driving and music

I crashed our Earth rover. Perhaps if it had been equipped with six wheels rather than four, this could have been avoided. Alas, Earth rovers generally only have four wheels, unless they are transport units. Never fear, there were no injuries to any living creatures, just an expensive injury to the little blue automobile that/which, nonetheless, is still operable.

What else is in the news? Waves, signals. While producing decals for various other mass-produced pleasure-vehicles at my work-place, I tuned in to a far-out station. The same 50 hard-rock songs by the likes of Van Halen and Guns 'n' Roses become very dreary after a short while, let alone six months, on the job. Most were dreary to begin with. Yet, the station favoured by my Earthly co-workers tends to be the one that plays these dirges. Experimenting with the tuning dial in hopes of finding "K100: Home of the Blues" I discovered that the Blues are once again and appropriately homeless in this icy town. However, meteorological events have brought us "100.7: Breeze FM" to fill the empty glasses of bourbon, scotch and beer.

The Blues have given way to schizophrenic optimism. To paraphrase: "...playing the misses of the 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, and Naughts". BUT you know what? It was amazing. There was so much variety, and all of it up-beat, dorky, weird, optimistic, "refreshing"! There were Polkas; there was Space Aged Pop aplenty; Bryan Adams and Bruce Cockburn were there. Il Divo showed up with Toni Braxton and wrecked the place; Rod Stewart put in an appearance with a lounge number. Nana Mouskouri warbled about undying affection. Old country numbers? CHECK! That Led Zeppelin song they over-play on the old station- not the one about the stairway, the other one about "big-legged women" not having souls- well, I never have to listen to it again. I don't have to hear a repeated song ever again, and that's the way it should be in the 21st century. So much music has been produced by human beings since sound-recording was made possible. Why can't we tune in and hear a little bit of everything?

A small update is in order. In attempting to tune in this morning to this new favourite of mine, I inadvertently discovered another fantastic radio station located at 107 on the FM dial. Nostalgia radio. Along with the Breeze, there is now enough music to keep seniors in Viagra for millennia! How I'd been missing the crackle and hiss of analog. I was stiff for over an hour last night.

on seeing things with fresh eyes.

Hello, all of you apparitions living in my mind, products of my brain and the world without. I've missed you. It seems there is so little time to discuss things with you these days. Busy as bees are we down here. This week of work has come to an end and rewarded me with two days of relative freedom. The progeny is watching Christmas specials with mother. The sun is shining. There is tea steeped; would you like some?

Fresh eyes: euphemistic, sure. One's eyes being well rested does not necessarily grant better vision or understanding. It's the quality of the rest that's most important for me. Ten hours of sleep is sometimes much worse for productivity, thoughtfulness, happiness than five peaceful, relaxed and dream-filled hours.

All this musing was prompted this morning by a simple discovery. It has always been that toilet paper must sit on the hook, dispenser (or what-have-you) with the loose end dangling over the facing side of the roll. Why would anyone's traditions run contrary to this? Well, the progeny has solved the riddle: toddling people (of, say, two solar years' age) like to unravel things, create chaos, act as "agents of change". It allows them to learn. If the loose end of the roll is at the back, then the toddler's natural inclination to spin the roll by pulling down on the facing side will not yield a ream of paper all over the floor.

This is, like everything I suppose, not fool-proof. But it is a good reason to consider the rear-facing-toilet-paper-roll-end. There you are, pass it on. Wars have been caused by less. Let's try to understand one another, even if others are only neurons firing in our brains. Communications.

click click.

http://www.google.com/mars/

The above link is actually self-explanatory, which is not always the case with our virtual addresses. The exception may be the spelling of the word "googol", but most people have stopped picking at that nit by now and have instead embraced lousiness.

Google has taken pictures of everything. Knowledge is power, and we the people seem to deserve, as a democratic right, to be able to know everything. Well, our robot-memories deserve to "know" and we deserve to horde, sit about, and get lazy.

Cinnamon bun for the breakfast? Sorry to change the subject, but I'm outta here! Maybe we'll talk about googols later!

farts.

Even as the current mission to the Red Planet is indebted to the appearance of bacteria, so too are we, down here on the Earthly outpost. Whether some of that living stuff came to the third rock from the fourth in some vaguely-explicable cosmic action is a really fun thought to turn round and round. "I turned into a Martian. Woah-oh-OH! I can't even recall my name...".

I was about to say that thoughts like this have already found their way into our zeitgeist, the comfort of the would-be lone-goer, the alienated, the freak. But using the Misfits as evidence is a dangerous game. Brain-trains get derailed.  Mr. Topham Hatt must warn Thomas the Tank Engine sternly against causing more "confusion and delay". Suddenly the compulsion to write about what Mythic Mrs. Zeitgeist teaches us about the God of War becomes impossible.

A few days ago, in the lunch-room, we opened a newspaper and were met with the leering centre-fold gaze of the new Mars rover, Curiosity. From what I saw spread before us in an attempt to cause awe-inspired swoons at the ingenuity of humans, I can safely say that felines need not forsake their lives just yet. They may go on terrorizing creatures capable of gravity-defying flight, keeping neighbourhoods awake in the wee hours, and relieving themselves in our flower-boxes. Do you remember, lovely reader, the lunar rover of decades past? Yes? Well grant it some modern computers and you have Curiosity. Huperdaughterkind (that's the feminist-sensitive way of putting it, though this project is likely starved of the female touch) is STILL stuck on the six-wheeled dune-buggy. REALLY. Grow up, boys.

Lunches went cold, became inedible, were thrown out. Jaws were too much engaged in the act of dropping to bring themselves to chew. Perhaps I hyperbolize, I don't even know anymore. What about a small android boy that can walk upright, uses laser-guided trowels (dare I say "in real time"?), has thousand-mile long harpoon-drills for fingers and operates an impervious suction-cup bubble vehicle that can roll up cliffs as he crawls within? No, N.A.S.A. is going with the dune buggy again. Dune buggies are the best thing for uncovering methane. And where there are farts, there is life.

So, let us go around the corner to see what the artists are coming up with when it comes to Space Exploration:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUr1zGq5OMM

Ah! Eh? Yes.

curiosity

As some of you must have heard or read by now, the American National Aeronautics and Space Administration (N.A.S.A.) has launched its most recent exploratory mission to Mars. This happened today, the 26th of November 2011. The spacecraft is due to reach the Red Planet in August 2012, after having traversed more than 300 million miles. I would like to go on record as being the first to say "Are we there yet?".

weak

It's a terrible waste of virtual space, this sharing of links. But we feel compelled. Not since Walter White discussed the discovery of water on Mars with the father of the junkie girl-friend he had allowed to die that same night, choking on her vomit, have we felt so compelled. Thank you "Breaking Bad" and Toronto Sun.

http://www.torontosun.com/2011/11/20/delaware-names-ambassador-to-mars

Space travellers! Time travellers! It all sounds very grand, and yet we all do it every day. That's what is so lovely about the ho-hum. It's really hocus-pokus. Just look a little bit more closely. Boredom is the first resort of the small-minded. Or would that be sarcasm? Sarcasm is pretty boring once you've practiced it for a while. Movin' on up!

It was our intent here at the hop to provide you with some entertaining reading of a decent length this morning. Unfortunately, a clean sweep of personal "E" accounts, a review of how they are connected to one another, and a massive clean-up of spam-spam-spam-spam-wonderful-spam-glorious-spam and old messages (hereafter and forevermore referred to as "E"s, new and old) needed to be undertaken. I dived in (not dove; a dove is a bird, not a verb) and wrestled the kraken. It pulled me down, down, down, to its dark abysmal home. Fortunately, I can hold my breath for a very long time as I am used to travel in places lacking any oxygen at all. (Most of you dear readers can relate, yes? Holding your breath for the next instalment, here?) I cut through the electric webbings of the monster's prison and swam to freedom. It is nice to breath again. Put Radiohead's "The Bends" on. It is the day's prescribed listening. Go back in time! To the nineties! Why would anyone want to?!
Love,
zpzmn!