More Mercury (plus a pointless prologue)

A while back, I posted about the unexpected surprise of an online anime store I order from lumping together all the DVDs collected for several incomplete orders and sending them out as one huge package. The memory of that might have started dwelling on my mind lately, with several more orders of mine there held up because one or two things had become delayed for various reasons... and then, at last, I got the shipping confirmation emails for what should be another big shipment. I felt good enough about that (beyond, of course, thoughts of the credit card bill) to toy with the thought of posting about it... but, of course, found myself suspecting that nobody else would care.

Then, while checking out news from the "Bad Astronomer," I learned that MESSENGER has completed its second flyby of Mercury and sent back more pictures. Once more, the innermost planet looks like and yet unlike our moon... and I also noticed that the pictures are of a different part of the planet than the side it went by the last time. That's different from how Mariner 10's three encounters worked out in the mid-1970s.