Actually, it's the Clint Black version that I sing. The intro is a bit more "generic," as is the punch line.

The Galaxy Song

by Eric Idle (as sung by Clint Black)

When you're feeling inside out and insecure
And life keeps getting you down
And all life's daily worries hurry through your head
You don't even wanna get up, you just lie around in bed
When you feel you just can't take it anymore
And you wonder what on earth it is all for
Your love life's like a war zone, your TV's on the blink
It's enough to drive a drinking man to stop and take a think...

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving,
Revolving at nine hundred miles an hour.
It's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see,
Are moving at a million miles a day,
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the Galaxy we call the Milky Way.

Out galaxy itself contains 100 billion stars
It's 100,000 light years side to side,
It bulges in the middle, 16,000 light years thick
But out by us it's just 3,000 light years wide.
We're 30,000 light years from galactic central point,
We go 'round every 200 million years
And our Galaxy is only one of millions and billions
In this amazing and expanding Universe.

Our Universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all the directions it can whiz
As fast as it can go, the speed of light you know.
12 million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember when you're feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space
'Cause I'm afraid that we've been cheated here on Earth.

Sometimes I end it with "'Cause we've sure as hell been short-changed here on Earth!" Has a little more impact. But it depends on how I size up the audience.

Don't try to use this as a reference to take an exam in Astronomy 101. The figures are sorta ball-park, but their not really that accurate.

Don Firth

Normally I don't like to drift threads, but this one, I think, could benefit from a major shift. . . .