“THIS is Ceti Alpha 5!”

Update: Please see Ceti Alpha V for the title reference.

(Geez, you PVP readers, I thought you knew your sci-fi pop culture references. It’s not even that obscure.)

Update, 2007: Sadly, the joke alert is no longer there. It was great. NOAA posted a test alert saying that the Earth was careening out of its orbit towards the sun, but then erased it, and mr_crash_davis posted a screenshot, but now it’s gone, and the reference to Ceti Alpha 5 is just completely pointless now. Forget it.

A good thing that mr_crash_davis managed to grab a screenshot of the NOAA weather statement warning of unusually hot weather due to the planet Earth’s unseasonable catastrophic orbital displacement. Just so you know how doomed we all are.

(Note on the thread title: it’s a quote from Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan, where Chekov still thinks he’s on Ceti Alpha 6, not 5, where Khan was marooned. Khan tells him, “This is Ceti Alpha 5! Ceti Alpha 6 exploded six months after we were left here. The shock shifted the orbit of the planet and everything was laid waste.” Hence the reference to the fictional orbital displacement mentioned above.)