Category: General

Since I’m buried in work lately, here’s a lolcat that expresses how I feel sometimes.

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Hope y’all have a great weekend.

While I sit around and not work on my NaNo project and not blog, I’ll still think of my readers and share this not-an-actual-commercial for Trader Joe’s, a place I never shop at but which seems like a place I should.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdB7GDZY3Pk&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0]

(I’m talking about the hot moms in their yoga clothes. Oh, and all the delicious food.)

I stole the video from my my awesome totally personal and bestest friend ever and he totally knows me and didn’t just pose for a picture with me when he was in town, Wil Wheaton and his blog post about W00tstock.

OK, back to not writing. Ciao, bellas!

I may be blogging even less than usual here; National Novel Writing Month began at midnight last night, and I am doing it this year.

I’m not just participating; I am going to do it – I’m going to write 50,000 words. It may not be a novel, but I’m sure a story will emerge from my frantic writing.

Tomorrow is the 6th anniversary of the first post I ever wrote on this blog. 2,223 posts (not counting 54 draft posts that have yet to, and may never, be published) and who knows how many words?

Do all my posts here tell a story? Sure, I suppose. Someday I may try to make one of them.

But for this month, I am going to create something entirely new, from nothing but my brain and experiences and creativity.

Thanks to everyone still reading. I’ll check in from time to time, and after this month is over, I will be launching a more focused blog.

There will be spoilers for the most recent episode of Mad Men below.

Here, I’ll give you some space to scroll past.

That should be enough. Someday I’ll figure out how to include a “cut” in Blogger.

Am I just getting wiser to the writers’ thematic tricks, or was it all a bit obvious this week? The episode was called “The Hobo and The Gypsy”, and the first connection I made, of course, was to little Dickie Whitman’s encounter with a hobo waaaaay back in the day. I believe that was in Season One. But the Gypsy?

I’ve learned to watch the show by asking myself, “What is the theme of this scene? What are they trying to say?” and in every scene in this episode, the characters were being asked to make a choice between either their past, or their future. Annabelle, the rich horse-farm client (and past lover of Roger Sterling) was trying to salvage the past reputation of her daddy’s business. And she was trying to reclaim her past fond memories of Roger in pre-war Paris. For the first, Don tried, oh, how he tried, to sell her on the idea of abandoning the past by changing the name of the dog food that her beautiful horses became. Let go of the past and create a new future – it’s obvious to us why Donald Fucking Draper would see that as the ultimate solution, right?

And Roger’s choice, too, was for the future – his beautiful young bride, Jane, instead of his beautiful old lover, Annabelle. Or so we were led to think; never once did Roger mention his wife by name when turning down Annabelle. “You’re not [the one]”, he said, implying or allowing Annabelle to infer that the one was, in fact, Jane. But then what are we to make of Roger taking the phone call from poor Joanie, asking a favor? “You want to be on some people’s minds,” he said, “Some people, you don’t.” He liked the idea of being on Joan’s mind, didn’t he?

Dr. Greg, Joan’s husband, was also clinging to the past – he wanted to be a surgeon, but didn’t make the cut. Apparently being a psychiatrist isn’t good enough for him, in spite of all Joan’s coaching and prep work on his behalf, so he blows the interview. So intensely is he hanging on to the past that he signs up for the Army, his one chance to still be a surgeon… and blinds himself to the future escalation of war in Vietnam. He thinks his Army pay and rank of Captain will be enough to protect him.

Joan, who is fighting for the future she always imagined (a capable and upwardly-mobile doctor husband to care for her needs), has her past dreams rubbed in her face when Dr. Greg whines “You don’t know what it’s like to want something your whole life and count on it and not get it, OK?” Oh, my, yes, she does, and right now that thing she’s wanted her whole life is crying like a spoiled kid on her couch. And she promptly smacks that thing she’s wanted her whole life over the head with a vase. She realizes her past still has some influence, in the form of Roger, so she makes a call for help, since Dr. Greg isn’t getting it done.

Who am I leaving out? Oh, right, the big showdown between Betty and Don. This part of the story was many-layered; Donald Fucking Draper represents the future, an identity created out of whole cloth, a poised, confident, take-charge guy, versus Dick Whitman, a scared, poor, self-loathing man trying to escape his roots. Donald F. Draper works in shiny, new, Manhattan, in a tall skyscraper, with the rich and powerful kings of corporations; Dickie Whitman worked on a farm, and then dug ditches in foreign lands as a lowly foot soldier.

Betty, his wife, and their three kids and giant house in upstate New York are Donald Fucking Draper’s past; Suzanne, the schoolteacher, Donald Fucking Draper’s newest, and closest-to-home, fling, with whom he’s ready to run off with, is his future.

Donald Fucking Draper’s Cadillac is his future; the photos and documents he keeps in a box in his desk, that Betty finds, is his past.

But when Betty confronts him with the evidence of his past, instead of choosing one or the other, he finally chooses both, and confesses (mostly) to Betty what he’s been hiding from her since before he met her. He didn’t tell the whole truth – it wasn’t the Army’s mistake that gave him the name of Donald Fucking Draper, it was his own act – but he told enough, and it was clear that he was ashamed and afraid of what it all meant.

So when Bobby Draper went from choosing the astronaut for Hallowe’en (the future) but ended up being the hobo (the past), he was mirroring his father’s choice. And the two oldest Draper kids were the hobo and the gypsy at the end of the episode, with their father standing, nonplussed, behind them, again, the symbolism to me was of the past (hobo) and the future (gypsy, complete with crystal ball). The look of satisfaction on Donald Fucking Draper’s face when their neighbor asked him, playfully, “And who are you supposed to be?” tells me that the choice has been made.

What an amazing episode of a masterfully-written show. I particularly liked Amanda Marcotte’s analysis, as well as Silkstone’s recap over at Open Salon, if you want to read more in-depth on the many levels of metaphor and details that go into this show.

Apparently the Billionaires for Wealthcare snuck into the annual AHIP meeting:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2QX9sMV5xI&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0]

The Billionaires for Wealthcare also had a demonstration in Portland this week. I guess when you’re filthy rich, you can really get around.

I remember my dad taking young me to the Memorial Coliseum to hear the Great Bird of the Galaxy himself, Gene Roddenberry, talk about Star Trek, which was, at the time, one of my passions. I don’t remember much about what Roddenberry said – hey, it was many years ago: 30? More? – but I do remember the Star Trek Gag Reel.

The Gag Reel was a film they showed at the end of Roddenberry’s talk, and it was made up of bloopers and funny bits from the classic Star Trek show, the original run. This was before any of the movies had been made, so classic Star Trek was the only Star Trek.

In the gag reel, I saw Scotty shoveling stuff into the warp engines (he was going pretty fast; must have been at least Warp 5); I saw McCoy and Nurse Chapel shaken around, causing the good doctor to grab Nurse Chapel’s, um, nacelles; I saw Spock break up and laugh again and again. And more. It was delightful, and a wonderful memory for this old nerd.

Kids these days don’t have to traipse off to some distant sports arena to view such things, though. They have the internet bring the gag reels and the talks straight to their iPhones and X-Boxen.

Like this one, for the recent Star Trek reboot:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfRjyRtlDOw&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0]

It’s a tradition that goes back decades. Enjoy.

Of course, my friend Ken saw Michael Moore’s movie with me, and apparently he’s been thinking about the movie, too, because no sooner had I hit publish on my previous post than did this video show up in an email from Ken.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bObItmxAGc&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0]

And it’s on topic with at least one of the at least two things I took from Moore’s documentary, which is, “Just how fuckin’ rich is the Catholic Church?”

Not to mention all the non-catholic churches, your Southern Baptists and your Anglican and your Greek Orthodox and your Episcopalian and your Mormons, and even the non-Christian ones like your Muslims and your Buddhists and your Vikings and so on, and so on, and so on. Though I don’t know for sure if the non-Christian ones had their founders specifically telling their followers to give all their money to the poor. But I’m far too lazy a blogger to go look that up right now.

It has been more than eight years since my mothers’ death.

Today, for the first time, I wrote down how I felt about it. Or more specifically, how I feel about the reactions of my own family and why that makes me angry.

The thought has been lurking inside my head for all this time, but even I am amazed at how long it has taken me to formalize it.

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How could I have the last name of “Moon” and blog at Lunar Obverse and let the NASA LCROSS mission pass without comment? I would not be much of a blogger at all. Perhaps even less of a blogger than I am now.

We threw a bomb at the moon! There’s science behind it, I know, but I secretly suspect we did it just because we could. Does no one else think that the Mythbusters weren’t behind this, even maybe a little bit?

Here’s the video:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVYKjR1sJY4&hl=en&fs=1&]

To all the nay-sayers who said “nay” and worried about shards of molten moon material raining down on us like cold death: you are woefully uninformed and I will find it very difficult not assuming you have difficulty with simple math and finding your ass with both hands.

Yes, I am smug. For a reason. The mass of the Moon is 7.36 x 10¹⁶ kilotons. The bomb was 1.4 kilotons. It’s not going to make that much of a difference. Things the size of the bomb we used impact the Moon all the freakin’ time. See those craters? That’s why they’re there, people.

Anyway, yay, science!

A little science for you: Astronaut David Scott drops a feather, and a hammer, on the Moon, to verify Galileo’s theory that, in the absence of atmospheric friction, objects of varying weight or mass will fall at the same rate as each other.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C5_dOEyAfk&hl=en&fs=1&]

Here’s hoping the weekend falls more like a feather for you, than a hammer.*

* I don’t even know what that means.

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