Journal of No. 118

Was considering Mexican places for lunch today. Discovered that Margaritas on Crenshaw wouldn't open until 2pm. [Ended up at the El Cholo on Western]

KCET showed a nice documentary [interspersed with begging for money] about Endeavour's trip down the streets of LA. As it trundles down Crenshaw, there's a nice shot of it through the archway at Margaritas.

---

ThisTV was (well, still is) having a Bond film marathon. ThisTV has an interesting assortment of advertising, including one for a little hand-operated food processor thing that has a pull cord that moves the blades. I was a bit shocked that the smiling loud man chopped some vegetables, dropped them into his stir-fry, looked into the camera, and said "Me so Hungry" as though he had done nothing wrong.

Then when the credits of A View to a Kill came on [I said it was a marathon of Bond films, not a marathon of good Bond films. Only watchable for Grace Jones and the fact that the ridiculous plot involving injecting water into oilwells to cause earthquakes has turned out to not be so ridiculous.] and it was hard to let a name like Papillon Soo Soo go by without further investigation.

"Papillon Soo Soo appeared as Pan Ho in the 1985 James Bond film A View to a Kill, the first of three films that she appeared in.

She is also well known for playing the role of the Da Nang hooker who uttered the famous "Hey baby, you got girlfriend Vietnam? Me so horny. Me love you long time," and "Me sucky sucky" lines in Stanley Kubrick's 1987 film Full Metal Jacket, which continues to be referenced in popular culture..." such as advertising on This TV.

[Since things come in threes, we can further connect synchronicities #1 and #2 via Moonraker, which is just as bad as I remember it.]

Our latest spy satellite.

Click his cutesy-poo face to learn more.

The Bad Astronomer tipped me off that a comet may smash into Mars next year (but probably won't).

It's an interesting situation. The comet orbits the Sun the opposite direction (though also at an odd angle with respect to the plane of the solar system, it seems). This means if it hits, it'll be more like a head-on crash on the freeway than getting rear-ended. And it's on a hyperbolic orbit, so it's going a bit faster than you might otherwise expect. And that also means it hasn't been around these parts often (if ever), which means it hasn't lost much of its original mass like old comets have. Which all adds up to big kinetic energy if it does happen to hit Mars:

Doing a rough calculation, I get an explosive yield of roughly one billion megatons: That’s a million billion tons of TNT exploding. Or, if you prefer, an explosion about 25 million times larger than the largest nuclear weapon ever tested on Earth.

Now, probably this thing's gonna miss. But... couldn't we... maybe... make it hit? It'd be awesome! Think of it as training for that mission to make an asteroid miss the Earth. Yeah, I'm sure pushing a fluffy falling-apart slushball wouldn't exactly be easy, but if my mad plan succeeds, just think of the fireworks!

Okay, okay, but hopefully it'll still put on a pretty show.

---

Oh, and speaking of comets, Comet Panstarrs has brightened up recently, and is already visible with the naked eye in the Southern Hemisphere. It ought to get a little brighter still and will soon be in Northern skies at sunset.

Nice story of the 'Where are they now?' variety about the Voyager spacecraft. One detail caught my eye: "Each also has an eight-track tape recorder."

I was gonna post something stirring and informative about the 50th anniversary of Sputnik's launch, but I've been deluged by same, so there's no point. Instead, here's a picture of a bunny with a waffle on its head:


I always remember the date of the Sputnik launch because it was the same as the birthday of one of my babysitter's kids, who was roughly the same as age as me. I have no idea where Mike Aquino is now, but 30 years later, I remember his birthday because it's the same as the date of the Sputnik launch. Happy birthday to both of them.

From time to time, Mike and his older brother would pick on me. I remember once I got so mad, I thought to myself, I know where I live... I now have a key... I don't need this shit... So I left, walked home and let myself in. I understand Mrs. Aquino got pretty busy with the slipper that afternoon.

It's weird to think that I was then closer in time to the Dawn of the Space Age than I was to my present self. I was -12 when Sputnik launched. I was in mom's tummy when Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon (and let's show some love for Collins, while we're on the subject). When I was 12, Voyager 2 got to Saturn (oh yeah!) and the first shuttle launched.

Ok, there, you got something better than just a breakfast food on a lagomorph.