September 28, 2006

The Blue Drone Confesses...

A worker bee friend of mine recently remarked about my musical tastes: "I bet all you listen to is Pansy-Ass rock!". I was taken aback by the comment. How could that be? I like music that rocks...hard, preferably at ear-splitting decibel levels. I thought long and hard on this, until I realized that maybe, just maybe...my friend could be right.
So, I confess, yes...I like Pansy-Ass rock...and in order to revel in my Pansy-Ass Rockiness I will post not one, but three videos from a band that may be a quintessential example of said genre:

"Something 4 the Weekend"


"If You Don't Want me to Destroy You"

"Lazer Beam"

The Blue Drone: Pansy-Ass Rocker...possibly even a communist!


September 27, 2006

The Blue Drone Goes Oink!


I knew it all along...

Who's a cute little piggy? Oh, you are!

Who's the prettiest most adorable lucky piggy? You are you are!!Oh look at you so precious and pink with your cute little hooves! awww.

Who's the bestest...tastiest piggy? You are! CHOMP!

Oh, the pig... In Buddhist tradion it sometimes represents the deity called 'Varahi', who is:

The boar-faced goddess who protects Newari (Nepalese) temples and buildings, Varahi or Barahi, refers to any of 4 sow deities who preside over Kathmandu Valley, Nepal. They guard the gates of the city-as-mandala.

In Egypt:

-Nuut, the Egyptian goddess of the night, Mother of Stars, was sometimes depicted on amulets as a sow suckling her piglets.

In Greece:

Swine were sacred to Demeter, goddess of the earth's fertility, who was the mother of Persephone, queen of the underworld. In autumn, during the rites of Thesmophoria, her devotees drove a herd of swine into a labyrinthine cave. Later, they would return to see if the deity had accepted this offering by examining the condition of any pig carcasses that might remain.

The pig truly is a wonderful, magical animal! Strong, powerful, noble, highly intelligent, harbringer of good luck, and also...

Quite delicious!!! Ich muss Schwein essen!!!

September 20, 2006

The Blue Drone Asks:

What the hell is going on in Space?!

Atlantis Landing Delayed After Mystery Object Spotted
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA
shuttle managers are deciding whether simple camera views, a third heat shield survey or possibly even a spacewalk may be required to address a mystery object near the space shuttle Atlantis that has already delayed the spacecraft’s planned Wednesday landing.

Our team of expert scientists at Blue Drone headquarters have studied these objects and have concluded that the first one...



is only an improperly discarded "Take 5" candy wrapper, wedged between the tiles by NASA contractor in Cape Canaveral. Either that or a space slug, that in any case will safely be incinerated upon reentry without any further damage to the insulation tiles, unless it's a Super Killer Space Slug of World Destruction...then we will all be doomed.

The second object is a bit harder to identify:

Our experts have yet to agree on an explanation as to what exactly this is. Some say it's a floating see-through skirt ejected from the Russian Zvezda Module after some serious partying with a group of Bolshoi ballerinas flown in an unscheduled Vostok launch. Others say its a Super Killer Giant Space Jellyfish-like creature working in conjuction with the Super Killer Space Slug attached to the Shuttle. If that is the case then we will truly be royally screwed.

Not that it will matter to the Russians in the Zvezda Module:

Space Station Crew Detects Smoke-like Smell in Russian Segment
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – A mild toxic leak and a smoke-like smell aboard the International Space Station (ISS) prompted an afternoon scare for three astronauts aboard the orbital laboratory, mission managers said Monday.

Smoke like smell eh...

“Everything is good, everything is fine,” Expedition 13 commander Pavel Vinogradov told Russian ISS mission controllers in Moscow, adding that he had contained the apparent leak in a rubber bag.

Yeah, of course everything is fine when your brain is fried on some primo ganja...Hmm, is that how you make a bong in zero gravity? Our sources obtained an unedited clip of the transmission and one could faintly hear some reggae music in the background, along with some giggling. Commander Vinogradov was also heard saying: "Когда пица приходит?"... which is Russian for "When's the Pizza coming?"

“I believe that the rubber seal produced that odor,” Vinogradov said, adding that the Elektron appeared to stop leaking after he shut it off.

You're not fooling anyone Vinogradov!

September 12, 2006

Why?

I sometimes just don't understand human beings....

10 stingrays killed since Irwin's death
SYDNEY, Australia - At least 10 stingrays have been killed since "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin was fatally injured by one of the fish, an official said Tuesday, prompting a spokesman for the late TV star's animal charity to urge people not take revenge on the animals.
Irwin died last week after a stingray barb pierced his chest as he recorded a show off the Great Barrier Reef.
Stingray bodies since have been discovered on two beaches in Queensland state on Australia's eastern coast. Two were discovered Tuesday with their tails lopped off, state fisheries department official Wayne Sumpton said.
Sumpton said fishermen who inadvertently catch the diamond-shaped rays sometimes cut off their tails to avoid being stung, but the practice was uncommon. Stingrays often are caught in fishing nets by mistake and should be returned to the sea, Sumpton said
.

Now explain to me what purpose does this serve? Was this guy so popular in Australia to impel people to start killing stingrays? I always thought Australians were strange, but this is downright stoopid.
I didn't want to comment on this guy's death anyway. His death was tragic, yes, but something in me also tells me that the odds just caught up with him, and in fact, he reminds me a little bit of this guy.
Then again, as eccentric entertainers go, he was quite harmless, except when he dangled his baby son in front of a crocodile, and he did at least encourage learning about nature.
Now all this talk about Stingrays and Manta Rays brought back a song to my head, The Blue Drone sometimes being Mr. Literal Drone, and I'd like to play it as an eulogy of sorts to the Crocodile Dude...to the Manta Rays. It doesn't matter...take a pick, what is certain is that it's rockin'.


Tsk Tsk...


Looks like somebody wasn't following the step by step instructions:

Astronauts lose bolt during spacewalk
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Spacewalking astronauts worried they have may have gummed up a successful job connecting an addition to the international space station Tuesday when a bolt, spring and washer floated free.
Astronaut Joe Tanner was working with the bolt when it sprang loose, floated over the head of Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper and skittered across the 17 1/2-ton box-like truss that they were hooking up.

Now I wonder what this guy would have said about this:


"Never let a mechanical engineer do a handyman's job!"

September 7, 2006

The Blue Drone Asks: What does this all mean?




1. I am walking on a sidewalk, a very wide sidewalk in a non-descript big city. It is cloudy, it has rained. I chat with a friend as we walk nonchalantly and I notice that the sidewalk is littered with thousands and thousands of wriggling earthworms. We start to tread carefully so as not to step on them, we get closer to the storefronts. Near one of the windows there is a heated grill, similar to a space heater. The Earthworms that have wandered close to the grill are withered and all dried up. We keep walking carefully. A chicken, just like the one in the picture above, starts moving...dragging itself along the sidewalk. All of a sudden a stranger, a girl, steps on it and squishes it, muttering something about saving the animal. End.
2. I am cleaning the bathtub. I apply a cleaning solution and start scrubbing. I scrub and scrub and scrub some more. Yet the bathtub remains dirty. I keep scrubbing and scrubbing and cleaning and water starts to accumulate. The bathtub is still dirty. I scrub and scrub until all the paint, porcelain, and metal are gone, revealing some underlying fiberglass-like material. It starts to soak up all the water and begins to bulge. End.

I was going to ask Josef Von Teufel about these two, but he's a hopeless charlatan and a silly man, so I decided to ask the Wikipedia instead.

Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is the stage of sleep characterized by rapid movements of the eyes. During this stage, the activity of the brain's neurons is quite similar to that during waking hours; for this reason, the phenomenon is often called paradoxical sleep. Most of the vividly recalled dreams occur during REM sleep. It is the lightest form of sleep, and people awakened during REM usually feel alert and refreshed.
The function of REM sleep is not well understood; several theories have been advanced.
According to one theory, certain
memories are consolidated during REM sleep. Numerous studies have suggested that REM sleep is important for consolidation of procedural and spatial memories. (Slow-wave sleep, part of non-REM sleep, appears to be important for declarative memories.)

Any other suggestions are welcome...


The Blue Drone checks the pulse of the nation...realizes there isn't any.

I was browsing through 'Yahoo News' and noticed that I am surrounded by idiots: Here are the 'Most e-mailed' news. Anger arose within me before I realized that it all fits with my master plan, as it is easier to control dimwits.

In other news, today's prize for most blatant promotion of disingenuous theory based on bad historical/scientific analogy goes to this article:
Climate change was once boost, not threat to civilization: scientist
LONDON (AFP) - Severe climate change thousands of years ago may have been a boost to civilization rather than the danger it appears to pose today, a British scientist said.
Between 4,000 and 6,000 years ago, natural fluctuations in the Earth's orbit weakened the monsoon rains and brought a more arid climate, the University of East Anglia's Nick Brooks told a science festival in Norwich, eastern England.
The seeds for the civilizations in Egypt, Iraq, South Asia, China and northern South America were sown when hunter-gatherer people then gravitated to the remaining water sources and settled in stable communities, he said Thursday.
His view contradicts that of many experts who believe civilization resulted from a transition from a harsh, unpredictable climate during the last ice age, to a more clement and stable environment 10,000 years ago.


Taking the theory at face value, the massive climate change provoked by the giant asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs(just a theory as well) was also beneficial, because it eventually led to the further development of mammalian species. So, following that line of thinking, wouldn't we all benefit by a a friendly visit from a giant asteroid or more cataclismic events?
The article also fails to point out the fact that what took place 6,000 years ago was 'natural' climate change, not change induced by humans. Now, I will not get into the argument regarding what makes a natural event "natural", as I am aware that humans are not alien entities on the planet, but the article is written in such a way that suggests: "Hey, climate change is actually good so, don't worry about the scaremongers and hysterics, had it not been for it we wouldn't have the Great Pyramid of Giza, who knows how far we will go if we pursue our current ways."

I could'nt stop thinking that no serious scientist would promote such a hare-brained idea, unless he worked for a think tank paid for by a fossil-fuels company, and then I found an article about the same speech, but written by Reuters instead of Agence France Presse.

Climate change forged first civilizations: scientist
NORWICH (Reuters) - The earliest civilizations were not a product of favorable conditions but rather a last resort in the face of dramatic shifts in the weather, a climate scientist said on Thursday.
Flying in the face of accepted theory that settled societies emerged from the development of static farming in good climatic conditions that produced food surpluses and allowed specialization, Nick Brooks said the opposite was true.
"Civilization did not arise as the result of a benign environment which allowed humanity to indulge a preference for living in complex, urban civilized societies," he told the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

Pretty similar no? but here is the last line in the Reuters article:

And he warned against drawing comparisons with the global warming that is predicted to raise average temperatures by around three degrees this century, noting that the temperature rise was well above that which forced the societal change 5,000 years ago.

It's not only what you read...but also where you read it.

And, speaking of Dinosaurs...

September 5, 2006

Josef Von Teufel: Bibliomancer, Visionary...Silly Man(so says The Blue Drone)

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Greetings, adoring public and faithful followers of sideral bibliomancy. I have indeed returned to reveal truths and answer the questions that befuddle all. This week my fingers will caress the pages of XIX Century philosophy and guide your way towards fullness and happiness. And I will achieve this feat despite the fact that this mensch was considered-though not entirely accurately-to be quite the pessimist. Those Germans, and their German ways...but in any case, let us proceed....


Aquarius(Jan 20-Feb 18)
"A good supply of resignation is of the first importance in providing for the journey of life. It is a supply which we shall have to extract from disappointed hopes; and the sooner we do it, the better for the rest of the journey."

---
Your object of affection, I am sorry to say, does not love you back. Move on Aquarius, there are more fish in the sea...that will reject you. Also, Red Sox fans, give up! They're not even making the division championships this year.

Pisces(Feb 19-Mar 20)
"In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods."

---
And I suspect that in your case these periods only involve sleep. Cease to watch this "television" and read "Gossip magazines", lest you become an insufferable idiot.

Aries(Mar 21-Apr 19)
"The actual life of a thought lasts only until it reaches the point of speech: there it petrifies and is henceforth dead but indestructible, like the petrified plants and animals of prehistory. As soon as our thinking has found words it ceases to be sincere or at bottom serious. When it begins to exist for others it ceases to live in us, just as the child severs itself from its mother when it enters into its own existence."

---
Shut your trap, if you know what's good for you. Silence...is golden.

Taurus(Apr 20-May 20)
"What makes us almost inevitably ridiculous is our serious way of treating the passing moment, as though it necessarily had all the importance which it seems to have. It is only a few great minds that are above this weakness, and, instead of being laughed at, have come to laugh themselves."

---
It matters not that you have been laid off, slipped on a banana peel, then got hit by a car and suffered 4 compound fractures within a period of 30 minutes. Laugh, even if it is a Pyscho-homicidal laugh.

Gemini(May 21-Jun 21)
"It is just because all happiness is of a negative character that, when we succeed in being perfectly at our ease, we are not properly conscious of it. Everything seems to pass us softly and gently, and hardly to touch us until the moment is over; and then it is the positive feeling of something lacking that tells us of the happiness which has vanished; it is then that we observe that we have failed to hold it fast, and we suffer the pangs of self-reproach as well as of privation."

---
That's the feeling you get when you stop reading Josef Von Teufel's wise words.

Cancer(Jun 22-Jul 22)
"Money is human happiness in the abstract: he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes his heart entirely to money."

---
Cancer, I care for your happiness in the concrete! Give away your wealth...to me! So as to purchase more, err...volumes of books, yes, that's the ticket.


Leo(Jul 22-Aug 22)
"Many undoubtedly owe their good fortune to the circumstance that they possess a pleasing smile with which they win hearts. Yet these hearts would do better to beware and to learn from Hamlet's tables that one may smile, and smile, and be a villain."

---
She's faking it...you know, in bed.

Virgo(Aug 23-Sep 22)
"Why should it be folly to be always intent on getting the greatest possible enjoyment out of the moment, which is our only sure possession? Our whole life is no more than a magnified present, and in itself as fleeting."
---
Great Outlook on life Virgo, you are a champion and a wise man and will go on to achieve great knowledge and fame. ahem!

Libra(Sep 23-Oct 22)
"It is not without meaning that mythology depicts Cronus as devouring and digesting stones: for that which is otherwise quite indigestible, all affliction, vexation, loss, grief, time alone digests."

---
You once tried to swallow and digest pride along with some heartache, with a side of dejection in a sweet mango sauce. Now had it not been for those stones you were passing you would have pulled it off. This is what you get for trying to imitate a Titan: Gastrointeritis Acuta.

Scorpio(Oct 23-Nov 22)
"If you want to know how you really feel about someone take note of the impression an unexpected letter from him makes on you when you first see it on the doormat."

---
True, but I still think you should reply to those 357 unread messages in your inbox.

Sagittarius(Nov 23-Dec 21)
"Recognise the truth in yourself, recognise yourself in the truth; and in the same moment you will find, to your astonishment, that the home which you have long been looking for in vain, which has filled your most ardent dreams, is there in its entirety, with every detail of it true, in the very place where you stand. It is there that your heaven touches your earth."

---
As your legal and spiritual counsel I advise you to follow this to the letter, mixed with some song and dance...aye.

Capricorn(Dec 22-Jan 19)
"Marriage is a trap which nature sets for us"

---
Ditto.


FIN

September 1, 2006

Ernesto, you let me down...again

Not only did you fail-miserably by the way-to destroy Florida, but now you are intent on ruining my long weekend with your wind and rain. Now if you had been a real hurricane it would have been at least a bit interesting. But you are only a wimpy depression with lots of rain...meddlesome and irritating, just like a zit on the butt.
All I have to say to you is this: I'm over you, and I don't love you anymore!