Someday, I will see the Northern Lights with my own eyes. Sigh.
Rainbow Wonderland by Antony Spencer
Things that don’t legitimately exist in conservatives’ eyes:
- Presidents who are not white that are born in the United States
- Poor people
- Poverty
- Uninsured or underinsured people
- Women’s reproductive rights
- Donald Trump’s nutbaggishness
- Racism
- Corporations that are not people
- Sensible gun control laws to help stop people from getting murdered over stupid shit
- Tax breaks for anyone but the uber-rich
Also:
- Genuine compassion
- Gratitude
- Humility
And the common good.
Oh, very cool!
BeatifulWhat if Leonardo da Vinci designed the Large Hadron Collider? Art by Sergio Cittolin.
What?
Carry your towel the whole day with you, wherever you go.
When?Every year at May 25th.
Where?Of course everywhere you go!
And why?May 25th is the commemoration day for Douglas Adams, the author of the world-celebrated book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, who unfortunately passed away in 2001.
A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you - daft as a bush, but very, very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.- Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
It’s Doug’s day.
I only met him once — doing a Tomorrow’s World Christmas special: shared a couch with him and Frank Bruno, and it was one of the happiest evenings ever. We had such a great time, and I would have been glad to spend more time with Doug* again at the drop of a hat. A very sweet guy… and so much missed.
*Or Frank, for that matter. He kept calling me “Ma’am.” It was… memorable. :) …Does anyone know if that show’s on YouTube? We had a tape of it once, but it seems to have vanished.
Alphabet challenge: 10 things I love starting with the letter “J”
From a blog challenge, given to me by my writer friend, Arabella Stokes. She tasked me with “J”. If you want a letter, leave a comment!
Jelly-baby is one of my 10 things.
jelly-baby
True confession time: when I was 12, I discovered this weird little British SF TV serial. You may have heard of it… Doctor Who. But old Who. My Doctor was Tom Baker—the dude with the scarf and the long tweed greatcoat. One of my favorite ‘schticks’ was when he would be captured by the bad guys and have to empty his pockets. He always seemed to have these little gummy candies—jelly babies—in his pocket.
BlueMusings—free short fiction
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Past stories available in the archives. My most recent story, “Thou Shalt Not” is a strange little story about God and his psychotherapist.
