The End of the World
I’ve got to write something about the Uprising. I’ve got to keep my head or it’s all lost. Everything may be lost anyway, but if I freak out, then everything’s definitely over for me.
I’ve never been able to get into a zombie movie… I know too much biology. Well, I’m in one now, and I’ve got to keep my mind occupied. How are their muscles moving without a blood supply? How can they have a blood supply with an unbeating heart? Their tissues are rotting, their bones are crumbling – how can they move at all?
Okay… their bones are holding them up, and their muscles are producing force. Something has repaired them at least that well. Niven suggested a strange symbiotic plague in “Night on Mispec Moor”, but why would they rise from the grave all at once if there were various plague infections?
Evil spirits? The Devil’s work? Angry ancient voodoo houngans? As near as I can find out – the cable channels aren’t much use right now – the risen are impartial in their attacks. If this is an act of revenge, it’s on all humanity.
This is what I know. This is coordinated by someone or something with the power to make rotten human tissue functional again.
—–
I may go mad, but I’m physically okay right now. They moved us all from the NASA side to the Air Force side as soon as possible, and well-armed soldiers are proving effective for the moment. I can’t contact anyone else… land lines are clogged, cell lines are clogged, and e-mails / IMs to my friends and family seem to be going to /dev/null. I will check my Friends page again shortly to see if anyone’s blogged about this.
Feeling a little like Dr. Clayton Forrester right now – trapped in the research lab while the destroyers of humanity knock on the door, and the refugee hordes demand what few resources we have. Perhaps the common cold will save us as well. I’m not sure what else will.
What the hell could be behind this?
Not deja vu, thankfully
At least this time, when the tire went flat on the interstate, I maintained control; babied it to a gas station; discovered that the gas station had an attached tire center; found that the tire folks could see me immediately; and learned that the only problem was a bad valve stem, which cost me less than $20 to replace.
This one worked out a LOT better than getting a hip replacement. I’m still rattling from the adrenaline, though.
“Pro-ceedin’!”
Those that play computer games should wander over to http://www.blizzard.com today. Seriously.
It’s sort of embarrassing to know that someone’s sold me a game before the thing’s even finished. But that’s the truth, and so it goes. The CGI trailers are AMAZING. I don’t know why Blizz is talking about shooting the WoW movie in live action, their CGI people should be winning awards right and left.
If there’s anything that company does well, it’s detail. The level of polish in their website, trailers, and their actual games are amazing. None of that would help if there was no solid foundation, but that’s been taken care of too. Of course, simultaneous Mac releases are also a plus for me 🙂
“Hell. It’s about time.”
Are you Experienced?
Just came back from a very nice dinner with raininva at Red Robin. She gave me some loot from Vegas’ Star Trek: The Experience – a Starfleet emblem and an isolinear chip keychain.
Rain just got promoted, and is apparently being groomed for bigger things in the future. I’d be jealous, if it weren’t for the fact that I’m quite pleased with my new job 🙂
Quack
There were ducks napping right outside my front door last night when I got home. This makes me happy. I like ducks.
The Leiji Matsumoto fans on my flist (I know there are a couple) really need to check out this iTunes link… Look! More cool-looking TV I don’t have time to watch!
Wish I could make the Yeager Anniversary picnic this weekend. There are real disadvantages to living 5 hours’ drive away from the fandoms I grew up in. I do feel like I made a modest contribution to the history of the chapter, and I’d love to see everyone again, but it’s not to be this time. Hope everyone has a great time!
Monday morning musing
This morning, I stared into the shaving mirror while performing my daily skin irritation ritual, and remembered someone at Technicon referring to me as one of the con’s “elder statesmen”. I enjoyed the compliment… but it’s still a little weird trying to think of myself that way.
Didn’t get to stay in bed any later than 9:30 or so this weekend – too much to do! Happy weekend, though. We were celebrating Starr’s graduation from nursing school at the top of her class! I think that excellent things are ahead for her.
My Dad drove up to see me yesterday, and I’m planning to go see my Mom and my sister before long this summer. There’s been a bit of distance, because of how wrapped-up I’ve been in myself lately, and I’m really looking forward to re-connecting with them all this year.
The living-room TV’s flipped its power supply, and we’re down to watching Good Eats on a 12″ portable we had in the bedroom. I was looking at getting an AppleTV in a few weeks, but I suspect I’ll be putting that off a bit. One of the reasons I’m so far behind on my TV watching is that a lot of it’s on the computer, and I just don’t think of my desktop Mac as a media center – more of a creativity, communications, and gaming support device. TV programs are for relaxing in the living room – so, really, that makes me a perfect AppleTV customer. (Another reason I’m behind is that I usually have much better things to do than television. Even really good television. I’m almost to the point of cutting things I like from the DVR schedule that I know I just won’t get around to watching. People keep saying things like “you should start watching Heroes!” and I look at my backlog and think “yeah… next year maybe!”)
Dave S. will be running his Marvel Super Heroes game tonight. I haven’t been able to attend since March, and I can’t wait to catch up with everyone. For the last sessions, I’d had to finish at work and fly right over to arrive fashionably late; with my new schedule I can take it a little easier.
My outlook’s not too bad for a Monday morning.
Safety first, Robin
The lever-operated aluminum can crusher over the recycling bin in our break room is solemnly marked:
“Do not place small woodland creatures in can crusher.”
Good advice, I’m sure.
For a Foggy Morning
This morning, I discovered that the video drivers for my eyeballs must have gone bad. My view distance was cut to around 30 yards, with everything farther cloaked in thick white fog. Perhaps I needed a patch – Sunlight 3.4?
Seriously, the fog this morning gave my commute a truly surreal ambience. Once I’d travelled a third of the way onto the Monitor-Merrimac Bridge-Tunnel, all I could see was a short stretch of driving surface before and aft, with nothing but unfinished whiteness all around. I was driving from nothing into nothing – it might have been a visual metaphor to describe some kind of magical or high-tech transit. Perhaps this morning I was dropped into a parallel universe with all my memories instantly edited to make me believe that I’d always lived in a world where the Allies won World War II, and Earth had a single moon.
Perhaps it takes me a really long time to wake up in the morning.
Podcast review: Astronomy Cast
Today, as I drove to work, I plugged the iPod into the car stereo and listened to an episode of Astronomy Cast. (iTunes link)
Astronomy Cast bills itself as “your facts-based journey through the cosmos”. There are few surprises in the podcast for a hard-core space geek, but the presentation is good and the content accessible to almost anyone listening. The science expert for the show, Dr. Pamela Gay, becomes excited and passionate when talking about her fields of expertise, but seems ever so slightly impatient any other time. Overall, it’s entertaining and informative, and it’s usually one of my first listening picks.
Today I heard pretty useful advice about purchasing binoculars and telescopes for casual amateur astronomy – useful because I think there’s a telescope in my near future. (Suffolk is a short drive away and has nicely dark skies.) The previous episode, however, made *me* impatient; 30 minutes pointing out that higher dimensions, alternate universes, black holes, and FTL travel really do none of the fun things that science-fiction writers come up with. Hey, kids, human exploration will be over as soon as we land on the remaining solar planets – after that, it’s all data analysis! Check out this set of spectra!
I admit, based on what we know right now, all that’s probably true. But scientists have thought before that little remained to know, then been forced to change their minds when something new poked though the statistics. I’ll acknowledge the validity of thier statements for now, but I’m not yet ready to give up the dream of yearly trips to Alpha Centauri! In the meantime, the “serious scientists” need to stop being such bummers. Carl knew better.
