I’m Really Worried About Zooey Deschanel

Like I just said, Zooey Deschanel has given me cause for concern — not about her personal well-being, because that’s a given, but more that she’s secretly some sort of malicious entity bent on amassing power. Look at her. Just look at her.

No one dresses that cute without an ulterior agenda. Just from an aesthetic standpoint, Zooey Deschanel should worry you, too: She dresses in a way that seems to charm old people and hipsters alike. What is that? Like, that’s not something that happens, yet she nonetheless seems to win over these disparate groups. She’s a Hollywood brat who somehow maintains indie cred, and then she jumps from playing at an alt rock musical festival back to L.A. to film an episode of her popular network sitcom, all while wearing outfits that make her look good but which when imitated by mortal women make them look sad, boho dumbasses. I did the math; that shouldn’t be possible. Oh and that blog! That blog! “Hello Giggles”? Did she really trick the literate, adult women of the world into thinking it’s somehow okay to read something called “Hello Giggles”? And why is she the only thing I remember now about Almost Famous? She was barely in it. What was it about? Zooey the stewardess saves the world and kills Kate Hudson? Can’t even remember now.

Here’s basically what I think will happen in 2012: You’re going to wake up one day and say, “Hey, when did Zooey Deschanel become the unquestioned lord and master of the universe? The last thing I remember was I was watching a YouTube clip of her singing some dopey song with a ukelele. But I liked the song, even though anyone else singing the same song with the same ukelele would be pitiful and repellant, and I just got lost in those blue eyes. What color are those eyes? Cyan? Ice blue? Some especially cool shade of winter mint that God spared from the spectrum just so it could exist solely in the eyes of the Zooey Deschanel?” And then when you come to, Zooey is sitting on a throne adorned with the skulls of the her imperfect, failed prototype girlbots — Katy Perry, Emily Blunt, Lizzy Caplan and Anna Friel — and demanding blood sacrifices of us all because her plan worked, dammit, and we were all to fucking busy humming the theme song to The New Girl to notice. She’s reigning over all with an iron fist — iron fists sheathed in vintage pearl white driving gloves are stil iron fists — with her sister, Bones, seated at her right side. And oh yeah — we call her “Bones” now because she actually eats people’s bones. Because she can. Because she always wanted to and now she can.

So yeah, I’ve got to say it: I’m really worried about Zooey Deschanel. And now that I’ve publicly associated myself with these fears, I’m worried about myself. If she comes and kills me, at least she’ll do it in a cute manner.

She’s watching me. She’s watching you. Deschanel Blue sees all.

(Apparently this is how I end the year.)

Seeing Things / Running Through Your Head

Sprawling and sinister though the clouds may have seemed, I was willing to give them a pass on size and character and instead just appreciate them for their color. I usually see chromatic displays like this only in the form of screensavers.

Then, on my drive home through L.A. traffic, it began to rain — just two days after the hottest day ever recorded in the city. Then thunder and lightening. And then a double rainbow. Yep, should have gone with my gut; these were clearly apocalypse clouds.

And I just moved all my stuff in, too.

The Power of Mu Compels You

Yesterday I saddled Super Intern Devon with the task of writing an article on a UCSB professor who's being published in a major scientific journal for his defense of the Large Hadron Collider, which, if you haven’t been paying attention, is the particle accelerator being built near Geneva that will, among other things, create small black holes for infinitesimal amounts of time. The project has created some concern that the black holes formed in this monstrous machine — which, really, sounds like something a mad scientist would cook up specifically for nefarious purposes — could end up sucking the earth and, indeed, all existence into a celestial nothing spot and collapse all mass into a single nanoparticle. Or something. (I’m actually not sure what happens to matter upon entering a black hole, but I’m willing to bet that scientists don’t know for sure either.) Scientists say the collider won’t, in fact, erase the earth’s past, present, and future — and the UCSB man agrees — but I can’t help but feel a little concerned.

After all, black holes exist off in outer space, and I feel maybe like maybe we shouldn’t change that fact, because they’re big and scary and powerful and, as far as I know, exist for no other reason than to suck things into them. (They’re like sorority girls, in that way.) Maybe creating them closer to my house, where al my stuff is, could turn out badly for existence. “But Drew,” the scientists would argue, “the evil black hole machine will be all the way in Switzerland? Surely you have no need for concern.” But I worry that — if matter does, in fact, collapse — then the distance between my house and Switzerland will become considerably shorter. Zero, in fact, because neither my house nor Switzerland would exist anymore. Nor would Tahiti, and I’ve never even been there yet. This all may make me sound like a Luddite, and I truly would like to have faith in the science men in the white coats, but so many other scientific discoveries have wrought destruction upon us: the ability to split atoms and gun powder and television chief among them.

So while Devon prepared to talk to Mr. Published Scientist and ask questions about what the black hole creators hope to achieve by making this miniature abominations — “Okay, pretend I’m stupid and don’t know anything about large hat iron collisioners. Now tell me in extremely simple terms what’s being gained from this.” — the rest of us in the newsroom brainstormed about what benefits of black hole technology could be for Average Joes. What we have so far:

• Extra storage for people who live in apartments
• Alternative to a handgun for single women.
• A way for me to get out of carrying either a briefcase of a messenger bag,
• Junk disposal. (Though that does raise the question of whether we’ll get a crumpled-up note popping back out of the mini-vortex that reads “Quit throwing garbage into our dimension.)
• Portable body dump. (Don’t have to drive to the Nevada desert anymore.)
• Looney Toones-style portable hole.
• Means to taunt your Bizarro-self.
• Quick clean-up after parties.

But in the end, of course, the black holes created will probably result in little kids in the Midwest trying to play hide-and-seek in one of them on a hot summer day. And we all know how that goes.

All life begins with Nu and ends with Nu. This is the truth! This is my belief, at least for now.