I love the Internet. Truly I do. But occasionally it can scare the shit out of you, and all the more because you realize how right it is. There were a couple of articles today that caught my attention, one I thought was just kind of eerie, the other flatly terrifying. Either carries some mighty spectacular implications.
If you’re not living under a rock, you know about the massive oil spill in the Gulf. One person predicts here that it could escalate into an extinction event.
Don’t you hate it when that happens?
The second option is (at least in theory) less immediate a threat, and probably (possibly) not a threat at all. That picture at left isn’t an eye, though heaven knows it looks like it, doesn’t it? It’s a depiction of Voyager 2 pushing against the edge of the solar system.
Thing is, when Voyager got to its (approximate) current location, it decided to change its tune.
Literally.
The exploratory probe continued to cheerfully beep and blarg back to NASA, only it decided to do so in a different format than was programmed into it. Scientists are scratching their heads and saying, “WTF?” Only I’m pretty sure they’re not using the acronym, but the actual words. The probe still responds to basic commands, like “STFU already!” But the communication part, the part that returns scientific data to Planet Earth – that’s in the galactic equivalent of Mandarin Chinese, or maybe Navajo. So far nobody’s broken the code, but they have recorded a nice little ditty that’s playing on Radio Voyager, located at 93,137,221.9 on your FM dial:
Cute, huh? Now whether this is ET, the cosmos in need of a ginormous dose of Tums, our star-neighbors’ dial-up service trying to connect or something else altogether, I don’t have a clue. I still find it noteworthy. (The player doesn’t work well here – if you want to hear again you will need to reload the page.)
Of course then you also have to consider that physicist Stephen Hawking is saying, “Ummm… about that friending ET on Facebook. Bad idea. Very, very bad. We injuns, they cowboys. We all know how that turned out.”
I was thinking more along the lines, “We ants; them, little boys with magnifying glass in the sun.” Same principle, just greatly enlarged. So to speak.
Maybe the 2012 doomsday claims aren’t all that far-fetched. They just haven’t figured out which self-inflicted technology will do us in.
G and I found ourselves unexpectedly losing our dining room set, since the youngest daughter moved out and has now decided to claim it. (It belonged to her so that’s perfectly okay with us.) It wasn’t my preference anyway because it was blond wood and I prefer darker hues. However, G insists on eating at the dinner table so that left us in a bit of a quandary. Not a major issue, fortunately, but we did start hunting for a replacement set over the past few days.
The kids haven’t picked up my daughter’s set yet anyway so we’re still using it. We found a tiny (VERY tiny) set for free online, which we had planned to use as an interim measure. It’s really cute and the table, though too small for us over the long run, is relatively stable. The chairs are pretty darned wobbly. I can see my fat butt plopping down and landing on the floor when that darling little chair goes all Goldilocks on me.
We’ve been watching Craigslist pretty closely and hopefully today we’ll pick up the set shown at right. I like it anyway, but what’s even cooler is that the tabletop can be folded down to 3×3 or extended to 3×5. Given that we don’t yet know how much dining space we’ll have when we move, that’s a HUGE deal. So is the price – a huge deal, not a huge price. For the moment the picture links to the Craigslist ad.
I’ve already emailed the seller and we’re supposed to go get it at noon today unless it turns out to be falling apart or something comparable. Cross your fingers!
Other than that, it’s been a fairly busy, if fun, weekend. I did a big grocery run yesterday, stocked up on a lot of basics. No meat to speak of at all, but I did pick up a lot of staples like sugar, milk, and canned veggies.
Yay! We have green beans again!
Yesterday we hit yard sales looking for a dining room set. Instead we came home with – what else? – more books! We found some unusual ones, including a hardback that promised a whoooole lot of unusual uses for mundane stuff. Like for example, if you have a dead car battery and need to revive it, you can drop a couple of aspirins into it. I’m sure it’s not a permanent solution but if you’re ever stranded, it might be just what you need to get a little further down the road.
Well, aside from getting off here before I bore anyone else to death, I need to get moving this morning. I want to make a quick trip to Safeway for a couple of things and also need to fill the car up with gas. I really don’t like leaving the fuel situation until mornings when I’m trying to get to work and am more than half asleep.
LATE EDIT: I was reading an entry from LA. She was bemoaning a life in which existence was her only point. She’s married to a good man she doesn’t happen to love madly; she has a teenager who’s being typically teenager-y; and her wonderful job went buh-bye and her substitute was less than stellar.
Heard THAT.
However… After many a year married to a royal shit; a man whose idea of “fun” was to hold a gun to my head or a knife to my throat; a man whose idea of “work” was to walk to the fridge to get his OWN beer (bought with MY money); whose idea of class and refinement was picked from garbage bins; and so on… Well, after all that I’ll wholeheartedly embrace a little mild okay-ness.
Would I like a bit more excitement at home? Sure. But G does ALL the housework and has even occasionally started putting dinner in the oven before I get home. He still doesn’t actually cook; however, when I get a premade meal (like frozen lasagna, etc) he will have it ready for me. I walk through the door to a hug and a kiss and a glass of iced tea, in that order. After many, many years of being greeted by a shove, a scream, a threat or God only knows what else – I’ll take what I have and run like Hell with it.