My Mom Asked Me To Knock A Spiderweb Down For Her The Other Day (she's Very Afraid Of Spiders And I Kinda

Occasionally I check twitter, and occasionally there are interesting things there...

[Image ID: A screenshot of a tweet by Gabe Saporta reading "Pretty stoked about Riot Fest. Any special requests?". The first reply is by kal (bat emoji) @/DecaydanceBats and reads "Snakes on a plane with William. Do it for the gays Gabriel this is our last shot". Gabe Saporta replied "You know I would do anything for you, right?". The first tweet in the exchange is from 4:41 pm on 17 May 22 and the replies are marked 1 hour ago. End ID]

Wow, Mars!? I know that’s kind of bad but it’s also kind of awesome. 

We live a mile south of the MN/IA border (we live in Iowa but the nearest town is in Minnesota, just 6 miles north), and this is not my first -20F day. It’s a funny thing, stepping outside when it’s this cold; I find it feels as though it’s wet, not because of any moisture, but just because it’s so cold that my body reads it as wet from the drastic temperature drop. 

But, back to that exciting part about Mars. 

I’ve often compared putting on all the pieces of my winter gear to putting on a space suit, and I’m not going to lie, I sometimes go full mental role play when it’s this cold and I’m going out to feed animals in the barn. Like, I start mentally referring to the house as the exploratory base and my car as the rover and I’ll say I’m going out on a solo surface mission and whatnot; if my scarf slips off my face, I have a helmet breach, and so on. (I could probably pick more accurate scientific space terms, especially after reading the Martian, but it’s usually just in my head so I don’t typically pay too much attention to accuracy). Apparently, I never realized how semi-accurate I was actually being! 

So wait, wait though. Are you actually telling me that the winter gear currently in my possession--knee-length down coat rated to ~ -20F, wool scarf, felt-lined wool mittens, wool hat, snow boots, snow pants, etc... Is what you’re saying that with the clothing I currently own, I could potentially walk around on the surface of Mars without actually needing a space suit?? I mean, I guess there are also other factors, like oxygen and pressure and things, but I’m suddenly feeling like a patched together homemade spacesuit made from the winter gear I already have and like maybe a scuba diving tank or something is way more viable than I had previously considered. It’s a good thing I don’t have any way of quickly transporting myself to Mars right now or the high level of childish space energy currently flooding me might make me foolish enough to try it. 

Also I just had this moment where I thought, “it’s like I’m in space!” and then remembered that the earth actually is a planet that is in space, so, technically... I am in space. So, in conclusion, stay warm, my fellow space travellers, and may your space suits/winter gear serve you well :)

Fun Fact for my friends caught in the US Polar Vrotex:

It’s 19-20 F (-7 C) whole-ass degrees at the Larsen Ice Shelf in Antartica.  

Google says it’s -7 F (-22 C) in St. Paul, MN.

Congratulate it’s nearly 30 degrees warmer in antartica rn, stay toasty and be real smug about living through this.

So my mom and I picked back up watching A Series of Unfortunate Events on Netflix the other day, and for the most part, I really do like it and I agree it’s a highly faithful adaptation of the books (though admittedly it’s been a while since I read them, but from what I recall, the series is doing quite well). 

But one thing did bother me: their Lemony Snicket is not at all like I pictured him. No hate to Kronk; Kronk is doing a great job being the Lemony Snicket that he is. But like I said, he’s just not at all how I saw the character as I was reading him. 

For one thing, given that his name is “Lemon-y”, I pictured him as blonde, perhaps strikingly so. For another thing, I just got the sense that book Lemony was a touch more shy and awkward, and I pictured him as a rather wiry kind of guy--not completely scrawny, thin but tough. That is to say, less strong-shouldered than Kronk. And recently, after a bit of thought, I realized that the Lemony I was picturing as I read looked more or less like a young Tom Petty.

I could just see Tom, fedora nestled on his soft blonde hair, hanging about libraries looking for clues regarding missing sugar bowls and odd, question-mark shaped creatures, penning lengthy coded love letters to a woman who regrettably cannot marry him, and watching grimly from the shadows as a number of dismaying tragedies befall that woman’s orphaned children. He has the perfect lemon-y hair, a suitably wiry frame, and just the right amount of quirky awkwardness in his smile, I believe. 

(To clarify, I don’t think Tom’s deep, Southern speaking voice would necessarily suit Lemony, just his physical appearance, so this is just for the sake of visualization.)

And so, I present to you, young Tom Petty as Lemony Snicket. Well, really just a series of photos where he looks how I would picture Lemony as looking; I haven’t edited them or anything, just arranged them. 

Anyways, young Tom Petty is just generally adorable and full of subtle swag. It’s always fun to look at pictures of him.  

Image sources below the cut. 

picture sources, in order:  1http://www.theuncool.com/tag/tom-petty-the-heartbreakers/ 2 https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/544724517406734973/ 3 https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/tom-petty-1950-2017/2/ 4 https://www.biography.com/people/tom-petty-201299 5 https://www.listal.com/tom-petty-%26-the-heartbreakers 6 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0965382/mediaviewer/rm3324321792 7 https://www.elmodulor.com/el-modulor-ep08-tom-petty-nacio-en-florida-pero-le-dio-sonido-a-california/

I was finding a lot of Moocow text posts in the Puppy Bowl tag but not enough pictures/videos of Moocow so I went to youtube and --

https://youtu.be/JB9LMjTaSlI

Teeny tiny Moocow!!

fandom is so weird you never know how old anyone is but you just kinda assume most of them are around your age until proven otherwise and then one day someone is talking about their 9 year old kid on your dash and another person is saying they just finished 10th grade. wild.  

(via blagueofchaos, fuckyeahbillbeckett-blog)

So I decided to try stripping the blue tones out to see what this would look like with more natural coloring. It still looks weirdly off because I think there wasn't that much color left underneath the blue, so even boosting the saturation didn't really make it quite normal-looking, but here's my best try with what I can do on my phone:

Then I messed around with it a little more on my laptop and boosted the contrast and messed with the tones a little more, though it’s still flatter than I’d like, especially in the background.

Well, it was a fun experiment at any rate, and it does look a touch more true to color! To get it really realistic, I think you’d have to color it section by section, almost like colorizing a black and white picture, but I don’t really feel like messing with Pixlr right now so I think I’m going to call this good enough. Enjoy! :) 

So, is the guy with whom Lucy wishes she could set Mina up the owner of the same insane asylum as the one across the street from the castle Jonathan found for our friend the Count, or are there just a lot of insane asylums around in 1890s London?

No hate to Star Wars, but Earth is a really awesome planet and this is a super cool post! :) 

Oh, and speaking of pink lakes, this reminds me of Lake Hillier in Australia (image source: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/lake-hillier) 

And also, I know people get all excited about Hoia Baciu forest because it’s supposedly haunted and an alien sighting hotspot or whatever, but just aesthetically, I think the curvy trees would be a neat look for a far-off planet. (image source: https://www.dreadcentral.com/news/109706/hoia-baciu-forest-beyond-the-legend-explores-one-of-transylvanias-greatest-mysteries/)

(image source: http://lilianausvat.blogspot.com/2015/03/hoia-baciu-forest.html#.XB3An9MrKXQ) 

And speaking of funky looking forests, did I mention the rainbow eucalyptus forest in the Philippines?  (image source: https://matadornetwork.com/trips/75-places-so-colorful-its-hard-to-believe-theyre-real-pics/)

(image source: https://www.elitereaders.com/rainbow-eucalyptus-tree-philippines/) (*note: I have not read or verified image sources; these are just from whence I got the pictures.)

Yeah, sci fi in general could do well to take more advantage of these things. Like, I know filming in quarries is a time-honored Doctor Who tradition, and I’m not suggesting an end to that. Welsh quarries are neat, too :) But the world is full of a great many fantastic sights. 

why are star wars planets more boring than earth and our solar system like sure we’ve seen desert, snow, diff types of forest, beach, lava, rain, but like… 

rainbow mountains (peru)

red soil (canada/PEI)

rings (saturn’s if they were on earth) 

bioluminescent waves

northern lights (canada)

salt flats (bolivia, where they filmed crait but did NOTHING COOL WITH IT except red dust?? like??? come ON)

and cool fauna like the touch me not or like, you know, the venus flytrap.. and don’t get me started on BUGS like… we have bugs cooler than sw aliens

BASICALLY like???? come on star wars you had one (1) job where are the cool alien species

So I’ve been working on transcripts of these farmers’ memories at my job and one of them mentioned his old Jet Star tractor... Turns out the “Minneapolis-Moline ‘Jet Star’” was a model of tractor in the late 50′s and early 60′s. 

So, for anyone in the Killjoys fandom looking for a potential origin story for Jet Star’s moniker, consider this: he grew up on a farm, and when BLI took over and everyone started picking fancy names, he took the name of one of his family’s old tractors. Maybe he felt nostalgic for his youth on the farm, or maybe he just thought it sounded cool; perhaps it’s a bit of both.