Ah, Saturday morning. I forgot to turn off my alarm clock radio. Weekend edition began and I reached over to kill the noise. I shifted in the bed and went back to a sound sleep.
The phone rang. "Why the fuck is my father calling me this early in the morning?" Muttering "Someone better be dead" under my breath, I answered the phone.
"Hello?" My voice still thick with sleep.
"spivak, it's The Department Manager." Uh, why the hell is she calling me on Saturday? I told her weeks ago that I'm not doing the after hours fiasco for overtime.
"Uh, hi?"
"Where are you?"
"It's Saturday, ma'am."
She laughed, "No, it's Friday!"
I did a dead man sit-up that would put most death-themed wrestlers to shame. "Holy shit!"
Spot was fed, I was dressed and I was hanging up the phone within sixty seconds. As usual the VCR clock was wildly off and I didn't have the patience to check the microwave clock. At least the department manager was laughing and telling me that it was alright, to take my time and all that kind of stuff. I only remember saying "Oh this is one hell of a boner."
spivak got to work at 8:53 a.m. and finished the day in second place. I'm just that damned good.
On a less positive note, I'm a god damned tool.
Thank goodness I am never late without a good reason. Even if it was as ridiculous as thinking it was Saturday.
I wish I knew what happened to that item. I hope it's in the basement.
Bullshit.
If you're standing on Earth, Mars or the pinkish ice of Pluto then all the constellations are going to look exactly the same. The parallax is not going to be that great that everything will diverge and Orion will lose its usual shape and the asterisms will redefine themselves. Shit, if you were able to view the night sky from a planet near Alpha Centauri the constellations would still be the same. Keep an eye out for Cassiopeia, the W near the Big Dipper asterism, because there'll be an extra star and that extra star is Sol. Now if the observer was 46 light years from earth then it'd be completely different.
Secondly the whole premise of sending out specialized intellectuals is baffling to me. The Alabama mission to Coyote is a one way trip, all or nothing. Once they arrived, they'd have to live off the land and engage in farming and other tasks which do not require a four year or eight year degree. Where are the metalsmiths and glaziers? Where are the carpenters? It's all well and good to have an astrophysicist but will that individual be able to tow the line doing their part for a new colony? These questions aren't raised and if one can believe in space travel then it's not a great jump to believe that these people can easily take on new labors.
Beyond Coyote, I've come to realize how superficial I am when it comes to books. Parts of this book come across as (what I would presume to be) Jack London stories. Why the hell am I not reading Jack London? Because his stories don't take place in outer space with space diatrymas.
Which reminds me again why I have that resolution coming up for 2006. I'll leave it to you, gentle reader, to poke around this site to find it or you can simply wait until I post my resolutions.
Message 251734 on *currant events (#213):
Date: Fri Dec 16 09:25:41 2005 MST
From: Jaybird (#105276)
To: *currant events (#213)
Last night I dreamt that I blew up the death star and then hit on the deaf checkout girl at Safeway. She was responsive.
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