i feel like i made the mistake of coming to work on a sunday or something. there is no one here. the parking lot was as empty as i’ve ever seen it, despite the fact that there’s a flight up right now (meaning there are mission controllers who must be here round-the-clock). i think becca and i should have chair races down the hall. either that, or go with becca’s idea to rearrange the furniture in our mentor rich’s office.
two funny bits from sfgate‘s morning fix:
Because Aliens Love Your Dumb Business Card
The Moon is open for business. A California company plans to fly the world’s first private mission to the moon next year, delivering messages, business cards, cremated remains, and whatever other moronic crap they can think of, for a fee. TransOrbital Inc. signed a $20 million contract to use decommissioned Soviet-built ballistic missiles for commercial space launches. The unmanned space vehicle, called the TrailBlazer, would orbit the moon for about three months, taking photos, before crashing onto its surface. Private messages, cremated remains and other crap will be carried in a capsule designed to survive the crash. The company charges $2,500 for a business card. Messages start at $16.95. Inert materials are $2,500 per gram. TransOrbital said the company hopes to fly regular missions to the moon. “Wait wait wait, let me get this straight,” said the Gods of Goddamn Human Decency and Common F–king Sense, “You’re going to crash a bunch of crappy Russian missiles into the Moon’s surface and discharge a bunch of inane business cards and jewelry and powdered dead people and useless solipsistic garbage? Is this a joke? What the hell is wrong with you people? What, you think you own the moon now? Are you all just simpering money-drunk capitalistic jackasses? Is that it?” the gods all said, just a little bitterly. “What’s next, dumping 20 million gallons of crude oil in the ocean near Spain?” it added. “Oh wait.”Giant, Elegant, Beautiful, And Dead
Sure, the towering 76-foot Christmas tree installed in New York’s Rockefeller Center looks huge, but it’s a dwarf next to Miami’s 110-foot giant in Bayfront Park. The company decorating Miami’s waterfront park — a balmy patch dotted with un-Christmas-like palm trees — got its Norway Spruce through a Christmas tree merchant from a private residence in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., a suburb north of NYC. Delivery included a certificate stating the tree is the “tallest Christmas tree in America,” gosh isn’t that nice, cities now competing to see who can chop the biggest oldest most beautiful tree and prop it up in their tourist meccas and string it with a billion lights for about a month before it becomes firewood. Is there not some sort of mute sadness attached to this ridiculous practice? Can we not just sigh sadly at the loss of a 110-foot spruce just so sticky Miami can claim the biggest xmas tree?
i get these morning humor emails from sfgate, and i love them because the guy that writes them is so incredibly sarcastic. you know how some people think jackass-style humor is the funniest thing around? that kind of stuff never really makes me laugh. i don’t find crude or bodily function-related other generally low-brow humor all that funny…but show me something said or written that just drips with sarcasm, and you’ll get me every time.
anyway. i can already tell it’s going to be hard to get anything done here today. becca and i are taking advantage of the absense of boys (and their associated picky eating habits) to have lunch at mediterraneano’s. mmm.
oh! and thanksgiving dinner yesterday went very well. we had so much turkey that everyone got to take home plenty of leftovers (turkey sandwiches for me this weekend!), my sweet potatoes turned out mmm mmm good (and since not everyone likes sweet potatoes, i have lots of leftovers, yummy), and everything else was great as well. it was nice to have people to have thanksgiving with.
i called home yesterday and was chastised by my grandmother for saying that i’m going to root for stanford tonight when they take on unc in the preseason nit final. the fact that i am an alumni of stanford seemed have no effect on her perception that i was rooting for “some california school instead of [my] home state.” she is funny.
