I went with Brandon and Krystel yesterday to COSI, where we “Explored Science and Discovered Fun!” There’s a Star Wars exhibit there that we were interested in, and since COSI is pretty interesting anyway, we made a date of it. I hadn’t been to COSI since right after graduating high school, I think, when I went with Nate and we participated in this awesome treasure hunt-thing, ala Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider.

Upon entering the building yesterday the first thing that struck me was: “Why are there so many fucking kids around? It’s motherfucking summer! They should be at the pool and the mall and the Oregon District!” Then I backhanded a kid running by and sent him to the ground. Seriously though — there were too many little annoying kids for my taste.

The Star Wars bit was okay, but not quite what I was hoping for. There were a number of props and costumes from the movies, which were pretty cool, and several interactive exhibits on robotics and space travel. We sat through a boring presentation on robotics featuring C-3PO, a bunch of lame, modern robots that do things like “fix sewer pipes” and “ingest nuclear waste,” and a video representation of some condescending robotics expert-lady. This supposedly took place in a miniature “sandcrawler” that in actuality was a plywood tetrahedron painted brown.

The rest of COSI was pretty cool. We wandered through a bunch of crowded exhibits, testing some of the interactive stuff. Krystel and I tried to heft Brandon using a pulley system, but alas, it was rough going. We made little hovercraft out of LEGOs and magnets. I got incredibly frustrated when I couldn’t make mine float down the tracks properly. But Brandon could, that fucker. In the Death exhibit, we also used a computer to predict how we’d look when we’re old. Guess what: I’m gonna be wrinkly like a raisin when I’m old; who’d've thunk it. While we were waiting in line, there was a video playing nearby that consisted of old people relating how they found out they had cancer, and what their feelings were on their imminent deaths. For some reason, the subjects weren’t very cheery or enthusiastic. A little girl summed the video up best: “Well that’s depressing.” They also had real fetuses on display, which I was horrified to discover were actually only half a fetus.

My favorite exhibit had to have been the one on the ocean. Set up to look like some Atlantean cave, there were pools of water arrayed on the floor with the smaller exhibits placed throughout. This kick-ass stone globe was awesome, and I really wanted it for my front yard. A gigantic statue of Poseidon also glared down at us from behind his “mythical playground.” (I wanted Poseidon in my backyard, so he could glare down at my neighbors from behind my non-mythical privacy fence.) Another part of the exhibit featured a mini submarine you could enter, but I didn’t go in it because there were too many of those bastard children in line, and we were slightly pressed for time, since we’d to schedule a time to visit the Star Wars exhibit.

Huh. I wonder if COSI would let me live in their Ocean exhibit? I could easily be a creepy, grizzled tour guide, perpetually smelling of rum and chomping on a wooden pipe. I’d get in the wee little ones’ faces and sneer, “So . . . ye’re interested in the oceans, are ye? Well, I can tell ye a few things about the sea . . . like that it kills the ones ye love the most, like yer mothers and fathers!” And they would cry. They would flee and they would cry.

JAB