Yesterday was a definite day of downswing. Mood, luck, Stuff, all rock bottom. Today? Is less than halfway through and already feels like that moment on the way up to the top on a swing, when your insides go over with the force of the lift and the iron frame around you shudders and lurches as your weight and momentum tug on its anchoring, and the wind and sun hit you in the face and it's all too exhilarating to be frightening even if it does feel like you're about to fall off. Today, so far, is good.

And this news article on measuring quantum effects without them realising that you're looking is just the icing on the possibly-existent cake. Apparently, if you can manage to observe reality without changing it, you discover that it is EVEN WEIRDER THAN YOU THOUGHT. Somewhere in the back of the universe, I can hear laughter. ^_^

In other more local news, it's so good to be awake and alive and not half dead with exhaustion for a change. ^_^ I even have a story blocked out in my head, which is great as I've been utterly useless at getting anything into pennable form lately. And today there will be pub food, and useful work, and friends, and also Judgement Day pay-per-view over at Mark's... yep, stuff is good. Life++.

Laters,
The Navigator

PS Also, new best thing ever: Body Shop's brazil nut body butter. I have no idea how it goes from smelling of warm and creamy and, well, brazil nuts in the jar, to smelling like WKD-Iron-Brew-over-hot-charcoal[1] on me, but the fact that it does is frankly just fantastic. Win!

[1] You will learn strange things from pouring alcoholic libations over a disposable barbeque. You may also discover the most unimaginably wonderful caramelised-sugar smell in the world, seriously... ^_^

If there's any truth at all in this, it's one of the creepiest things I've seen all year:

Numerous blond, blue-eyed twins of Brazilian town may be the handiwork of Josef Mengele.

This sort of thing is what still sets the Third Reich apart from every other evil empire I can think of. Plenty of other regimes have been amoral, immoral, bloodthirsty, genocidal... but I can't call to mind any other that throws up this kind of pure, spine-crawling, uncanny wrong with quite such macabre effectiveness. Even now, sixty years later, and this sort of thing still pops up.

Of course, I have no idea how good the research in this particular book is. But even if it's all made up, the fact that it's considered worth a news story is in itself a comment on exactly what place people like Mengele still hold in the popular imagination. Brr.

Laters,
Rath

Allegedly, David Bowie invented the credit crunch!

It's pretty obviously just someone drawing a silly conclusion, but I almost wish there was something more in it because it would be pretty damn rock'n'roll. ^_^ I mean, we all know David Bowie is badass, but being the guy who made the entire world economy collapse? That would be its own whole new kind of badass, albeit probably not the kind anyone would invite to parties any more...

Anyway. How is everyone today? I've just noticed I haven't posted here in ages...

Laters,
Rath

Obama vows to close Guantanamo Bay.

So relieved. Thank you Barack, because it looks like you really do mean to turn America back into a nation such that people won't back away from me when I tell them I want to live there. Thank you for being someone to whom the word "moral" means "we can't go around torturing people" rather than merely "we do everything it says in this dumbed-down edition of a dusty two-thousand-year-old book and everyone who gets hurt in the process, it was their own fault, y'see?"

I could hug the man, I really could, and I can't remember ever wanting to hug a politician before in my life. *throws flowers*

Laters,
The Navigator

Because it's frankly awesome to realise that you're watching history in the making... I would just like to raise my glass *lifts, er, a McDonald's soda cup since that's what I currently have* to President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama II. Congratulations to the man who stole America's heart, and may he take good care of it now he's got it!

*applauds*


And now a meme, since everyone else is doing it. From deepbluesquee and raisedbymoogles:

One little compliment can make you feel amazing.

So give me a compliment, anything in the entire world, even that my shoelaces are pretty. Put this in your journal, so I can return the favor. And once you get some comments, put that entry in a memory or tag so that when you are feeling down, you can go to that entry for a quick pick-me-up and a smile.

Backhanded remarks, friendly insults, and general abuse are also okay because, hey, I know some of my friends have issues with the idea of ever being overtly nice to another sentient being. *grins*

Laters,
The Navigator

PS Is anyone else who also uses Livejournal finding that their clever security checking measure for their new "find a friend" feature is killing their browsers? I mean, at least they're trying to do what their membership want (ie, allow people to opt IN to intrusive data searches rather than OUT) but nul points for the coding, right there...

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/4/20081016/tuk-what-does-outer-space-smell-like-dba1618.html

Apparently, out there in the void between the worlds, it smells of frying steak and welding - or at least, that's the rather prosaic description provided by astronauts sniffing things that have been out there.

I have to admit, the idea that the sensory bottom line of our universe is flesh, fire and hot metal makes me very, very happy.

I really hope that the attempts to duplicate this scent are successful and that it's somehow made commercially available. I'm not sure I'd ever wear anything else again.

Laters,
The Navigator

Just saw this via (lj)nevla: Senior witch curses Ely's Cromwell re-enactment bash.

Is it just me, or is telling the local news that you're going to make it piss with rain on a local educational event setting yourself up quite spectacularly in several directions at once? Especially when you're a self-proclaimed White Witch? See, this is why I don't trust the forces of Right and Good. They think that as long as they're convinced of their own righteousness they can do anything and still call themselves Good, and that worries me because it's exactly the same thinking as led to the witch-burnings he's allegedly protesting about. *mutters* No better than the Christian priest (twat!) who I met once, who proudly told me how he'd sprinkled holy water in the venue before an Inkubus Sukkubus gig to "protect" the audience...

Laters,
The Navigator

This is my favourite news story of the year so far.

Man flies. On turbine-powered personal wings. It's the Rocketeer for real.

I want to do that so much that it makes my heart bump up against my throat trying to get airborne. I almost certainly can't, not for another twenty years or so until the tech becomes mass market anyway, but I am so happy that someone else can and is.

Monsieur Yves Rossy, I salute you. From all the way down here. May your name go down - and indeed up - in history.

Laters,
The Navigator