Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking passed. There are tributes all over the place.

Tender and sensible and mature and respectful, all over the place.

He's been a favorite subject for the goofballs at b3ta.com for the irony that's inherent in his being. They'd photoshop him in ridiculous gags for as long as I've been aware of the site. Flying across the moon silhouetted in his electric wheelchair as the boy on a bicycle with E.T. in the handlebar basket, for example.

It's mean. And it's cruel. And it's also having fun with someone you deeply respect and love, acknowledging the harsh reality of their existence. It's addressing reality face to face, and being silly with it.

It's like me going down the basement steps with friends for cards taking them awkwardly like Hillary Clinton and saying "Run, Forest, run!" And everyone cracking up at the cruel reality. On the street I complained to a friend, "As I walk everyone passes me, a blind woman tapping a cane passes me, a baby in a stroller passes me, and old woman in a walker passes me, Stephen Hawking passes me and flips me off in the distance." And the guy busts a gut right there on the sidewalk visualizing that ridiculous combined cruelty.

Incidentally, at that particular basement card game I was not playing. Neither was Jiva, our Hare Krishna friend. The rest were engaged in their game, silently dealing the cards. I was talking and I didn't think anybody was particularly listening. Nobody was responding to me, but I kept talking, filling the silence. I had no one''s attention. I was telling them about my deaf friends who played this same game of Hearts. A bit like Bridge. They did the same thing after the deal of passing their worst card to the player to their right for one deal, then pass the worst card of the deal to the player on their left for the next deal. So they don't piss off the same guy repeatedly. While this was going on I got to the point in my story about the deaf guy complaining about the bad card he was passed and whereas I told my story in my usual voice, I switched to an unmodulated louder deaf voice to imitate my friend accurately. "Hey! You. give. me. da. black. bitch!" Rather harshly. I was only being accurate. But the relative silence was broken by the entire basement of players and observers bursting out laughing. They pushed away from the table and bent in their chairs. Jiva was especially amused. I turned red as a beet because I was not trying to be funny. I was trying to make my story authentic. For some reason me imitating the way the guy sounds was hilarious to them. My embarrassment at accidentally betraying my friends made it doubly funny to them. They're all just really stupid bastards. There wasn't anything funny about it. Making fun of my own absurdity was one thing but making fun of someone else is another. I felt very small. That showed me how cruel humor is. Insouciant cruelty is funny. And all that makes them no less empathetic. They laughed so hard they had to re-deal the hand.

So I was certain the B3ta members would drag out their old satire tributes and possibly come up with some new ones. I expect this tribute collection to grow larger as the day passes. They keep 13 to a page, I think, maybe 17, some fixed number, however many tributes there are here when you look, if you choose to, there won't be any before the announcement.

Impressive how many are based on Christian belief when so many members, so many British, and Hawking himself are atheist. To suggest his spirit is now released from the daily torture of his body runs contrary to his own disbelief in eternal spirit.

Example: by member killa 1980

Killa 1980 chose a font to show him speaking with synthesized voice. So even in death he's still crippled