I have just discovered that there are only 2 degrees of separation between captain jean luc picard, the british-accented, french-named, american space-naval captain of the USS enterprise on star trek TNG (yes, I just used the acronym), and myself.

marlene: so my friend hangs out with patrick stewart
me: GET OUT OF TOWN
marlene: nope
me: LEAVE THE TOWN
marlene: he goes to [restauarant name removed, apologies to TMZ] and she is a manager.
me: GO TO ANOTHER TOWN
marlene: they hang out and shit, seriously
me: THIS TOWN IS NOT FOR YOU
marlene: Macbeth is at bam and bam is down the street
me: NO MARLENES HERE
marlene: so they are like bff
me: THERES A TOWN JUST A MILE A WAY WITH YOUR NAME ON IT
Marlene: for real
me: that’s so rad.

In honour of my best friend, I would like to share his appearance on rick gervais’ Extras which makes me giggle uncontrollably:

*has he even been knighted yet? it doesn’t really matter, he is a knight in my heart-monarchy.

The news and the interwebs have been all a-flutter with NASA’s release yesterday of the photo below, very clearly showing a humanoid “sasquatchy” thing mid-leisurely-stroll in the desertous wastelands of Mars.

As a no-less-than-thoroughly-enthusiastic fan of both generalized cryptozoology and the elusive sasquatch, as well as a proud collector of sasquatch cinema, my first thoughts were: “OH SWEET MARY H. CHRIST, my prayers have been answered! Bust out the bubbly, there is proof of bigfoot’s existence! and OMG! ALIENS! yay!! no. SUPER yay.”

That is… until I took a closer look at the larger picture - I noticed a familiar face in another mass near the “sasquatch”:

If you look at the photo above it appears obvious that the popular focus on the “sasquatch” is merely a ruse to conceal the fact that, after significant budget cuts in a weakened economy, NASA decided to sell Mars to George Lucas, who subsequently colonized the planet with popular Star Wars creatures.

BUT! as seamless an explanation as that may be, you mustn’t be so easily convinced, my dearlings… NASA also released the following somewhat-zoomed-in photo…

With amateur CSI-viewer talents, super-sleuth-skills and Science ™ in tow, I felt it necessary to zoom in closer, only to discover that, no, it is neither Chewbacca, nor a sasquatch.

It is Teen Wolf.

Yes, David Bowie, there is Life on Mars.

Underneath all that hair, you’re still a dork, Scott.

fellow fans of 60’s garage rock will be delighted to learn that after watching the ‘agency‘ movie, my dearling friend edwina, aka mme. awesomepants dds, found an ? and the Mysterians ‘best of’ album on the interwebs, that I am ever-so-very-thrilled to be able to share with you here.

From wikipedia about the front man, Question Mark:

“The band’s frontman and primary songwriter was Question Mark... He claimed (and still claims) to be a Martian who lived with dinosaurs in a past life, and he never appears in public without sunglasses. He has also claimed that voices told him he would still be performing “96 Tears” in the year 10,000.”

yay.

Apparently, they named themselves after a 1950’s japanese sci-fi movie (”The Mysterians“) that, judging by the cover alone, I must own immediately:

UPDATE: thank you to will (betheboy) for bringing it to my attention that mr. question mark’s home burned down last year, to donate to his help-fund click here.

In 3rd grade, my teacher picked a random word from the dictionary for each student and asked us to write a poem based on that word. My word was “agency”.

I have far too much time on my hands:

Astronomers just found the biggest most ginormous star EVER. It is 114 times the mass of the sun. criminy! that’s one big star*.

The most giggle-positive part of the story, however, is that they found the star using the Very Large Telescope (VLT). No joke. It is called the “Very Large Telescope”. It’s in Chile, they could have called it “Telescopio Muy Grande” or something. Scientists aren’t generally known for imaginative nomenclature, but they certainly phoned-it-in with “Very Large Telescope”.

*not to be confused the 70’s power-pop band.