A few weeks ago I wrote about space junk. This entry’s a bit different. And yes, while this stuff was deliberately placed there, it’s not your garden-variety space program detritus. It’s all simply for fun.
My first entry has an awful lot to do with “Star Wars,” which, thanks to Disney utterly saturating the market without mercy, hasn’t quite gone this far to promote their film. In fact, the producers of this little clever snippet are garnering worldwide attention just to snatch a couple of opening night tickets. Hey, for what it’s worth, I say these guys deserve it! Attaching an X-wing fighter to a weather balloon’s a pretty nifty idea and puts a bit of a scientific spin on a sci-fi icon.
But why stop at an X-wing fighter? Haven’t you ever wondered what would happen if a pink glazed doughnut took a updraft hike?
Credit: Stratolys
Curiosity knows no bounds as a small team of Swedes gather in what appears to be a running track and launched the first doughnut into space. There’s little fanfare, but it seems the Coast Guard comes to the rescue.
Now that you fought a war and ate a doughnut because you’re starved, how about celebrating your achievements with some space whisky? Ria Misra from i09 writes about gross-tasting, overpriced whisky that Ardbeg, a single malt Islay Scotch whisky company tested, was sent in space to the ISS in 2011 and returned to earth in 2014. Hey, it was worth a try, eh?
Credit: Ardbeg
Clearly, those with enough money and resources know what’s going to capture attention. Sure, doughnuts and X-wing fighters are great do-it-yourself projects. But we’re talking classy booze here! Discriminating palates await! After a hard day’s walk out into the Great Vacuum, you’re going to relax and take a nip or two.
But for those of us stuck here on the ground, there’s always this:
I’ll admit I’m the first person who hates flying, but I do it anyway. That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the vessels that transport people from A to B. However, the winged method of transportation I’m talking about here are joyrides of a different kind – military style.
Yes, this past weekend Stewart Airport hosted the New York Air Show, a parade of the latest and vintage military aerial vehicles dating back to World War II. My husband, Andrew Chattaway, a photographer, shot all of the pictures you will see (except the one above – I did that). Andrew, me and our son Matt braved the heat and crowds of 15,000 people to get up close to classic planes and helicopters. I even had the chance to go inside a Chinook and sit in the pilot’s seat. Despite $3.00 bottles of water, parking about a two days’ journey away and standing the entire four hours we were there, we had a magnificent time.
Here, let me show you some of the sights of this fantastic show. And if anyone’s looking to do research for space vehicles, you’ll find plenty of inspiration here!
Credit: Andrew Chattaway
Credit: Andrew Chattaway
This is a beautiful example of a B-Class Bomber from World War II with its payload doors open.
Credit: Andrew Chattaway
Here’s a U.S. Marine Corps AV-88 Harrier. This bad boy’s totally cool feature is that it hovered over the runway for what seemed like ever, much to the crowd’s appreciation.
Credit: Andrew Chattaway
U.S. Army helicopter rescue demonstration, achieved in mere moments.
Credit: Andrew Chattaway
Geico Skytypers do an amazing job of scrolling trails and daredevil stunts
Credit: Andrew Chattaway
Old-fashioned stunt flying that made everyone, us included, hold our breath.
Credit: Andrew Chattaway
The U.S. Navy F-18 Super Hornet flies gracefully in just about any direction – straight, sideways or upside down.
Credit: Andrew Chattaway
Here’s a U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor really showed everyone that it pretty much could do anything, including blast out our eardrums. It went past us at 700 miles per hour and left such a retort that my ear, blocked by my hands, banged anyway. Take a look at this thing – it really seems like some kind of alien attack vessel, you know, the kind that comes down by the millions from the mother ship hovering just above our atmosphere.
Credit: Andrew Chattaway
At the end of the show flew a top-of-the-line WWII fighter plane next to the F-22 Raptor. At first glance, it doesn’t seem like much of a comparison. Yet both flew proudly and with such grace, it really was a marvel to watch. The F-22 slowed to keep in time with its much older companion, but it didn’t take away from the fact that both protected our nation and allies.
Well, I hope Andrew’s photos inspire you to write some really good speculative sci-fi, military sci-fi, what your father did during the war (any) or present you with the opportunity just to marvel at some really incredible feats of aviation engineering. Enjoy!
Steampunk surrounds itself with proto-modern examples of past ingenuity updated for today. Take, for example, the above video. It’s described as the best steampunk robot of 2014. I didn’t fact-check to make certain it was, I merely took its word. What’s obvious is any steampunking robot has to prove its worth by dancing…and it does…to great accolades from the audience.
A category woefully underrepresented is animated Steampunk. James Lopez, a former Disney animator, has set about to create his dream, Hullabaloo. He crowd funded the project and updates are regularly found on the Hullabaloo Facebook Page and official website. Using 2-D techniques instead of computers, this project does homage to the past by actually recreating it – by hand drawing the cels, just like they did back in the day.
Has anyone seen this? It’s been making a tour of Facebook pages over the globe. How do I know? Just Google it and you’ll see. Here’s dancing of a sort, although I must admit I have no idea what’s the purpose. Sure, the guy in silver seems to be a superhero type, beating up the Godzilla-ish beast, but how does the bear-y thing justify jumping hysterically while clutching Godzilla’s tail? I mean, what’s really going on here?
This, my friends, is a classic. I first saw this Kikkoman anime around the turn of the millennium. A friend sent it to me when emails were still kind of new and fresh, as was the internet. As far as bizarre things go, this one definitely holds the test of time. The accompanying tune is unavoidably infectious – just try to not hum, “Kikkoman, Kikkoman, show you, show me…” It shows even better if you’re altering your own reality through artificial means, too.
Hope you didn’t make any plans to take that much-needed restful vacation to Puerto Rico from September 15-28, 2015. And while that’s the heart of the hurricane season, this wrath-of-nature event’s going to create giant waves not as the result of intense low pressure, but the crashing of a honking huge space rock. Yes, folks, this sucker’s got our name on it and it’s that apocalyptic nightmare we’ve been long warned about. So if any of you were thinking about paying bills or going to college, your time’d be better spent making plans of an otherworldly sort – the kind that involves a sudden belief in religion and hoping that all of those priests, preachers and other sorts are right.
NOT!
Oh geez, here we go again. Once again, life on Earth is going to end. Or that’s what they’d like you to believe on the internet.
So much buzz and inquiry flew around in cyberspace that the American authority on such matters, NASA, had to release a statement that categorically denied our home planet’s days were numbered.
As things go, this latest rumor of our planet’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. There is no asteroid, the Earth is still planning to turn and as far as vacations to Puerto Rico are concerned, it’s still hurricane season and you still might want to check the forecast before you leave.
Back in 1982, a rare alignment of all nine planets (back then, Pluto was considered one) occurred. Our entire solar system lined up within a 95° arc, all on one side of the sun in March of that year. This amazing event prompted horrific rumors of devastating earthquakes, shifts in gravitational forces and life as we know it’d go the way of Betamax players (also popular at the time). And no Earth-ending force would be complete without California’s San Andreas fault sliding off the West Coast and offering the residents of Arizona the beachfront property they’d been longing for. Of course, no one would have even given this planetary lineup a second thought had it not been for the book written by John Gribbin, Ph.D., and Stephen Plagemann, called The Jupiter Effect, published in 1974. For some reason, nothing really happened except nighttime sky observers had a fantastic view. Not long after, Gribbin and Plagemann published, The Jupiter Effect Reconsidered, backtracking to say the actual event occurred in 1980 and was responsible for the monumental eruption of Mt. St. Helens. Finally, in 1999, Gribbin admitted he might have been mistaken about the whole thing.
There seems to be no end of apocalyptic predictions, it seems – humankind thrives on them. Most of them seem to revolve around Christ coming again and bible predictions, or some deity wreaking havoc, or even a random event magically pull the plug on our planet. To illustrate, Wikipedia has a fairly comprehensive (although by no means complete) list of popular end-of-it-all predictions. Suffice it to say, we’re all still here.
Why is it seemingly so popular to want life to end on our planet? Lots of reasons. Those in power used it as a means to control less sophisticated types, while others, through limited means of scientific understanding, considered such celestial events as comets to be a omen of death. The same goes for plagues, droughts and other extreme weather events, earthquakes, eclipses and more. I remember as a kid hearing Pat Robertson of the 700 Club predict the world would end in 1982. Why? He was a big fan of the Antichrist and figured that’d be a good time as any for the devil to show up. That, and this prediction bolstered viewers for his popular TV show. Hey, wouldn’t you want the latest details of your demise? Of course, if you were God’s Chosen, you’d be lifted up in The Rapture…and all of his viewers were special, natch.
Alas, as long as humans trod the earth, there will be naysayers for its future. The Assyrians are famously known for making this oft-quoted prediction, way back in 2800 BC:
“Our Earth is degenerate in these later days; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; every man wants to write a book and the end of the world is evidently approaching.”
I’ve been glancing through the headlines, as most of you do, I’m sure, to not only figure out what’s going on in this world but perhaps troll up some fodder for fiction. When I’m stuck or need a break, I put down the project at hand, pick this up and scan headlines. Not blogs or other social media, but that quaint little collection of light grey pages that lands at the end of a driveway or plops on a porch.
Yep. A newspaper.
I subscribe to two local papers, have several digital subscriptions and read all sorts of magazines, both online and print. Listen to a whole bunch of different podcasts. From these sources, a virtual (literally) treasure trove of really neat stuff’s just waiting to be picked and eaten, occasionally alive. Though you might already know the stories and the sources, it’s worth consideration for sci-fi stories.
Random inspiration: El Nino (“the child” – male), a slumbering pre-conquistedor kid, awakes from his long-forgotten grave when San Diego sewer workers open up a bit of the freeway to repair a broken water main. See, this kid’s the ancient victim of a sacred ritual wherein young innocents’ lives were sacrificed to The Holy One in order to bring warmth and water for crops to grow. Trouble is, after one long, lingering look at his hot wet-nurse, this youngster planned to grow to adulthood. Kid’s last thoughts, right before his neck slicing, conjured up a curse, promising a time when his bones are discovered, he’ll unleash his vengeance and both fry and flood California. So when our unsuspecting sewer workers jackhammer and pickax the asphalt on a typical July morning, the steam rising from the broken pipe isn’t evidence of a pipe failure, it’s EL NINO manifesting a physical form so he can wreaked havoc with the weather…and unite with the one woman who’d give him what he needed.
Random inspiration: Though they might appear to be missing Japanese climbers, they are, in fact, only the remains of higher ascended beings who shed their disguises after studying the lives of those on Earth. Meeting at the foot of the Matterhorn glacier, their intergalactic stellercaster ship gracefully landed when said mountain, enveloped in dense fog, provided a safe and mysterious curtain for rescue. Once aboard, duo relates horrific story of nuclear war, cold war, resource depletion and disintegrating moral values, especially those having to do with free love. Ignoring all of the former and attentive to only the latter observation, lonely shipmates ditch the spacecraft to come ashore on this wild planet to learn a few firsthand lessons of their own.
So you see? It’s not much of a leap from reality to sci-fi. All that’s needed is a quick read between the lines and a spin on the details. After all, it’s what politicians do every day. Why not you?
So there I was, minding my own business and typing last Thursday’s blog entry – something about creating a new genre of fiction – when I thought I’d put in a handy, useful link. There were a few books I wanted to gather up links for, so I set about searching for the first – Stephen King’s “On Writing.” Since I was in a bit of a rush, trying to finish the blog before I made dinner, I noticed there were several Amazon site links for that book. That’s pretty common. I clicked on one to copy. Within nanoseconds, up came several pop-up windows telling me I had a security alert – one pop-up window literally spoke to me – and behind the speaking pop-up I could see something was downloading.
On top of that, a phone number appeared telling me I must call it immediately. Foolishly I did, out of idle curiosity – and I asked immediately who it was I was speaking to and how much this is going to cost. Not getting any real answer, I hung up. Okay, okay, you’re all going to call me an idiot for doing that. But you know what? I was panicked and on sensory overload. Normally, I’m as sensible as galoshes in a rainstorm. In this instance, I was a hair’s breadth from collapsing into a puddle of goo.
Then I shut down my computer, closed its display/lid over the keyboard and stared at it, as if experiencing a bad dream or a silly one-off that’d go away the moment I lifted the lid….which I did. Turning it back on, the evil pop-ups still lurked on the screen, menacing my desktop and covering my blog entry. I couldn’t close the pop-up windows, so I closed the browser.
Andrew, my husband, just happened to call and I spewed out the rapidly-disintigrating chain of events. My entire life flashed before my eyes (oh, c’mon, you can’t tell me your computer isn’t your entire center of being?). Calmly, he asked me to recite the series of events for him. Desperate to wish this unfortunate series of missteps away, I did, hoping for a seed of a solution.
“Did you back everything up?” Andrew asked.
“Well, most of it…and I thought our server did that,” I replied.
Okay, now this brings up two issues: “most of it” and “server.”
“Most of it” means I had my first book, latest draft, the one my agent now has, saved on two sticks. I’ve mailed it to myself, too. My latest book, a work-in-progress, saved on a stick and the server, but as I was working on it, not the very latest, up-to-the-minute version. Old incarnations/drafts of my first book – yes, on a stick drive, but not the server. Other files were saved on stick drives but I know I had other random files not saved anywhere.
“Server” means if our auto backup to the server backed up my work-in-progress book while the malware infected my computer…don’t want to think what might have come next…firewalls do come in handy…but so does disconnecting the internet from the wireless router. Nothing gets past if there’s no way it can get in, period.
Grabbing the travel case, I shoved my Mac into it, yelled something to my son like he can help himself to whatever’s in the fridge, hopped into my car and jammed onto the rush-hour traffic on the highway. I’m kicking myself, repeating what a dope I am for allowing this to happen, and am especially unforgiving about calling the number. When did I become soooo stupid? Sped like lightning to our local Geek Squad, stood in line while fighting to maintain calm. The woman who stood next to me made me laugh – her smartphone kept turning off and on and she was powerless to stop it. It was quite funny, actually – even she was laughing. “If I dropped it, yeah, sure, I can see something like this happening, but I didn’t do anything! This is all this phone’s idea,” she said.
The techie calls me forward and I swallow before explaining my actions to him. I feel like an idiot. With the manner of a emergency room doctor, in a soothing, calm voice he said, “You’re not the first one this has happened to, nor will you be the last. Macs are increasingly vulnerable to both malware and viruses. Give me a minute,” he said, disappearing through plastic sheets into a back room. After about five tension-filled minutes, he came out and said, “All right. Here’s the good news. From what we can tell, the malware didn’t execute, so that makes this situation a whole lot easier. It seems we can save everything, clean ‘er out and make everything right again, but it’ll take a few days since it’s the summer, people are on vacation and we’re short-staffed right now. So the bad news is, we have a seven-day turnaround right now. If you can wait that long, we’ll do the job.”
All I heard is, “The patient’s going to live.”
I gratefully thank him as I hand over my credit card, ignoring the ridiculous amount it’s going to cost to repair it. At least the service contract will last two years and the software that goes to protect it can be installed on two more computers.
It’s not until I get in the car and am on the highway that I realize it’s dark and 9:00 pm…and haven’t had dinner. Ah well, not hungry at all, after this. I arrive at home and walk in the house, handing Andrew the software as he asks me for details. He installs the software and it scans all of our networked files, as well as those on our hard drives and everything comes up clean (we have several computers). In the end, this story turns out well. I’ll get my computer back in a few days, I have another one to use but still, when I think how this could have turned out?
My God, what a nightmare.
Folks, drop whatever you’re doing RIGHT NOW AND BACK EVERYTHING UP!!!
Maybe you read The New York Time’s July 16, 2015 article regarding a fragment of a Russian weather satellite passing near ISS caused one astronaut and two cosmonauts to enter a Soyuz capsule until the all clear was issued. It wasn’t the first time something like this happened, nor will it be the last.
Take a look at the above picture. That’s a graphic representation of all of the flotsam and jetsam from the entire planet’s space industries. First, blame it on the United States and Russia. Then, blame it on any nation that dared test the limits of gravity. Pretty soon, anything as minuscule as a paint fleck to a section of a satellite remained at various levels of orbit, zooming around at 175,000 mph/281,640 km/h. Occasionally bits fall to earth, succumbing to gravity and burning up harmlessly as they enter the atmosphere.
NASA and the Department of Defense keep an excellent log of anything larger than a softball and if any debris comes close enough to the ISS, both Houston and Moscow work together to plan a strategy to keep the inhabitants safe. If a threat is deemed plausible, all are instructed to go into the ISS’s lifeboats – the Soyuz capsules – in case a quick getaway is necessary.
But this poses a larger problem: what’s being done to clean up the mess? Simply ask this question to Google and you’ll get numerous responses on various sites. Space.com has an article listing 7 Wild Ways. Popular Mechanics has its own solutions.Here’s what Mental Floss has to say.
The truth is, nothing’s being done…yet. Sure, the idea’s been kicked around, maybe even a few plans surfaced. It seems getting there and back takes priority over all the mess it takes to accomplish our goals. It’s a junkyard, for sure, and like the neighbor who refuses to let go of all the cars (and their subsequent parts) owned over the past 30 years, it’s unsightly, only getting worse, and isn’t going away.
Of course, there’s been a multitude of sci-fi inspiration drawn from this. Take, for example, the recent movie “Gravity,” wherein Sandra Bullock’s character Ryan Stone finds herself floating in space untethered thanks to a run-in with remains. David Brin’s novel, “Existence” tells the story of an alien artifact tucked among the pieces of debris.
Sadly, this is a commentary on how the inhabitants of this planet choose to deal with exploration and conquering the impossible. Mt. Everest is defiled by the remains of extreme tourism. Roman ruins scattered about their former empire faced years of abuse from casual visitors seeking an up-close inspection.
SpaceX, to its credit, is developing multistage rockets that return to earth to be used in future missions. It’s facing challenges with no successes yet, but it’s not giving up and it’s getting closer with each try. They do seem to be one exception, though.
Until we learn that exploration often results in exploitation and near-irreversable damage, perhaps any further missions might benefit from following SpaceX’s lead. If not, there won’t be any room up there to put a satellite nor will be be safe to remain in any space station.
I’ve been back for a week, yet I’m struggling to figure out what to write in this blog. I’ve so much to say about Pluto, the near miss up in the ISS and Ant-Man, but my thoughts keep drifting back to my recent vacation. So why not blog about that? It was, after all, the last subject of my blog.
Andrew and I took a trip that amounted to 4000+ miles/6437+ kilometers, driving through New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, all in 15 days. For those of you who are unfamiliar with such places, check it out on a map. Looks doable, right? That’s what we said. And sure, it is. However, possibilities always come with caveats and, in our case, ambition met with reality. Our car ate up the miles and burned through its recent oil change all in one journey, but it didn’t complain once.
I have to tell you, it was an AMAZING adventure that I hope to repeat…just not all at once. Be that as it may…
We started out one early morning and drove clear up to Maine in one shot – nine hours – and settled in Freeport, Maine, home of L.L. Bean and their grammatically incorrect sign, unless you really don’t want people kissing outside your store:
It’s a charming town, so we stayed overnight, shopped a bit at the 24-hour L.L. Bean, then continued on the next morning through the vast expanse that is Maine. Traveling along State Highway 9, we discovered its beauty – and its remoteness. Feeling hungry and needing a pit stop, there wasn’t a single place to pull over and eat. Sure, there were a few convenience stores with take-out menus, but no toilets. Luckily, we found a place just when our bladders and stomachs nearly gave up hope. About an hour and a half later we arrived at Lubec, where we crossed into Canada.
Up until relatively recently, Americans and Canadians had to show only a driver’s license to cross the border. Now, we need passports or an enhanced license, which contains much of the same information one has on its driver’s license embedded in it. But that doesn’t stop anyone from enjoying each other’s nation’s treasures.
Our goal was Campobello Island, where Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt had a summer cottage (a term I’ll use loosely) and also the location where he caught crippling polio that prevented him from walking for the rest of his life…but didn’t stop him from becoming the greatest American president ever.
From there, we took a tiny ferry across to Deer Island, and because the tide wasn’t going the right way, we missed the world’s largest natural whirlpool – looks like a sink draining. Another ferry put us into St. John, NB, and quite possibly the worst motel room we’ve ever had, ever. But it was only for one night and the drive to it was quite beautiful – saw a moose! – and then it was up to Moncton.
We eventually wound up at Confederation Bridge, a bridge so long it took three songs playing on the radio to keep us entertained while we crossed. It was totally cool, though. PEI is one of these magical places that you trip upon at some point in your life and swear you’re coming back. Lucy Maud Montgomery felt sufficiently inspired to write “Ann of Green Gables,” and we were lucky enough to stay across the street from the home that inspired her to write said book.
The next day, we rode horses on some Martian-red sand and hopped a ferry from PEI to Nova Scotia, just in time to celebrate Canada Day.
Tides are insaaaaaane! Check out the below photo:
Now this is a low tide! Andrew’s in the lower right hand corner, crouching as he snaps a photo. That’ll give you some perspective on how empty the beach becomes after the water ebbs.
After Nova Scotia we drove north and headed to Newfoundland. We took the 8-hour ferry to Port-aux-Basques, giving me ample time to finish “The Caves of Steel” by Isaac Asimov, nap, eat and take artful selfies.
Hey, we were bored…
Newfoundland’s AMAZING. Nothing short of. However, take my advice – DO NOT plan to drive from Port-aux-Basques to St. John’s in one day. It’s something like 570 miles/913 km/12 hours in one go. Andrew and I are idiots. We said f*** it, let’s go. So we did. Along the way, we saw this:
…which led to this:
Yes, he boldly went where many moose dare to go – in the middle of the highway – and I was driving, but luckily he chose to run back into the woods and not total our car, but not before Andrew took his incriminating photo.
Because Newfoundland is packed with pristine beauty, we stopped frequently. Even took the time to nip into Terra Nova Provincial Park.
Finally, we came to St. John’s, saddle sore but relieved. Loved that city the moment I stepped into it, not because it was the end of the road (finally), but because it’s a happening town all lit up like an Easter basket under a Christmas tree.
However, we had a mission: icebergs. We were not disappointed.
There are no words to describe that iceberg that accurately conveys its size or majesty. That’s the ice field an iceberg leaves behind – just as dangerous as the iceberg itself. Later on our tour, Andrew and I were screeched – listened to a Newfie recite the history of the province, taught us a saying in Newfie tongue, we had to repeat said (incomprehensible) phrase, kiss a frozen cod and take a shot of rum. Afterwards, we received a certificate declaring us Screeched and honorary Newfoundlanders.
Alas, we turned around and headed back towards the ferry (another 13-hour drive) and over to Nova Scotia once more to enjoy Bras d’Or Lake and a coastal assortment of lighthouses, then a fun-filled evening in Halifax, only to have lunch in Moncton once again and depart Canada over a very friendly crossing at St. Stephen, New Brunswick to Calais, Maine. In fact, both towns are so close you see license plates from both New Brunswick and Maine in each town’s streets.
A quick stop in Bar Harbor, Maine and Sturbridge, Massachusetts over the next two days ended with our arrival at home.
It’s that time of year, in these parts of the world, at least, that one rises off of one’s bottom and seeks adventure, or a break from the routine, at least. This New York State person is headed out, way out, to the above pictured place. Can you guess where that might be?
Gas is relatively cheap now. Put that together with the American love of cars. The result? Pack it to the gills and set off somewhere that you’ve never been before. See, the advantage of a road trip is that you don’t have to juggle weights in suitcases to shove them in a 747’s cargo hold. You have the absolute freedom to take every single pair of pants you own, twenty pairs of shoes, all your T-shirts, most of your sweaters and about eighty percent of your socks and underwear. So what if the trunk won’t close – there’s no weight restriction!
Andrew and I decided we’d head off to Atlantic Canada: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland. I’ve been to Canada a bunch of times, just not there. Andrew’s never set foot in the country. I happen to think it’s a fine place worth visiting over and over again. It is, after all, right next door.
As a kid, I dreamed of going to Nova Scotia after seeing such dramatic photos of the Bay of Fundy in a National Geographic magazine. Having grown up on the New Jersey shore, the Atlantic there seemed pretty tame, only eating up a relatively small chunk of the beach at high tide. Here, the beach either vanished entirely or the ocean disappeared. Wow! Years later, after Andrew and I married, he showed me the dramatic tides in Cornwall, England, where he’s from. That was pretty cool, but my curiosity about the Bay of Fundy never abated.
I trolled the Internet looking for cool places to visit and pretty soon, the itinerary filled up with New Brunswick – we’re crossing in Maine and I want to see Campobello Island (where President Roosevelt contracted polio and left him crippled). Then up to Nova Scotia, PEI and Newfoundland added spots in our must-see list. Tell you what, though, this website for Newfoundland won me over. It’s not like I didn’t want to see it, this quirky website made it impossible not to.
No trip is complete without a reading list. It’s going to be time for me to catch up on my classic sci-fi and I’m bringing along a selection of Asimov, Bradbury and one or two others to read, mostly on that 8-hour ferry ride between New Sydney, NS and Newfoundland. Andrew’s reading “Existence” by David Brin and “The Martian” by Andy Weir. I fully intend to abscond with both at some point.
But for now, as we set out on our epic adventure, I might just stare out the window and enjoy the sites on our own fair planet. Or look up and see my favorite constellations in different places. Cross fingers, there could be an aurora – sunspot activity’s been kicking up. I’m hoping to find enough wi-fi sites to do a few postings. And who knows? Maybe I’ll see one of those icebergs drifting by.
Writing is hard, let’s face it. Inspiration is short, patience nonexistent. And there you are, sitting in front of your computer, in absolute agony, trying to conjure up an image of a beast that’s the favorite companion of the King of Darcoia, that planet just to the left of Asysamia, right out there in the Booidad Triad. He’s been looking for a pet since his wife left him and his kids pretty much blew him off. What more can a person need than unconditional love from a favored snuggleupicus? Or your favorite little mumuchka?
On Huffington Post this week, an article regarding an adorable little creature appeared. She seemed fresh from another planet, ready and willing to charm anyone with her cute face and eyes like those of the Greys/Grays. Was she the product of an experiment, perhaps some intergalactic cross-breeding? Sure seems it, eh? This is exactly the sort of creature you’d see in a parody of space films OR a serious new race of aliens bearing the dual purpose of charming the natives to deceive them cruelly.
Oh yes, another creature that defies explanation – the tardigrade. It’s actually microscopic, but from the looks of it, a tardigrade most certainly bears the features of an alien. It’s so puffy and wrinkly, yet it’s got that cog-like snout – does it adjust the puff/wrinkle setting somehow?
The Blobfish almost reminds me of the cartoon character Ziggy, drawn by Tom Wilson. Got to admit, there’s a VERY strong resemblance. However, before you draw conclusions, what you see is the result of bringing a deep water fish up to the surface, where the pressure is much different. Here’s an artist’s drawing of what a blobfish really looks like deep below the ocean’s surface:
Blobfish hold the distinction of being internet celebrities and rate many YouTube shorts. Here’s a good one that offers not only a little informational tidbit but music inspired by it:
Science calls this Grimpoteuthis, but it’s more popularly known as the Dumbo Octopus. I say it’s one of those creatures where you give it a squeeze and its little snout pops out. Or, one plops it on top of one’s cubicle wall and invites people to ask silly questions about it. They’re actually very graceful swimmers and resemble a sort-of elephant when full grown; the above is a baby.
Moon, Stars and Beyond 