Tag: moon

Lost in space

Photo taken by Neil Armstrong.Let’s say you’re a government agency–a famous one. About, oh, say, 40 years ago your agency had its crowning achievement. In fact, it was hailed as one of the most important events in the history of humanity. It’s a good thing you got the whole thing on tape, right? You’re damn right it is.

Then let’s say a few years ago you admitted you couldn’t find the tapes of the pinnacle of your agency-nay, of your country in the 20th century. You even checked behind the couch, because tapes sometimes get stuck back there. You search high and low, until you find out what happened to the recordings.

You figure it out one day. You erased them. You f&$%ing erased them. What the hell were you thinking about? This satellite launch mix tape you made sucks. The moon landing was a way better jam. You really, really suck, NASA.

And don’t think that restoring other tapes makes up for it, bean bags.

In space, no one can hear your ramblings

Space, so we’re told, is a very peaceful. You have a nice view of the Earth, you get to go outside for a stroll, even some lucky few have walked on the moon. But they don’t talk about what happens to you when you go into space: you go crazy.

That’s right, it happens to a select few, but they get space dementia, which we all know is totally real. Case in point: Edgar Mitchell, a former astronaut best known for orbiting the moon on Apollo 14, said yesterday that UFOs are real and the U.S. government is covering them up.

Another former astronaut, Harrison Schmitt, who walked on the moon on Apollo 17, says that global warming is fake. He claims that science is being intimidated into supporting global warming because the scientists need their funding. Say, is this why no one really ever hears from Neil Armstrong?

Celestial event? (Frowny-face.)

Just when it seemed like Australia couldn’t get more full of themselves, the skies have to just smile down on them.

Jupiter, Venus and the Moon were aligned just after sunset so that they formed a happy face over the country/continent that gave us Yahoo Serious and Fosters beer. Witnesses also reported hearing the song of angels, but that was just the iconic Sydney Opera House’s choir rubbing it in a little.

Americans will get to see it tonight, one day later. Oh, and because of our position, the moon will be flipped around, frowning at us.

U.S. astronomers suggest just staying indoors at 20 to 30 minutes after sundown, and pretending not to know what Australia’s talking about when they call.

Wales continues to be uneducated individuals–but knows how to get probed

A bit of an incendiary headline? Yeah, I’ll admit it is. But before the people of Wales start emailing me hate mail consisting of a bunch of consonants and only one vowel, just pause for a second and read.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen the effects of UFOs on the population. They make everyone pause and shriek in terror, and for good reason too: no one wants to get mutilated or probed. That’s just yucky. Well, who would expect a UFO to have the gall to appear recently in Wales? No one did–which is why a Welsh citizen called the local police to make sure that they knew a UFO was in the general area. Good job, citizen … right?

When I was a lad, my mom would sing to me a song that started out with “I see the moon and the moon sees me”. It would seem that no one in south Wales has ever had that song, as the unidentified flying object in question was the moon. Yes, the same moon seen every night since … ever. No one recognized the moon. Not so much a good job, citizen.

The McBournie Minute: Finish the space station already

With a space shuttle landing yesterday and the Discovery Channel’s three-part documentary about NASA, When We Left Earth, space has been in the news a lot lately. Of course, space is all about cooperation and brotherly love these days. But for the first 40 years of space flight there was more of an “eff you, we’re going to beat you there” mentality. Perhaps we need to go back to that, if for no other reason than to get things done.

I remember first hearing about the International Space Station when I was in fourth grade, this was 1993 One of my teachers put on the overhead projector a snapshot of how the ISS would look when it was completed. A couple years later, I remember stumbling across it in an encyclopedia, I was probably looking for the definition of “isthmus” or something. There again was a computer-generated model of the huge structure orbiting the Earth. The caption underneath it said it would be completed around the year 2000.

It’s 2008 and the damn thing still is not finished. Continue reading The McBournie Minute: Finish the space station already