A quick one before the shuttle

(And then last night I had a dream that George Strait was sitting next to me at some kind of cafeteria lunch, but I was kind of a dick to him. But it was because he had his boots off and was putting his feet up on the table.)

I was an ensign

I had a dream last night that I was playing the Star Trek: The Next Generation Interactive VCR board game ... only I was playing it with Captain Picard, Riker, and Worf.

Usually my dreams tend toward pretty ordinary but uncomfortable things, like I'm working at my old bookstore again, or I've moved back in with my folks, or the brakes on my car don't work anymore. I've always wanted to have those dreams where you get to fight with lightsabers or fly spaceships.

So if the closest I can come is pretending to fly spaceships with fictional characters that fly fictional spaceships? I guess I'll take it. Riker was into the game, but Picard got bored pretty fast.



There are stickers that came with the game that look like the Star Trek communicator badge, and I was wondering if the other guys would stick them on over their ACTUAL badges, or like put them to the side, or what. But then I forgot to pass them out.

Thinking Ahead

From Warren Ellis, who found it wherever he finds these things:

Vampire Dictator Stopped with a Stake:

"Serbian vampire hunters have acted to prevent the very remote possibility that former dictator Slobodan Milosevic might stage a come-back - by driving a three-foot stake through his heart.

"Miroslav Milosevic (no relation) said "he and his fellow vampire hunters acted to stop the former dictator returning from the dead to haunt the country". His team explained that the wooden stake had been "driven into the ground and through the late president's heart"."

Ha-ha-ha

Someone over at the Engine posted this, and it made me laugh:

Clk*Clk*Whirr

Artist Eric Poulton has undertaken an awesomely nerdy art project - reimagining Star Wars as Steampunk.



That's Darth Vader! There's a bigger version on Eric's blog, as well as some rad renditions of Han & Chewie and Jabba the Hutt. Jabba even has a little mustache.

I wonder if they say it in the paperwork

From the BBC:

The city council of New York has voted to ban the use of the word "nigger".

"The resolution to ban the so-called "N-word" is largely symbolic as it carries no weight in law and those who use the word would face no punishment."

There's more in the link, but that's the meat of it.

Great Magneto's Tail!

NASA's New Horizon's space probe was pointed toward Pluto and the frozen, sunless reaches of the solar system on a nine-year journey after getting a gravity boost Wednesday from Jupiter.

Yeah yeah, etc. etc., New Horizons is flying to Pluto at 52,000 (!) miles per hour, giving us a view of Pluto we've never, ever had before.

But!

Here's the best part:

"Project manager Glen Fountain said the craft will also travel through Jupiter's 'magneto tail,' which he described as a "tear drop-shaped bubble of plasma," streaming away from the planet into space."

Jupiter's Magneto Tail!



















""This is a region never before seen," Fountain said."


















Speak for yourself, Fountain.