedroom walls every now and then.