Tag: nasa

the end of an inspiration

Grand Finale 2010-11 from McLean Fahnestock.

I had plans to fly down to Florida to see the very last space-shuttle launch, the one in the bottom right corner, and meet with my best friend from the internet, someone I had never met in spite of a decade of regular correspondence. We were going to watch the ship launch, then road-trip across the American South to New Orleans, stopping along the way to see things like Florida’s Real Live Mermaids and an exotic animal conservatory. It fell through, as many things do – his work schedule changed, the launch was delayed – so the plan changed and I flew to meet him in New York instead. The last star-ship sailed into the sky without us. Now the friendship is dead and so is the shuttle program. We missed out on both history and love and I’m still not sure, a year later, which was the greater tragedy.

today’s most beautiful thing

 

From APOD: “Peering out of the windows of the International Space Station (ISS), astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson takes in the planet on which we were all born, and to which she would soon return. About 350 kilometers up, the ISS is high enough so that the Earth’s horizon appears clearly curved.”

The original, unedited, tweeted direct-from-orbit photo is here, courtesy of astronaut Doug Wheelock.

wish I heard his voice more often

BABIES AS WEAPONS is the most twisted thing you will see today, even if you’re a regular at ModBlog. It’s the inelegant site of XenoSapien, a man in the States who believes he is “suffering from deep feminist-culture side-effects.” I hope he never discovers gifs, as the flame motif is bad enough already. (Warning: for reasons unknown he plays inappropriate music very loudly). The front page has a pencil sketch named MyPain of a woman dressed as a stripper about to whip a prostrate man with a baby that’s still attached to her by an umbilical cord that snakes from between her legs. For added wtf, the diapered baby seems to be angrily shouting into a microphone. The entire thing gives me the quesy feeling he watches Wicker Man and touches himself on Friday nights.

  • “NASA can no longer afford the future.”
  • Plans for making a Jacob’s Ladder from readily available parts.

    Today has been full of unexpected phone calls, disco light moments, when the blare of music fades into almost silence at the exact moment you see her face. Theatre people, friends, night and day. Someone’s finally read my pen written letters, public transit edited. A long distance shout from an ex-lover, three defeated countries away, sunburned voice peeling across the lines, unexpected and welcome and a little puzzling. I love him, but why now? Little mirrors refracting light, circling in the room. Another chrome ring, pick-up-the-phone – a potential investor, in town from Memphis, surprise, someone I’ve been considering handing the project off to once I get it up on its feet and properly connected to my city. (We all know I want to leave.) I’m cancelling my plans this evening so as to see him.

    Just as a reminder: Bertolt Brecht’s Life of Galileo opens tomorrow at The Western Front. Further details here. I’m going, are you? Especially quick comments have a chance at a comp.