Friday, July 30, 2004

BEST BALLOON-RELATED PROFANITY EVER

The text of DNC coordinator Don Micher, mistakenly but very, very hilariously overheard on the Communist News Network:

"All right, go balloons, go balloons. We need more balloons. All balloons! All balloons! Keep going! Come on, guys, lets move it. Jesus! We need more balloons. I want all balloons to go, goddammit. Go confetti. Go confetti. More confetti. I want more balloons. What's happening to the balloons? We need more balloons.

"We need all of them coming down. Go balloons- balloons? What's happening balloons? There's not enough coming down! All balloons, what the hell! There's nothing falling! What the fuck are you guys doing up there? We want more balloons coming down, more balloons. More balloons. More balloons...."

Shame, really.  I was going to vote for Kerry, but, alas, there were just not enough balloons.

MORE BALLOONS at blondechampage@hotmail.com

Wednesday, July 28, 2004

Houston, We Have a Whiner

Oh, children, this whole Kerry-In-The-Bunny-Suit business is becoming quite the little story.

Our intrepid reporter on the launchpads, Nick the NASA Poobah, has checked in with the confirmation that the defiled orbiter in question is indeed the lovely and talented Discovery. She is slated to carry the banner for the Return to Flight mission, but given what just happened to her I wouldn't be surprised if she were benched for counseling and some high-octane post traumatic stress disorder treatment.

In case you're just joining us, this picture has caused widespread snickering amongst the press, snickering which has now spread to the general populace.

This is when it's fun to actually know what one is talking about. First of all, it's SOP for NASA to snap away for PR events such as this (sorry, as per NASA regulations, I am forced to instinctively switch to Acronym Mode.) They do it for historical purposes; their photo archives are among the most thrillingly comprehensive of all the governmental agencies (and, as you know, all the kids are lining up around the block to dig through the photo albums of the Department of Agriculture.) It was An Event for NASA for one of the Presidential candidates to pay a visit to KSC, and so they posted the photos right on their webpage to show everybody what was up at the Cape.

And that is what slays me about all this sudden pique. Kerry popped into KSC for a publicity tour. He wasn't there to inspect the engine bell replacements on Atlantis. He was there for a photo op. You can imagine his shock, then, when PICTURES of the occasion were slapped all over the web.

In NASA World, it's simply second nature to be wearing one of these suits in a cleanroom environment (as was reflected my reaction to the photo--sheer disgusted jealousy as opposed to bemused... amusement.) NASA had no ill will in its starry heart; since this is just space business as usual, it didn't for one moment perceive the photo as damaging.

Let me just pause for a second and take off the NASA batting helmet to make room for my poli sci BA bonnet and, once again, say this about that:

1) By appearing on Brit Hume's broadcast to blame NASA for the fact that Kerry looks stupid in a bunny suit, his campaign managers have done nothing but ensure that everybody will talk about this even more.

2) And due to this extra attention, we've now got Drudge re-involved. This pushed not only That Picture right back to the masthead on his site, but the rest of the Bunny Suit Brigade photos as well.

There's also a 3:

3) What the Kerry campaign should have said is something along the lines of: "Senator Kerry is profoundly grateful to have been afforded a backstage view of the shuttle program that most Americans are not able to see. He is proud to have been photographed wearing the same gear that the dedicated NASA employees who keep the agency moving wear every day."

See, this is what happens when nobody asks me.

blondechampagne@hotmail.com

Sunday, July 25, 2004

Classy

I have struck up an e-mail friendship with a college freshman, to whom I often allocate certain pearls of wisdom that only a Real World-embattled graduate is capable of dispensing, such as how to magically transform a five-page paper into a seven-page one by changing the font. She is grateful for my assistance and shows it by whining a great deal about her required courses. I take this as an offense and a challenge. NOBODY out-whines me where the evil cores are concerned:

Class: Biology

Took Place: Every.  Frickin'.  Day.  For a YEAR.

Usefulness: Would sooner drink formaldehyde than have to smell it again.

This course consisted largely of a man who wore the same four sweaters on a regularly rotating basis and talked at length about how cells divide. At one point he showed a film which graphically depicted mating rituals of the American honeybee.The fact that this was immensely disgusting was all anyone remembered on the midterm. A fetal pig was also dissected. No one enjoyed this except for the man in the sweater.

Class: Spanish

Took Place: Entirely too often

Usefulness: Negative one million trillion gazillion stars.

Spanish spoken by a learned or native tongue is lovely. Spanish spoken by hungover eighteen-year-olds at nine in the morning is not. An intense hatred of this course was easily engendered by its evil and deceptive nature.

The first week or so was dedicated to introducing oneself and constructing such marginally useful sentences as "The desk is on the floor!" Then suddenly, out of some deep, specially prepared hole of hell, came subject pronouns, the present tense of all verbs ending in -ar, singular forms of adjectives, the use and conjugation of the verb ir and one 125 vocabulary words, none of which even obliquely referred to such useful things as the procurement of liquor. The explanations for correct usage and directions for homework exercises were written entirely in Spanish. And that concluded Chapter One.

Raining especial torment upon Spanish 101 was Language Lab. This was an undodgable requirement for all foreign language courses, in which students signed in for their prescribed one hour a week with a proctor, then hunched in carrels with a language tape, a Trudy the Time-Life Operator headset and a "listening skills" workbook. In theory, the student listened carefully to questions posed by the tape, then entered painstakingly constructed, accent-perfect responses in the spaces provided.

This theory applied for perhaps a grand total of four seconds of the required 27 hours of my Language Lab time. Within a week I discovered the Listening Skills answers conveniently placed in the back of the book, the amazing physical resemblance between the textbook tape and, say, a personal mix tape featuring Toad the Wet Sprocket and the fact that student proctor did not in fact give a damn so as long as everyone was checked in, wearing headphones and holding some sort of writing instrument. I am pleased that Spanish 101 managed to inject joy and meaning into the life of at least one human being.

Class:  History of Western Civilization

Took place: Way the hell in the past

Usefulness: Too many guillotines to be certain

The textbook for this course contained an entire section entitled "The Use of the Hand Plow," and that's all you need to know about that.

Otherwise, the most pivotal event of Western Civilization took place at noon on Wednesday, October 4, 1995, which was the starting time for a lecture on Charlemagne — and the designated hour at which the verdict in the O.J. Simpson trial was to be announced. A mammoth battle then raged between the professor, who wished to lecture, and the students, who, fully cognizant of the verdict's impact upon the nation's judicial system and American society in general, wished to get out of hearing the lecture. A truce was reached when two "reporter" students were permitted to listen to the verdict on a radio in the professor's nearby office while actual learning took place for the rest of the class. (It should be noted that everybody hated this arrangement except for the two reporter students.)

At 12:15 p.m., just as Charlemagne was conquering Saxony, a great "OOOOOOHHHHHHHH!" was heard from the professor's office, immediately followed by the stomping appearance of the reporting students, who screeched, "NOT GUILTY!!" before flopping angrily into their respective seats. The professor was mildly stunned and the reporting students were near tears, but the lecture continued anyway.

I will say one thing for the cores: They kept me busy between weekends.

NOT GUILTY at blondechampagne@hotmail.com

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