What the hell is that!

So, its a lovely day on a 3 day weekend and I decide to give the dog an extra walk around the block.

We're cruising around and I see the neighborhood high school kids shooting hoop in the street and I see what looks like a couple of rolls from a pizza joint in the street. You know the rolls I mean... pizza dough rolled into a ball about the size of a billiard ball and baked in the brick oven - oh YUM!

Anyway, I ask them if those are crab apples, and the youngest one says no, and he's not sure what they are.

Me, being Mr. Smarty-pants, figures I can tell what they are, so I cruise on over. He grabs a stick and pokes one of them and picks it up for a closer look and then sticks it in my face.

I look at it.

I look more closely.

My minds starts racing, but nothing comes out.

It still looks like a roll, except it has cracks in it and the inside is kind of an amber clear stuff. I'm thinking its some sort of fungus, but there does not seem to be a place where it was touching the ground, or anything else. Plus, there is that clear, jell-o like stuff inside.

Then it hits me...

I call them over and say, "Its some sort of alien pod or seed and you're that person who goes over and pokes it with a stick." And we know what happens to him. He taken over by the aliens and is either possessed or dead before the first commercial (if it is TV), or before the beginning credits are over. He's doomed.

I back away and tell them, "Just kidding. My best guess is that its a fungus. Probably a good idea to not touch it or breath to deeply around it." But I know its an alien and he's a goner.

Maybe tomorrow I'll go over and take some photos of it and post it to see if anyone recognizes it.

Always something new under the sun!

Postscript: I went there the next day with my camera and it was gone.

Definitely an alien pod.

So Long Commander Armstrong

Neil Armstrong died last week. He was a true American hero.

Hero.

That gets tossed around a lot nowadays. I got an email from a vendor the other day passing along tips from their “customer support heroes.” Seriously? I emailed them that they need to put a leash on their marketers.

But I digress.

I was 7 years old when they landed on the moon. Kids nowadays have no idea how big the space program was back then. We watched them take off - even if we didn’t expect them to blow up on the pad. We watched them land. We watched their ticker-tape parades.

I built models of the Apollo craft. I was young, so I painted mine a pretty shade of green. The gas stations passed out cardboard punch models of the lunar landing and I made a bunch of them as well. Heck, I even had my own NASA astronaut jumpsuit that I played and slept in until the sad day that I outgrew it.

You get the idea.

Anyway, these guys were heroes. They risked their lives to advance science and (let’s admit it) to stick it to “the Rooskies.” They didn’t get paid much. They were risking their lives, and some of them even died on ships (Apollo 1). Remember, they didn’t even know what to expect on the surface of the moon. Was it so dusty that it would affect their suits or the lunar lander? Did they really calculate the fuel and the descent speeds correctly? Were they going to get home? Who really knew? These guys couldn’t be sure, but they went anyway, because that was what we asked expected them to do.

And now the most famous of them has died. A little part of my childhood went with him. But I popped his photo back up on my wallpaper, and for the next week or so I’ll remember back when a few brave astronauts, inspired by a fallen president, backed by the brightest minds at NASA, and the hopes of an entire country left the gravity of the small rock we call home to set foot on our closest neighbor.

This famous poem may be the best description of what he must have experienced.

"High Flight"
 Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
 And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
 Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
 of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
 You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
 High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
 I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
 My eager craft through footless halls of air....

 Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
 I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.
 Where never lark, or even eagle flew —
 And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
 The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
 - Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

- John Gillespie Magee

So long, Commander Armstrong. I hope that they’ll name something great after you. Until then, you’ll just have to settle for the fond memories of a little boy back in the 60’s.