Baby, It's Cold Outside

America went ape fifty years ago when the Soviets launched Sputnik I. Today, how many Americans even noticed when the government of China announced their Long March to the Moon, with pictures and all? Our astronauts seem a bit dim-witted these days, at least the ones caught in that ridiculous love triangle. The email exchanges between those three are appallingly dumb, hardly what we'd like to think of from NASA. (By the way, some people say NASSA, some say NASSAU -- why is that? Who knows, but add an L and you get NASAL. Hey, I'm just saying).


Astronauts, cosmonauts, taikonauts / hángtiānyuán: We Are the World. Show the Space Age spirit and get your very own Astronaut Power Baby Dolls!

Recreate love triangles, roam around on Moon rovers, drink Tang.

Personally, I've always preferred the term "cosmonaut." It just sounds better.

But the real question is, which show better represented American life in the early 1960s: The Flintstones or The Jetsons?


Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya bodyguards. Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi / Mu‘ammar al-Qaḏḏāfī / Moammar Gadhafi handpicks them. Does anyone else remember the "Libyan hit men" scare? God, what a joke.

There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late. . . . .
-- Bob Dylan.


Further Orwellian name butchering and sloganeering leaps to mind. Changing the US Department of War (accurate name) to the US Department of Defense (propaganda name) in 1947 was a heinous act, but not nearly so heinous as the fascist-sounding "Department of Homeland Security," created not that long ago by freaks. I mean, for the Chippewa and Cherokee, maybe . . . Then again, everyone needs to safeguard a little Lebensraum, right? Ja!

Today's Rune: Flow.

RIP, Diane Middlebrook (1939-2007).