Vital Viewing (Tails from the Darkside Edition)

 

With all the turmoil taking place here on planet Earth, you'd at least think the heavens above could offer a bit of serenity. No such luck! On July 1 of this year an Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescope in Rio Hurtado, Chile took notice of a comet newly arrived from outside the solar system. That it's acting a bit different from other known comets has scientists puzzled, and at least one scientist thinks it may not be a comet at all. Watch:

You heard that guy. If it turns out to be just a comet, don't worry. If it's a spacecraft, worry. 

Actually, I worry even if it is a comet, especially as I recall this movie from way back when:

Well, maybe there's nothing to worry about after all. That '80s teen slang is much too dated to make a comeback.  

Not that there aren't ominous signs elsewhere:

Better get out the tinfoil. 

 

Quips and Quotations (Roaring Twenties Edition)

 

I couldn't forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people...they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made....

--F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby 

Vital Viewing (And Now for Something Completely Diabolical Edition)

 

Halloween is almost here, the time of year when we take perverse delight in getting the hell scared out of us, and what better way to get the hell scared out of us than by a creature from Hell? Of course, I'm talking about the Devil, a.k.a., Satan, Lucifer, the Prince of Darkness, Mephistopheles, Beelzebub, Belial, Old Nick, Old Scratch, the Evil One, the Arch Fiend, the Serpent, and the Antichrist. 

Did I leave a name out? Oh, yes. Blair:

Scary, huh? But is it fair? Can there be another side to the Devil? Can Satan be misunderstood? 

John Cleese offers this perspective:

 

So you might want to consider chipping in a few dollars. It will do your soul some good. Assuming it hasn't already been sold.

Graphic Grandeur (A River Runs Through It Edition)

 

OK, you've seen all the news coverage, but what was the President's reaction?

Cartoon by Nick Anderson

Quips and Quotations (Uncommonly Good Edition)

 

1946-2025

Choosing the freedom to be uninteresting never quite worked for me.

--Diane Keaton (née Hall)

 

Read All About Her

 

 

 

Joan Kennedy, the oft-troubled and soon-to-be-divorced wife of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, glances up at herself in 1981.

1936-2025

 

 

 

Quips and Quotations (Not-So-Missing Link Edition)

 

When, in the early 1960s, I brazenly used such words as "childhood", "adolescence", "motivation", "excitement", and "mood" I was much criticized. Even worse was my crime of suggesting that chimpanzees had "personalities". I was ascribing human characteristics to nonhuman animals and was thus guilty of that worst of ethological sins—anthropomorphism.

--Jane Goodall (1934-2025)