The Friggin Longest-Ass Nights of the Year Zone

 

Aliens at Halloween

 

The Upside and Downside of Fall

 

Happy Birthday à moi!!!

 

I was born 59 years ago today, in 1963. That same year, Harvey Ball created the yellow smiley face that became wildly popular and spread across the country on buttons and tee shirts. (The granddaddy to today's emojis). It was like a sign from the universe, letting the world know that my arrival was a time of happiness! (Never mind that this was also the year that valium became available.)  😛 😏

Verily I entered the earthplane at a tumultuous time of upheaval and change. The civil rights clashes were raging, the Beatles were invading, and the race was on to see who could get to outer space first ---the US astronauts, or Timothy Leary? What a time to start being alive!! 

Even the food was otherworldly.  The year of my birth, the gelatin mold held sway and Chicken A la King was king. 

                                Gelatin Mold

                                                                        Chicken A la King ---YUM??? 

The gelatin molds in particular looked like they were about to blast off. I'm convinced this trend came out of the space craze and the need to evoke rocket ships and orbits in everything, even our dinner. 

Observe the yellow galaxy-shaped bowl I grew up with:

Bombarded with imagery of the space-age, it's no wonder I developed a love for anything having to do with space. My favorite breakfast cereal was Quisp ---the spaced out corn bits that were shaped like flying saucers. It showed up on grocery shelves in 1965. 

                   

 I'm amazed we were able to talk my mom into buying Quisp, but with a beguiling Martian like this on the box, how could anyone just roll their shopping cart on by? 

Today some 50+ years later we've actually landed on Mars and though you can't find Quisp in the store, you can buy it online on the interwebs. Civil rights clashes are still raging, two of the Beatles are still creating, and Timothy Leary's transcendental flights are taking off again.    

What a time to keep being alive!  😃😀😎😊

Welcome October!

It's October! October is here! My month of increasing power!

Inexplicable powers, including possibly the power to levitate while pogoing one-handed, as the woman on the right appears to be doing, and even ---gasp! ---wearing loud shades of red and yellow together!  

You may wonder, how does the month of October make my power increase? It's beyond explanation. It's quantum. I think quarks are involved. The charm and strange quarks, most likely. See chart below showing the standard model of particle physics. The charm and strange quarks are marked with a C and S, respectively.    

Fun fact: the Strange quark was first suspected as existing in 1963, the year of my birth, when it was proposed in a theory by Murray Gell-Mann working at Cal-Tech. Coincidence? I think not. 

The whole thing is too complex to explain, but it's something to the effect that when I was born within the month of October the particular climactic geodynamics present at that time left a template, as it were, within my DNA, and that gets activtated when the month comes around and creates an energetic field around me of unknowable, I mean infinite potentialities. (The fact that they are also often unrealized potentialities is besides the point!)

Suffice it to say, my power increases. I feel it singing through my veins. From the first crack of dawn, when I only need to hit my snooze button four times, instead of the customary twelve, before slowly sliding (inching) my way out of bed, to the last owl hoot at night, I am filled with an energy that is  indescribable and to the casual observer, unverifable, but it's there. Oh, it's there. 

And just what shall I do with this burgeoning power? That shall stay as much a mystery as the origins of this power, but rest assured I will use it for the good. 

Unlike some people.....

 

  

Reactions to NASA'S success at hitting the asteroid Dimorphos

 

Untethered Planets

 As it happens the wanderers, vagabonds and drifters who roam our earth's surface have kindred spheres in the cosmos that mirror their rambling movements ---known as "untethered planets." 

Yes, these are planetary nomads that have been described as "orbiting nothing at all."  They are a world unto themselves, floating through the inky void to the beat of their own drummers. Likely thrown out of their orbits eons ago after crashing into stars or other planets, these celestial loners travel as aimlessly as a hobo looking for the next train. Bound by no star or orbital path, they are "rogues" of the galaxy.

When I read about untethered planets in an issue of Discover magazine, I was sad to read that though astronomers believed they existed, they wouldn't be able to detect them for another 10 years, because they needed a sensitive telescope and it would take 10 years for NASA's Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope to be launched. 

Then I looked at the date of the magazine. It was from 2012 ---ten years ago!  OMG we're here!! 

I got the weird sensation I had just time traveled. 

Bring out the WFIRST and bring on the hobo planets!  

UPDATE:  Turns out the Discover article had been a little over-eager. The WFIRST, also known as the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is still in development, expected to launch by May 2027.  Ah dang. Still five more years, sigh....

Well, while we wait, let's learn something about Nancy Grace Roman.... 

 NGR was rare for her time, a female space nerd in the 50's with a degree in Astronomy. She bounced around between observatorys and did cool things like observing the changing emission spectrums of the star AG Draconis and dabbling in non-thermal radio source spectra (whatever the hell that is) and worked on things like geodetics and microwave spectroscopy. She joined NASA six months after it formed in 1959 and eventually became the first female executive at NASA and became the first ever Chief of Astronomy. 

Nancy Badass Grace Roman helped get satellites and rockets off the ground and had to convince Congress to back the Hubble telescope. Thus she became known as "the Mother of Hubble."  

Of all the discoveries made with the Hubble, what this astronoma-mama said was the most interesting was "Dark Energy" (whatever the hell that is.) Well guess what? Dark Energy is believed to be what 73% of the universe is.  

Another 23% is made up of Dark Matter.  Then 4% is hydrogen and helium. 

That leaves less than 1% for all the other odds and ends. The stars... solar systems... floating, untethered planets..........and us.  

 

Un Petit Cafe

There's a cafe 

inside my mind

I go there

now and again

well okay, fairly often

 okay okay, every day

 en fait, I'm there now....

 

Ness County Update

 Bringing ya news from Ness County.....

Not Safe to Drive -- Ode to a 98 Ford Contour Pt. 2

 I've been driving my mom's 98 Ford Contour because my daughter's car crapped out on her and I gave her my 2008 Honda with plans to get myself a new(er) car. But prices so insane right now I've been trying to hold out. So I took the old jalopy into the shop for an inspection. Which led to this tune...

Sideburns

 

 

To hair is human. 

 A "Simone Beyond" production. 

 Music is a sample of Gary Numan's "Down in the Park" which I mutilated and me on my mom's Casio keyboard.

I've got winter survival down to a tea

 I drink a lot of tea during the winter

Ode to a 98 Ford Contour

 I'm driving my mom's 98 Ford Contour because my daughter's car crapped out on her and I gave her my 2008 Honda thinking it was time to get a new car anyway, but car prices are insane right now and who has time to car shop? So I'm begging the Ford to hold it together and get me where I need to go and not strand my ass!