But don't leave me with no direction.
Happy belated, MJ. As an aside, I played the heck out of Pipes of Peace and Thriller back in those days.
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But don't leave me with no direction.
Happy belated, MJ. As an aside, I played the heck out of Pipes of Peace and Thriller back in those days.
Posted at 07:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Artemis I failed at launch again this week. Kamala Harris then touted diversity at NASA. This is the same week we have articles touting diversity at the Federal Reserve -- an institution that has run our economy into historic inflation. This is a s****y case for diversity.
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) August 30, 2022
I know he's just a dick troll, but c'mon, man. That's just weak sauce, especially starting with "again" (Artemis has never rolled out for a launch before).
First of all, Mary Jackson called and says, "you're welcome for noticing that heat shield design flaw so the Mercury astronauts didn't get cooked." Her friend, Katherine Johnson also says, "you're welcome for calculating the trajectory that brought John Glenn safely home."
Glenn was actually a bit of a punk when it came to women astronauts, but of course NASA has become more diverse since America first orbited a man. And that has fuck all to do with yesterday's scrub.
But let's flip that script, just for fun. Perhaps if we'd had more diversity all along, with fewer white Yes Men who failed to call out NASA's dangerous assumptions, we wouldn't have suffered the disasters of Apollo One, Challenger, and Columbia.
As I noted yesterday, and other commentators pointed out to L'il Ben, test launches often don't go as planned (waves to SpaceX). Yet he's doubled down, suggesting that after a failure, having MVP Harris touting diversity looks bad or something. I'm beginning to think he doesn't do anything in good faith, and there might be some other reason he's attacking her.
Man, if anybody needed to be smacked hard enough to go to the moon (without Kepler's drugs to dull the pain)...
Posted at 05:10 PM in Space | Permalink | Comments (0)
When I'm singing it's all been true.
PS - I know it's MJ's birthday, so a moonwalk would be apropos, but I'm just not in the mood.
Posted at 09:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
The sadness in his dream is a good omenfor the future. It is a quest for lasting joy,and so is punishment a dream of unexpectedpleasure. . .Works quietly for weeks.His silenceDarns a temperateHealing threadHis eyesBecome an elaborateDecorative artAvoiding everyone.“Every month,” said Cicero“the moon contemplatesits trajectoryand the shrubsand animals grow.”He has done to himselfWhat is easy.He must now blossomOut of his new secretsEven if joy is ephemeral.
Primus St. John.
Posted at 08:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Carl Sagan called Johannes Kepler's Somnium (the Dream) the first work of science fiction. It's a tale about a boy and his mother, who learn from a demon how to get to the Moon (Levania), which seems fitting today:
The island of Levania is located fifty thousand German miles high up in the sky. The route to get to there from here, or back to this Earth, is rarely open. When it is open, it is easy for our kind, at least, to travel. But transporting humans is truly difficult, and risks the greatest dangers to life.
We do not admit desk-bound humans into these ranks, nor the fat, nor the foppish. But we choose those who regularly spend their time hunting with swift horses, or those who voyage in ships to the Indies, and are accustomed to living on hard bread, garlic, dried fish and other abhorrent foods.
The best adapted for the journey are dried-out old women, since from youth they are accustomed to riding goats at night, or pitchforks, or travelling the wide expanses of the earth in worn-out clothes. There are none in Germany who are suitable, but the dry bodies of Spaniards are not rejected.
The whole journey, although far, is completed in a time of four hours at the most. Never are we more busy than just before the time determined for out departure, when the eastern side of the moon begins to be eclipsed. For if the moon regains its full light while we are embarked upon the journey, it prevents our departure back to the moon.
This occasion proves so narrow that we take few of the human race along, and none except the students of our order. Therefore: any person of this kind we all seize together, pushing upwards to raise him high.
First of all he experiences a strong pressure, not unlike an explosion of gunpowder, as he is hurled above the mountains and the seas.
For this reason, drugs and opium are consumed at the start, so that he falls asleep, and each of his limbs disentangled, so that his body is not torn from his legs, nor his head driven from his body, but so the shock will be distributed across all his limbs.
Next he experiences new difficulties: it is intensely cold and he cannot breath. All of us are born with a power to relieve the cold; for his breathing, we push damp sponges up his nose to block the flow.
With this first part of the journey accomplished, it is easy to set his trajectory. When we reach the open sky, we remove our hands from his body so that he balls himself up like a spider, which we transport almost by our will alone, so that finally the mass of the body falls towards the intended destination of its own accord.
Kepler was a smart guy, but he...seems a bit off in this case. I'm sure the Apollo (and future Artemis) astronauts prefer our method.
Posted at 06:59 PM in Space | Permalink | Comments (0)
We have had our failures, but so have others, even if they do not admit them.
- JFK, Address at Rice University, 12 September, 1962
Bummed that the Artemis launch was scrubbed, but that kind of thing is to be expected in such an endeavor. Even with all the testing of components, integrations, and procedures, an actual liftoff is always kind of a miracle in the early days of a new platform. I'm glad there was no Go Fever, so NASA can learn more from even an aborted attempt.
I share the enthusiasm of my buddy, Mustang Bobby, for this new rocket, as well the Bad Astronomer's skepticism. We haven't been back to the Moon since I was 3 years old, and I'm chomping at the bit to return. And while it was a clever idea to try leveraging our existing tech back when this system was first being proposed, it might not have been the best approach in the long run.
Sure, Apollo was mostly a Cold War dick-swinging stunt. But it worked, and it was a Good Thing regardless of its underlying political motivation. As Gus Grissom said:
The conquest of space is worth the risk of life. Our God-given curiosity will force us to go there ourselves because in the final analysis, only man can fully evaluate the moon in terms understandable to other men.
It's a risky business. Expensive, too. Yet we can afford to do this along with addressing homelessness and climate change and "the other things" (we often don't, but not because of space exploration). It's all part of being human.
I'm looking forward to the next launch window later this week, and maybe finally getting to meet Chang'e and her rabbit friend. Not because it is easy, but because it is hard...
Posted at 05:11 PM in Space | Permalink | Comments (0)
Posted at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Posted at 07:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
You make it very hard for a guy to be a Gray Lady.
- Hawkeye to Trapper, Radar's Report
Been a while since the last What Todd Is Consuming Now update, so here is one that also includes a dash of my love language.
Not quite ready to dip back into the GoT/LotR pool, so I took Hulu's advice and started binging on M*A*S*H. I don't think I've seen an episode in years, and haven't watched the series entirely through for, like...a few decades?
Anywayz, school starts tomorrow, and I am looking forward to having my house be quiet for a few hours during the workday, at least. First bell has been pushed back just a little, which is nice for the mornings, and won't really put a crimp in the kids' routine after school.
For them, it's all about getting online to continue chattering with their friends. For me, it was all about watching General Hospital, followed by 2 (TWO!) episodes of hijinks from the Korean Peninsula. Then I'd get down to actively blowing off my homework, maybe talking on our singular kitchen phone with the 12' cord.
Every episode I've seen countless times; even so I've been surprised by just how much I remember. Things that left particularly lasting impressions were clearly above my pay grade stuff that I had to ask my parents about (OMG, that's how I first learned of impotence!).
And the phraseology! I've been reminded, f'rinstance, that I often snark, "take [something] out of petty cash," because of something Hawkeye said to General Clayton.
Speaking of Capt Pierce, in the episode where McIntyre's patient is harmed by a wounded POW, he mentioned being a Gray Lady. I remembered the scene almost perfectly, but didn't recall that reference at all, nor was I entirely sure what it meant.
I surmised that it was something about being a woman of a certain age, perhaps a volunteer for charity or something. But one thing I can do now that I could not as a lad: turn to teh Google.
For the American idiom, it appears I was spot on (with the Red Cross, particularly?). And of course it's got a few other American meanings, plus some British.
So that was nifty, as is revisiting an old comfort watch. The show generally holds up pretty well, lo these 50 years later.
Its relatively progressive themes are still germane as ever, though there are problematic things (e.g., transphobia) that do make it awkward at times. Yet I'm noticing that I also am having some difficulty stomaching certain aspects that go beyond just old, pre-woke media.
Lately I've been finding it impossible to watch any subterfuge or deceit when it comes to relationships (in anything, not limited to M*A*S*H). Not banal things like unfaithfulness, but rather the stuff they play up for laughs about tricking somebody to fall for a person.
One of my absolute favorites was when they tried teaching Radar pseudo-intellectual phrases so he could impress a new officer (e.g., "Ah, Bach!"). I always identified with Cpl O'Reilly for a lot of reasons*, so this one naturally stuck with me.
Ugh. Couldn't get through even a minute of the first bogus interaction he and Lt Anderson have in the mess tent, and ended up skipping the entire thing.
That's happened a couple times now (not very far into season 2). Soon as I clock what episode it is and I get the first hint of even the most low key deception, I immediately know all the stuff coming up and it hits me all at once. Really makes it like an emotional flashback.
Oddly enough, I've always had an issue with trusting how people portray themselves. Some of that is wrapped up in my old C-PTSD, of course. Hell, for all I know, M*A*S*H might even have something to do with it.
* Not least of which being I've long had a similarly tenuous relationship with good relationships. Also, too: I still have my 53yo teddy bear, one of two items I'd explicitly listed as "essential personal belongings" in my initial DVPO petition, which a court clerk truly thought was precious (the other being one of our TVs so I could keep watching GoT).
Posted at 04:56 PM in Media & Entertainment | Permalink | Comments (0)
In light of school starting here tomorrow (finally!), how about we continue last week's theme with Method #62 - Student strike? While there are many examples all over the world, and in the US, the quintessential form of this kind of action for me comes from South Africa:
Fifty years ago, students were at the heart of South African politics, and new organizations were articulating a fierce critique of the apartheid social order. Their politics were frequently expressed through protests that were spontaneous and often disorganised, occasionally short-sighted and rarely sustainable. In a few short years, they remade politics in South Africa. Previously unimaginable ideas emerged in the course of these protests, and formed the basis of new political organizations. New classes and categories of activists became visible—not just students, but also workers. New identities became available, and new alliances—between students of different races and backgrounds, as well as between students and workers and others—became possible.”
I first heard about all this back when Another Brick in the Wall was banned back in 1980. Unfortunately, I didn't get much depth regarding Apartheid, as my friends and I were more scandalized by the censorship of lyrics we loved to belt out in bougie rebellion.
I've since taught my kids the meaning/context of the song, why it became an anthem of resistance, and about how fighting repression is important. Guess maybe I learned something eventually, and I hope they will be informed by the South African example. Their generation is being left a big pile of shit with our dying climate, inhumane society, etc, so they're gonna need to pull out all the stops.
Covered on previous Sundays:
Posted at 03:25 PM in Pax Americana | Permalink | Comments (0)
Wokeism means that 80s movies couldn't be made today.
Posted at 09:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
You just won the Internet. pic.twitter.com/5ygDkUilxe
— Sisterless Sister (@wenwhimsy) August 27, 2022
The Internet is so weird. I made a stupid throwaway comment while I was waiting for the bus yesterday, and it has become the most viral thing I've ever had (my Mr Grouper clip has 4.5M likes, but that took 7 years and, of course, ain't actually my content):
Anyhoo, in all my years online, I've never figured out how to monetize any of my shenanigans, but being King for a Day is nice.
Posted at 08:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
I've blogged this one before, but it is National Dog Day, so another excerpt:
The dog trots freely in the streetand sees realityand the things he seesare bigger than himselfand the things he seesare his reality
Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Posted at 07:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Because he's got another day of knowing of the path he fears to tread.
Wait, this is wrong track. Where's that damned intern?! Ah well, just adopt the poor thing, please...
Posted at 07:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
A story is only good if it’s made upbut convinces you it’s true.Even better if one of the charactersis someone who could be you.How else do you know who you are?I once asked an old strange friend:You only know you’re the person who’s withthe people you love, in the end.
Kathleen Ossip.
Posted at 03:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Horrible shot of old friends, winter companions, the old men.
Posted at 06:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Strange you're not a threat to me.
Posted at 08:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude:
And you, again, you, for the true kindnessit has been for you to remain awakewith me like this, nodding time to timeand making that noise which I take to meanyes, or, I understand, or, please go onbut not too long, or, why are you spittingso much, or, easy Tigerhands to yourself. I am excitable.I am sorry. I am grateful.I just want us to be friends now, forever.Take this bowl of blackberries from the garden.The sun has made them warm.I picked them just for you. I promiseI will try to stay on my side of the couch.
Ross Gay.
Posted at 06:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.
Back in '88, I wrote my first and only LTE to the Toledo Blade about the controversy swirling around The Last Temptation of Christ. So many reactionaries wanted it banned, of course, and the main thrust of my argument was that G-D had given us faculties of reason to assess the world, and that included letting people see a fucking movie if they want (oddly enough, not dissimilar to an op-ed I penned as an editor of the Colby Echo, critical of the movement to ban CIA recruitment on campus).
I got 2 letters in response. One from an attorney who simply said, "GREAT letter to the editor!"
The other was from an evangelical who wrote a longer exegesis about how wrong I was, and that she believed G-D was calling to my heart as in the case of Bartholomew, who sometimes was identified as Nathaniel (I hope she wasn't also thinking about the martyrdom part). Anyway, much like I do online today, I argued right back, and we actually exchanged a series of letters (that ultimately involved her husband inserting himself into the conversation).
Haven't thought about that in quite a while, but it popped into my head presumably because of the blogging I've done lately about the Garden of Eden and origins of local names, amongst other things. I'm sure if this interaction had occurred today, they would've snorted that contemporary idiom of "pronouns in the bio" to dismiss my perspective.
They label us snowflakes, yet melt down when a Democrat says "motherfucker." They say, "fuck your feelings," then whine if somebody dares suggest not naming schools after treasonous slavers.
All of which is a roundabout way for me to admit that I only recently learned that the dude whom Maury Island is named after ended up serving in the Confederate navy. Naturally, I'm inclined to label him a traitor, and go through the process of finding another name for the island, preferably one that honors the sx̌ʷəbabš whose blackberries we now enjoy.
Posted at 05:00 PM in History, Media & Entertainment | Permalink | Comments (0)
Struggled to get out of bed, weighed down by a wicked bad headache and muscle fatigue. COVID negative, and I don't think it was a migraine (although I've had several of those since I got the C during that first wave in '20, a new exciting feature of this game). Merely stress and exhaustion, I guess.
I canceled my class sessions, and have decided not to do any serious mental labor for Uncle Jeff today. An advantage to having been in the industry forever, and teaching my absolute favorite subject currently, is that I can rely on a significant database of tech knowledge and abstract intuition to deal with the aftermath tomorrow without putting in a lot of prep time.
Anyway, I realized that just as I'd stopped blogging for several months, I also have not been reading anything recreational, or doing much that truly brings me joy. Clearly I let myself get a bit out of balance, so now I'm trying to refocus on self-care, honoring my boundaries, and continuing the process of healing body and soul. So a mental health day it is.
Which brings me to the news landscape! Because, boy howdy, does this nation have a lot of similar shit to work through.
I'm sure from a clinical point of view, a professional headshrinker would have plenty of objections to this post, but I approach this essentially as how I am experiencing the world. Every time I encounter the Essence of Trump, I am practically triggered just like I'm dealing with yet another narcissistic ex.
That Fucking Guy has his flying monkeys in the media and GOP out there gaslighting us, hoovering us, and riling up his base with intermittent reinforcement to deny us the space to get over him and safely move on. We broke up with him almost 2 years ago, and he still hasn't gone away as promised.
Having been on the wrong end of such things with narcs (covert and otherwise), I see the signs:
For instance, if it’s the case of a narcissist hoovering after no contact, they may use all the time that has passed in the interim to their advantage and try to alter or fabricate the facts about what caused the relationship to end.
The Big Lie, all his shifting, shallow defenses for illegally holding onto classified and other government property, abusing the court system with nonsensical filings, etc, all fit into that mold of trying to overwrite our reality with his will. All Americans are survivors, whether in the MAGA Cult or not, trying to process the crazy making:
Their self-worth and confidence have been eroded, over time, by the [covert narc] until they are a shadow of their former selves. They often feel shame at having been hoodwinked or sucked in.
My answer to that is - you are the survivor. You have the emotional resilience to be admired and have more ability to exit this cycle of abuse than you could ever believe of yourself. Your freedom is yours to have, with a little help to take it back, after all, it was yours in the first place.
It's a lot of work, and it can be so utterly exhausting enough to make one feel like giving up. YMMV, but I know the feeling very well.
Part of why I've latched on to music by Metric of late is tied up in everything that's been going on in my personal life and the fact that there is no escaping it in our collective life (hello, Doomscroller). Like, can I go a day without some narc throwing a monkey wrench in the works?
Perhaps this is best exemplified by one of the songs I posted recently:
Find some daylight
Open my eyes
There's another way to leave the Garden of Eden
And I'm inclined to try
The garden isn't paradise, but an idyllic trap that tears down who we really are (sorry, obligatory Star Trek reference). It seems maybe we've finally found enough daylight that most Americans are inclined to try escaping fake America.
It occurs to me that maybe all those flying monkeys are really angels, escorting us out of this illusory garden for picking the fruit of knowledge. It's not so much expulsion as painful liberation. Can't be authentically human without some passion.
So how are you trying? I'm inclined to start by picking some blackberries, carefully, so as to avoid the thorns and stinging insects...
Posted at 03:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
There's a silence surrounding me.
Posted at 09:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
I noticed today is Vulcanalia, and also the day Vesuvius started getting gurgly before the Big Day, which, I mean:
It wasn't that the people in Pompeii didn't get a warning Mount Vesuvius was going to erupt because there definitely would have been smoke, small earthquakes, and loud rumblings at the very least. It was that because of Vulcanalia, they would have interpreted these signs as good omens from the god rather than warnings to get out. Any disruptions would have just been a sign Vulcan was busy at his forge in Mount Vesuvius, happy everyone was celebrating his special day.
I've always been fascinated by the story, but I didn't know about the eruption's ironic proximity to the celebration for Vulcan. Can you imagine partying one day, and then finding out your interpretation of events was wholly wrong, and fatal?
Humans seem to do this a lot. Just look at COVID, that long-rolling disaster whose rumblings we should've felt, and makes Vesuvius look like a piker.
I had to scroll a lot (because Insta's UI blows) to find that picture on the right, which I took when I chaperoned with Sam's class to the Pompeii exhibit at OMSI a few years back. As I ran through the posts, I hit a series of three photos from this spring: starting with an ancient tree stump at the Vashon Heritage Museum, then some filtered lights on my ceiling, and finally a selfie with me pointing at the hat I would lose off the ferry the next day.
Imma vagueblog a little, and will just note that was a time when life was greeting me with some unexpected changes and challenges. Unexpected, but perhaps shouldn't have been? Sometimes the signs are there, but we're too busy feeling good because we're misreading things when we really ought to run.
Posted at 07:53 PM in History | Permalink | Comments (0)
Heaven from Hell? Blue skies from pain?
Posted at 06:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Straight strength pitched into the surliness of the ditch,
A soul you have—strength has always delicate secret reasons.
Your soul is a dull question.
I do not care for your strength, but for your stiff smile at Time—
A smile which men call rust.
Maxwell Bodenheim.
Posted at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
...and the night has cried enough.
Posted at 09:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)