wait...what??

this is an excerpt from today's NY Times front page story about the shuttle and advance warnings that it was gonna blow.

"The study by researchers at Stanford and Carnegie Mellon
was particularly significant because it determined that the
two wheel areas were especially vulnerable to damage. They
were often hit by flying debris, became unusually hot
during the shuttle's fiery re-entry through the atmosphere
and covered some of the most vital - and volatile -
sections of the orbiter. Its helium, oxygen and hydrogen
are stored there in pressurized tanks, any of which might
explode and rupture the winged spaceship.

If even a single tile were lost in this area, said an
update on the 1990 study, a "zipper effect" could occur,
stripping away other tiles. The study noted that once
several tiles were gone, the resulting heat "could cause a
burn through in the aluminum skin of the orbiter during
re-entry, exposing and possible crippling some of the
critical subsystems and leading to the loss of the vehicle
and crew."

Yesterday, one of the authors of the study, Dr. Elisabeth
Paté-Cornell, a researcher at Stanford, said NASA
headquarters called two days ago to get a copy of its
original 1990 study. "I don't blame them," she said of the
space agency's inability to find the study. "I'm the same
way."

But the research does not appear to be widely understood in
NASA. Yesterday afternoon, Maj. Gen. Michael C. Kostelnik,
the deputy associate administrator for the space station
and the shuttle - who oversees safety issues - was asked
whether the tiles around the wheel wells were considered a
particular safety issue."

Okay, first of all--what the fuck is wrong with Dr. Elisabeth Paté-Cornell of Stanford university? "I don't blame them for not finding the study because i am the same way"????? um, yeah. I don't blame someone misplacing the TV Guide because I am the same way. I don't blame someone for making one-sided copies of double-sided originals because I am the same way. BUT I DON'T WORK FOR NASA!!! AND IF I DID, AND IF I LOST A STUDY ABOUT HOW SPACE SHUTTLES IN USE HAVE A FLAW THAT CAUSES THEM TO OH, I DON'T KNOW, BLOW UP--THEN I GUESS I AM OFF THE HOOK BECAUSE SOME RETARD AT STANFORD, WILL VALIDATE ME BECAUSE OBVIOUSLY THE NASA-SCALE FUCK-UP IS EQUIVALENT TO HER LOSING A INTRADEPARTMENTAL MEMO, OR SOMETHING.

also, what the fuck does it mean that "the research does not appear to be widely understood in NASA."? No, really, what does that mean? I mean, did the NY Times just diss NASA? cuz I am okay with that, but I am not sure that's what they did. Because I DON'T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING about this article.

there is no ontological, epistemological or metaphysical explanation for this

so, if there were awards for "most fucked up thing ever" the grand prize would go to "The Star Wars Holiday Special" which I had the pleasure? pain? of watching twice in the last two days.

there are simply no words to describe it. as charlie said, there is no cultural equivalent or precedent to it. so the best i can do is a free-associating impressionistic review, which is basically saying that at various point of watching it, i had many speculations about the effects of this movie (some david lynch, some suicides, etc.) but only one speculation about the cause, and that is DRUGS. i think everyone who wrote this movie was on a different kind of drug, and it's a fun game to try and figure out which sequences were penned under the influence of which substance. for example, the entire blocking (because there is no dialogue, really, just wookie howling and growling sans subtitles, for some paralingual effect of sustained (and boy, do I mean sustained) surrealism) of Chewbakka's hyperactive twitchy aggro little son same Lumpy presumably owes its existence to some sort of methamphetamine. there is a series of sequences that should flash the preepmtive caveat in neon: "BROUGHT TO YOU BY LSD," such as the tiny cirque de soleil that pops out of some piece of furniture in the Wookie household and serves to entertain Chewie's wife, who is a sort of Wookie corollary to Annie Camden on 7th Heaven because she is always doing some Wookie-housework, as well as the Imperial lieuetenant grooving to Jefferson Starship performing in a Wookie microwave. The Wookie VR porn scene (you think I am kidding, but I am not), as well as the impromptu cooking show featuring Harvey Korman in blackface AND in drag AND with four arms, were obviously conceived and executed on the kind of PCP trip they warn you about in PSAs, and the almost-ending, when the Wookies go across the sky (??) in a Life Day parade is equally evocative of Christmas Parades and the ending to Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal" where DEATH leads all of the protagonists away, in a procession, across the horizon. This is followed by the coda where Carrie Fisher sings, which is obscene, but not as obscene as Bea Arthur's TORCH SONG in a cameo that could have been written by Harold Pinter on CRACK, in which she is the Valkyric owner of the Tattoine cantina, populated by "freaky" alien reglars (including what seems to be a fetus brass orchestra), in a scene that obviously required tons and tons of makeup, but still not as much (especially in the way of eyeliner) as Luke Skywalker was donning in one of his brief obligatory cameos, in which he looked even more gay that the "now-more-gay-than-ever!" cartoon C3PO. yes, there is a cartoon. little Lumpy watches it on TV, although it's not clear why he is watching a cartoon about his absentee dad in the first place, and where it fits into the chronology of the narrative. oh, wait, what am i talking about? what chronology?? what narrative??? this movie is post-dadist in how little sense it makes, and the only thought I had at the end of it (after my brain committed hari-kiri as an act of defiance) was that it would be fun to take somebody tripping on acid for the first time, who has seen Star Wars before, sit them down to watch it and tell them that they are about to watch Star Wars, and watch--one epistemological framework collapse coming up.