Telling it like it is

We sat on the deck again tonight and looked for the space station. Bang on schedule at 9:30 it popped up over the western horizon and flew across the sky to northeast. Cool. And 10 bonus points to the first person who can tell me where the lyrics of the title of this post come from :-)

Cool . We've not used the telescope since we moved into the house over three years ago. Tonight we were sitting on the deck looking at a bright object with the binoculars and we decided to get the telescope out again. Put new batteries in the pack, and ran the autoalign, then skewed over and took a look. Jupiter. Not only Jupiter, but with 4 satellites visible: Ganymede, Io, Europa and Callisto. Once I put the super high magnification eyepiece, we could see the bands of cloud on Jupiter too. And for the first time, the telescope tracked properly too because we had enough objects visible to calibrate it properly.

Jussi Polet - Positive. Preferably the 'supermodels from paris' remix. Excuse me, I have to turn the volume up.

Yes yes I know it's still 35°C outside and we're months away from the first snowfall, but Solitude have their pre-season tickets on sale for $33 a day instead of $55 a day. I bought a pack today, and they'll be paid off long before winter so it'll be like skiing for free :-)

Lady, the rear view mirror in your car isn't there to help you put your lipstick and eyeliner on. That might explain why you drove into the car in front of you at the traffic lights this morning. Just thought you should know. I filed my 11th accident report with the police this morning. In my statement I made sure that I mentioned the lady in front had driven most of the way up 2100E with no hands on the wheel, using her rearview mirror to apply makeup.

Winamp is currently on random-play, shuffling through several gigs of 80's music. It just picked Sign 'O' The Times by prince, and literally within a millisecond of it starting, I could see the inside of a bar in Malta where we went on holiday in 1987. It had yellow and black chequered tiles on the floor, white and black on the wall and neon blue and pink strips around the ceiling with a red London phonebox in one corner. The bar was on the last corner before the steps down to a club called Styx II. It's amazing how memory works. Sign 'O' The Times was playing in there one night when I was on my way out to that with a group of kids I met at the hotel. It was the first time I'd heard it through a decent sound system which is probably why I remember that moment. Weird.

I turned on the Pentagon News Network this morning whilst having breakfast, like I normally do, only to be presented with Solenoid O Brien running a piece called "Target : USA". What the fuck? Basically, CNN are busily giving people ideas and instruction on how best to attack America. For example, on of their reporters was "reporting" from Gullfport Louisiana where he merrily told us that several million barrels of oil a day came in on tankers and they only had one security boat to police the entire area. He then pointed out how damaging it would be if one of the boats was hijacked and blown up - not just anywhere - but at the specific oil terminal he was standing at because of the processing capacity. Hey CNN : SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!!! Jeebus. Now you know this alleged proposed terrorist plot to perhaps blow up airliners (that never happend) was nothing at all to do with safety and security and everything to do with giving Bush and his cronies an excuse to get peopl...

I took myself off this morning to go on a little ride out on the bike. Turned out not to be so little - I did 178 miles and ended up in Eureka way south of Utah lake at one point. That's the bike in Eureka on the heavily photoshopped photo on the right (taken with the super crap-o-matic camera in my cellphone). The ride was good though - the air was cool even through midday and for the most part, I only passed other bikers on that road. There was barely another vehicle to be seen until I got close to Tooele.