I went to school at New Mexico Tech, the only school in the country that offers an undergraduate degree in Astrophysics. (At other schools, it’s strictly a graduate program, but since Socorro, New Mexico is one of the world’s centers for astronomy, Tech could go the extra mile.) Now, folks can go to neighboring Arizona to attend the country’s only accredited school that offers a degree in astrology. A subtle, but large, difference. People used to ask why I was going away to New Mexico (to study cosmology) when there were so many good schools for cosmotology close to home. Well, even with their accreditation and federal student loan money, the graduates won’t be able to come close to writing horoscopes as good as those over at Free Will Astrology.

Kevin Smith has a very nice comic strip in the New York Times detailing his meeting and then kissing his wife. I’m not such a good artist, so I just had to write about my own experience here on the weblog. In fact, when I want to make a comic strip, I have to steal the artwork and add my own writing. (It’s full of in-jokes and not as effective as the actual booklets I printed up and passed out, but the point is, I’m no comic book artist.)

There are campfire legends that the plainsmen spin of a man who was nothing like Paladin. Couldn’t ride, couldn’t shoot, but he won his fame ‘cause every thing he said said backwards (backwards… backwards…) was the same. Palindrome, Palindrome, what’s in a name Palindrome, palindrome, backwards the same

I’ve finally organized my mp3 collection on my work computer, and so I’ve been able to more efficiently listen to my collection of Riders in the Sky songs. The above is from the most excellent Ballad of Palindrome. Listen to it yourself, and if you like it, search out their albums for your own collection.

This is what drove me out of Astrophysics: the invasive science paparazzi. The last straw was when I caught the “reporter” from the Science World Weekly digging through my trash for discarded lab notebooks.

This message placed by the Alderaan Tourist Council.

I don’t know who this person is, but his diaryland diary is well worth the visit.

I have a knack for being at the right place at the right time. This knack has been especially useful in helping me live the life of luxury on a pauper’s budget. Case in point: Friday night I was flipping through the AM stations on the car radio and ran across an ad for an auction of professional restaurant and bar equipment happening the next morning just north of town. Knowing I’ll likely need a professional kitchen some day (if I want to sell cheese and other prepared goods anywhere other than the black market), I decided to go. Besides, I told myself, maybe I can find a stand mixer for a reasonable amount. When I got there, I saw that the majority of the items was junk, and most of it wasn’t even kitchen and bar equipment. Mostly it was trashed furniture from an old high school that got demolished last year. But among the items was a grungy KitchenAid 5 quart mixer, as filthy as it could be. I walked around with the crowd (twelve strong, and all restaurant owners) for two and a half hours, waiting for the mixer’s turn. When we got to it, the auctioneer bundled it with several tables of miscellaneous junk, including the tables themselves and opened the bidding at $100. Before he could continue, I offered thirty for the mixer alone. He looked around, accepted my offer, and solicited bids from the others. Nope – already got three – he can have it. He took my thirty, and now I’ve got the $370 mixer I’ve been scheming over for years now. It’s mighty grimey, but it works well.

If you want to send the President a few books for Christmas, use his Amazon.com wishlist for gift ideas.

As is typical, Randy and I are on the same track. He got the jump on me, though. His blackberry wine is already bubbling, while my blackberry mead is still in the design stage.

The El Defensor Chieftain has a slightly longer article on Bonita. Marjorie found a brief obituary in the Four Corners newspaper.