The Esoteric Science Resource Center

Am I wrong in looking at Wired's slideshow of survival gear that's just crazy enough to work and thinking "I'll take one of each, please"?

Hallmark doesn't make cards to promote the event, but May 10 is National Astronomy Day in the US, and I can think of no reason why it shouldn't be an international event. (Sadly, the Fort Worth Museum of Science & History is temporarily closed during its much-anticipated restoration and expansion, and the Dallas Museum of Nature & Science's planetarium apparently doesn't have anything scheduled at all. However, the Texas Astronomical Society of Dallas, a wonderful crew of folks, is hosting a Star Party in Frisco Commons Park on Saturday night, and you can bet your bippy that the Czarina and I will be out there. The weather is one of the reasons why May is one of my favorite times of year in Texas, especially with the honeysuckle blooming and the Mexican freetailed bats returning to eat the local bugs, and access to telescopes on a night like this is just gravy.)

To coincide with the official launch of the Texas Triffid Ranch site this weekend, I'm also preparing a new issue of the Hell's Half-Acre Herald newsletter, and I'm looking for willing victims for a free copy. Anyone interested in snagging a copy who hasn't already signed up for a previous copy is invited to leave their Snail Mail addresses: all comments are screened and will remain so in order to protect your privacy. (Those of you who already sent in a mailing address are already on the mailing list unless you specifically ask to be removed.) With luck, they'll be going out before Memorial Day, and yes, I'm glad to mail copies outside the US.

For those coming in late, I have a certain disturbed fascination with watching the Borders Books & Music chain as it slides down the toilet bowl; it's the same horrified fascination that I get when watching an ant in an ant lion trap, but I know that the demise of the ant won't flood the area with dozens of unemployed and unemployable English and Fine Arts majors who can't stand the thought of working anywhere where they can't "stay in the publishing business." The latest reason why I recommend dumping your Borders stock if you're going long, or buying up as much as you can if you're planning to short it, comes from the announcement of the impending opening of a new Borders concept store in Allen, Texas.

For those unfamiliar with Texas geography, this is due north of Dallas, and well on its way to McKinney and subsequently the Oklahoma border. For those familiar with the area, this quote should set off a ridiculous amount of merriment:

"With its many avid book, music and movie lovers - together with its vibrant culture and rich history - Allen is a wonderful community for a concept store, and we are anxious for customers to start enjoying all that the store will offer this summer," said Vince Vizza, vice president of real estate for Borders Group.

Avid book lovers? Vibrant culture and rich history? In Allen, a town that pretty much exists only because its southern neighbor Plano didn't want trailer parks within the city limits? Geez, Vince, did you pick Allen solely because of the tax writeoffs, or because someone on the City Council enjoyed the feel of your tongue on the inside of his colon?

That's it, kids. If Borders is blowing more money on concept stores at a time when its finances are already tenuous, someone in Corporate has already decided that the company's doomed. I've seen the same sort of zombie twitches from other companies just before laying off everyone and selling their facilities, and I have a distinct feeling that the liquidators are just waiting for the next earnings report. Just so long as the employees continue to delude themselves that they're going to win the Employee Fiction Writing Contest and hang on until the absolute end, the shorts and the liquidators are going to feast.

It's been a very long time since I've read an issue of 2000 AD, but I seem to remember that one of the many concepts introduced in the Judge Dredd features was of a body processing system that removed the need for standard funeral burial and recycled the bulk of the body's elements for future use. With alkaline hydrolysis, welcome to the future. Now if we could just get everything else right...

I know at least a few artists tend to prowl around the ESRC, so I'd be remiss in not sharing the joy and wonder that is the latest issue available in the States of the art magazine ImagineFX from the UK. In particular, besides the illustration of the Czarina's last visit to the greenhouse on the front cover, it features both an interview and a dinosaur illustration tutorial by none other than Weta Workshop conceptual artist Greg Broadmore. I just can't buy these magazines too often, because then I go nuts wondering if I could learn that level of artistry if I tried or if I'm just deluding myself.

You know, I'm simply amazed that nobody's noticed that today is the tenth anniversary of the launch of the original iMac. (I used to kick myself for having let my ex-wife whine persuade me that buying Apple stock at $12 a share at the beginning of 1998 was A Bad Idea, because I was ready to put down $1200 to get in on The Age of Steve Jobs. These days, I'm glad I didn't, because I would have had to give half of my stock to her.)

I realize that it's old news, but the much-blogged Harvard Lampoon parody of National Geographic is still lying in huge piles at my local Barnes & Noble, so I braced myself and read through it last night. A small tip to the "writers": you'd best hope and pray that Conan O'Brien or any of the other "Harvard Lampoon Mafia" enablers give you a writing gig on The Simpsons or some other workfare program after you graduate. I used to write funnier articles than this when I was at SCI FI, and lower than that I can't get.

james_nicoll passed on the Solar System Visualizer, which is the best time sink I've seen in years. First, take a look at our own solar system, and click on the menu on the left for those planets with moons to see their orbital mechanics. Had enough of a case of head-explodey from realizing how many moons Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune have that didn't show up in your high school textbooks? Hop on over to the "Extrasolar planets" directory to see a selection of one- to four-planet extrasolar systems, and realize that these recreations are probably going to be as dated in twenty years as solar system maps from 1988 are today. Man, I love living in the future.

Carl Zimmer expounds today in the New York Times on a new study that suggests that being smart can be dangerous for an animal's health, with learning ability going down when the animals are forced to compete for scarce resources. Hell, anyone who ever went to a Texas high school or spent any time at all on a political blog could tell you that.

The Czarina and I regularly and consistently agree on one thing, and that one thing is that we don't want kids. More importantly, we don't dare have kids, because my brother Martin and I regularly call our father's name from atop Sentinel Hill far too often as it is. Her elbows and my personality...oh, that's going to end well.

Last night, my best friend came by the Triffid Ranch for dinner and conversation, and we vaguely discussed what our kids would have been like. More importantly, I brought up all sorts of possibilities, mostly involving hanging from the rafters and snapping bats in midair with a prehensile trunk and she stuck her fingers in her ears and yelled "LA LA LA" so she could be guaranteed that she could sleep that night. I just waited until she stopped and unplugged, and then squeaked in a falsetto: "My science project is 'How does Brundlefly eat?'"

After five years of marriage, it's really hard to get her to scream "WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU, HUH?" the way I did when we were married, but I managed. Boy howdy, I'm really going to have to work on it by the time we're celebrating our tenth anniversary, and I don't think telling her "I love you" afterwards is going to work after our seventh.

Anyone up for a particularly cruel and vindictive practical joke? You know that person who's constantly whining about the merits of print-on-demand books and how they're unfairly categorized as garbage? The one who keeps arguing that there's gotta be a pony in there somewhere? Do me a favor and give him/her this for Christmas. Writers much better than I have commented that every idiot thinks he has a book in him, and that POD manages to allow them all to achieve their dreams. This one, though, tops my previous personal choice for "The Book That Best Encourages Illiteracy".

Michael Reilly at IO9 (which is really turning out to be an interesting science-based competitor to Cracked.com) puts out his list of the top ten moons in our solar system, and it's pretty much the fascinating bodies that you'd expect. Sadly, Mimas didn't even make the list: I have to admit that I'm a sucker for any moon that managed to survive an impact almost strong enough to shatter it. Well, that and because I always thought that the crater Herschel would be a great place to put the solar system's biggest radio telescope.

By the way, the Czarina is continuing her ongoing book sale, and she wants to make note that part of my extensive Harlan Ellison collection is now up. Anyone wishing to purchase Mr. Ellison's work at reasonable prices is welcome to make a bid, knowing that every purchase keeps her from burying her unsheathed elbows in my skull. After all, I have to earn my keep around here somehow, right?

Well, I survived the weekend. When I say "survived", it's not because of problems with last weekend's event (if anything, the friendliness and courtesy of everyone involved, especially after dealing with the attendees at the last few of the Czarina's shows, was a welcome treasure), but because the north winds tearing through Dallas stirred up a lot of pollen and spores that should have remained buried forever. I still don't know what particular combination of floral or mycotal reproductive material does it, but those blue northers always set off an allergic reaction that's identical to a bad case of the flu: slight fever, aching joints, inability to concentrate, and a general "please kill me now" feeling that has to go on its way on its own. Combine this with a lack of sleep from preparation for CAPE on Friday night, and Sunday was spent in a fitful coma. (For elaboration, the "fitful" comes from waking up from that coma unable to breathe from asthma fits. Oh, I'll be making up my sleep deficit for weeks.)

Anyway, the next week is going to be occupied with First Job and Second Job duties, so for consolation, feel free to pass on my latest missive for 101 Reasons To Stop Writing. Sure, it's nearly two months old, but at least it's out. And so it goes.

Since I'm going to be swamped for the rest of the weekend (a little over 22 hours until the show, and the Web site still isn't live), this is the absolute last time that I'll be able to exhort all ready and willing participants to come out to CAPE tomorrow from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. Fun, friends, and merriment, and the Drama Llama that normally resides at events such as these will be fitted with diapers. Come on out and say hello. Better yet, buy a plant or a T-shirt.

And along that line, I'd also like to mention that the midnight show at Dallas's Inwood Theater this weekend is the director's cut of Alien, and I may or may not be out there depending upon how well CAPE goes for us all. Anybody interested in heading out that way on Saturday night?

Earlier in the week, greygirlbeast and I got into a very friendly discussion on the merits of our various dinosaur figure collections: she's young enough to be my daughter, but she's already got a collection that would make me jealous if I hadn't already matched it. Of course, I've been picking up dinosaur figures since 1971, so I'm slightly ahead of the game. Even more importantly, after decades of dull dinosaur figures, we suddenly saw an explosion in the quantity and the quality of prehistoric animal figures, particularly in the fact that it's possible to find critter figures that aren't dinosaurs. (And before anyone asks, the Czarina neither has interest in hanging onto the figures nor going to the effort of researching their value for sale, so when I finally get sent back to Hell, Caitlin is getting the whole lot in my will. You've got to take care of your friends.)

The three authors of the Dinosaur Toy Blog understand our plight all too well, as they're taking the time to review a truly staggering number of interesting palaeo figures from various manufacturers. It even reviews figures of the magic Liopleurodon that'll show us te way to Candy Mountain. Life is good, and I just hope that they aren't having conversations behind our backs.

Eleven years ago, one of my few joys in life was heading out to the Oregon Museum of Science & Industry to cause trouble among the dinosaur fossils on display as part of the traveling "Giants of the Gobi" exhibition. Truthfully, OMSI directly led to the obscene case of homesickness that caused me to move from Portland: its gift shop started selling Battat Acrocanthosaurus figures, and after explaining to my co-workers at the Bureau of Land Management as to why this was a big deal, well, I realized exactly how badly I missed life in Texas. I still don't miss Portland, but I desperately miss many of the various events at OMSI, such as the star parties it used to hold in the back parking lot.

Anyway, one of the only disappointments about the Giants of the Gobi exhibition, a traveling tour of fossils from Mongolia and China, was that the collection of specimens didn't contain any carnivores. Oh, sure, it had a beautiful Nurosaurus skeleton, but none of the classic Gobi predators. No Tarbosaurus, no Velociraptor, no Saurnithoides...I even asked one of the people organizing the event as to the selection criteria for the fossils being shown, and his answer was "We take what the Chinese government will give us."

Jump forward in time by a decade, and we have the latest Chinese dinosaur tour, Dinosaurs: China's Ancient Giants, at OMSI until September 1. This one has tarbosaurs and other predators, and I'm almost on the other side of the continent. Well, a lot can happen between now and September, so while I won't be able to get out there for Astronomy Day on May 10, I may have to sell off body parts for the annual OMSI reptile and amphibian exhibition at the end of August. 'cause, you know, I need a T-shirt from the current exhibition to go with the Giants of the Gobi shirt that I bought back in 1997.

Oh, so it's not just me. Thanks to lolotehe for finding the perfect summation of what I go through with the Czarina every time an ex-girlfriend decides to see what I've been up to. (Of course, the Czarina is the least of my worries. A month back, an ex who used to mean a lot to me got in touch for the first time in nearly a decade, and I know now that if I'd agreed to meet her for lunch to discuss old times, the evening would have ended with her cornering me on a balcony with a Vorlon exhorting me to "Jump...jump NOW!")

It's bad enough that joiseyguy shared the story of a moron in Fort Worth who tried to cash a bad check for $360 billion. Yes, I wrote billion. I'm going to avoid the obvious George W. Bush comparison and ask one serious question. If the bank in which he presented this check had decided that it was okay, what was this Mensa candidate going to do: ask for it in bills?