Say Goodnight, Gracie

(not STS-135 but still a nice photo; "beep beep beep")

I was in second grade when the first Space Shuttle launched.  My teacher had asked the day before if one of the students could bring in a TV for us to watch the launch in the classroom.  This was before the days of DirecTV, the web (!), cable (for the most part), pretty much anything that involved TV in quantity vs quality. Broadcast TV in Puerto Rico at the time meant 3 stations and a scattering of wannabe's.  The notion that "this is going to be on TV without commercial break tomorrow and we're going to watch it" was as big a deal as it sounds.  Think Walter Cronkite-JFK assassination and then turn it around.

I remember her closing the windows to darken the room (it was a small b&w set that someone brought in) and us sitting on the tiled floor up-front from our desks around the blue light, not really knowing what the deal was but.....

3....2...1....

and it took off.   COLUMBIA.

My other classroom memory of the Shuttle, sadly, was in seventh grade when the principal came in and just blankly said "it blew up".  The teacher was not pleased, and not because her class had been interrupted.

Thirteen lifetimes later, it seems, it's over.  I'm not sad for the Shuttle program itself; there's always a better way to do something, even if it takes some time.  Give it time.

(link & image go to 30 years of Shuttle launches, with nice music)

Ben Stein is an Asshole

I just want to say, for the record, that Ben Stein is an asshole. This is not a new thought of mine; he's just facilitating the publicity of it. I'm not suggesting that that French guy is guilty; I'm just suggesting that Ben Stein is an asshole.

http://spectator.org/archives/2011/05/17/presumed-innocent-anyone

... because he thinks that some people should be treated differently than others when it comes to crime process.

In case you're wondering who Ben Stein is, this is what he looks like:





Hi Ben! Good luck being treated like everyone else.

For those of you who have not yet found that special someone....

Click.

A new addition

So my mom's meet'n'greet with her coop board went well.  Looks like the sale is going to happen.

I just found out earlier, as I was walking her into the building that is soon to be her building, that across the street on 72nd lives the last shrink I talked to.  That was some years ago.



The awkward part of that is that I recognized the building because of the berry bushes out front, and I remembered collecting some and putting them in my pocket before going in for a session, at the time then.



Most awkward, of course, due to Yoko Ono coming out of the Dakota, next door, waving John Lennon's femur around like a shillelagh yelling "No berry picking.. No berry picking!  Sacred berries.. you leave berries be!"





... and what are you gonna do when you've already half-chewed the berries?

Rice-a-Roni -based Pastime

While I was in Puerto Rico (no connection) recently I got the idea of a new form of haiku: an exceptionally short, pithy poem that would be shoehorned into a particular metric and rhythm... except that instead of following the traditional haiku 3-line form of


5 syllabes
7 syllabes
5 syllabes


... it would follow the metric and rhythm of the refrain from the Rice-a-Roni jingle:

RICE-[pause] a-Roni [pause]: the San Francisco treat!

Some examples:

Sal-[pause] mo-nella: it comes out of both ends!

Kir-[pause]sty Alley: she washes Xenu's car!

Asp-[pause]ber-ger's:  Even mom thinks you're weird!


Try it yourself, it's fun!

A Metric Collins

A Collins is a linear unit of measure.

It describes the minimum distance that one may cast offshore in a rowboat and sing along (boombox optional) to "I Wish It Would Rain Down" at full voice during a deluvial downpour without the neighbors calling the cops.

David Gregory's Head is Huge (pt 2)

rAs I've pointed out before

Ebert Reviews 127 Hours: "Oh Yes We Could"

This is a difficult review to take at face value, having been written by a man who had his jaw surgically removed as a necessary result of oncological complications.  It almost comes across as a little angry at the end -- having been handed a similar anatomical fate as the protagonist.  But of course he must be forgiven (and admired) for that.  Nobody I know has been at all close to either type of situation.

But, oh, no, we all couldn't, necessarily.

She wants to go to school

Both of these images are, strictly speaking, outdated (in that the first was illustrated by Norman Rockwell in the 60s and the latter was a photograph taken in Central America in the late 80s), yet both very much timely.

If only we all had US marshalls (with the right political backing) when push comes to shove.

Now we KNOW the guy is doing it to get his jollies

Since Jobs's goal from the beginning was clearly to be obstructionist, he could have easily just ignored her email (as, obviously, he does 99.999% of the emails he gets through his public/personal email address, out of simple time-management necessity).  But he didn't.  He sure didn't.

http://gawker.com/5641211/steve-jobs-in-email-pissing-match-with-college-journalism-student