Keith Palmer's Multi-Purpose Journal

A "three decades of Gunbuster" piece on the Anime News Network caught my attention; when it was brought to my attention again by being mentioned on my reading list I thought that much more about the Original Video Animation series. My "default anime icon," after all, does invoke it, even if that might also have to do with how, when I saw someone on a message board rotating through "anime meets the Powerpuff Girls" icons quite a few years ago and started saving them myself, the Gunbuster one just looked the most appealing in the end.
( It's been a while for me, too )

Along with the countdown to the solar eclipse, I've managed to pick up on another occurrence in space by hearing we've reached the fortieth anniversary of the launch of the Voyager probes. This was further distinguished by the probe launched Voyager 2 having been launched on August 20, 1977, only to be passed on the way to Jupiter by Voyager 1, which didn't leave Earth until September.

The Voyagers were "the more detailed follow-up" at Jupiter with Pioneer 10 and 11 having made it past that gas giant's dangerous radiation belts years before the launch we're now marking, and Pioneer 11 took a slow route to Saturn to take a few not especially compelling pictures still in advance of its successors. However, the Voyagers had their own important and impressive part in turning "dots in the sky" into a succession of worlds. I suppose I did experience "these first and once-ever revelations" at Jupiter and Saturn after the fact through National Geographic cover stories (although Voyager 1 had opened up enough of a lead to Saturn the second article only included its pictures, leaving the drama of Voyager 2's camera-aiming gear jamming to books I managed to find later). It wasn't until Voyager 2 got to Uranus (even that had seemed a carefully underplayed "maybe it'll last that long" possibility in the early coverage I've seen) that I was following along in the newspaper. That encounter was unfortunately followed by the fatal last launch of space shuttle Challenger, although getting to Neptune three years later made for a better ending. I have heard Voyager 1 could have been sent to Pluto had it not been sent close by Titan (an important enough target Voyager 2 could have traded Uranus and Neptune for it); in one of the books I've found, though, some program scientists were asked if they "regretted" having taken close-up pictures of a satellite shrouded in peach-coloured clouds only to explain there was more to detect close up than just surface pictures. Whether some pictures of Pluto would have made it harder to dismiss in the next decade as "not big enough to really count, and obviously not interesting," I don't know, but I suppose they wouldn't have been as good as the pictures from the brief encounter of New Horizons.

Beyond that actual ending, of course, the Voyagers have kept sending back information, enduring not just years but decades after their first estimates of longevity to reach uncertain stellar terrain. Beyond that, there's contemplation of the time capsule records attached to them, although I can also consider that in a mere four decades they've gone from "a durable record not quite like one you'd play at home" to "at least they'd long outlast a CD, and they might be easier for even extraterrestrials of unknown mentality to decipher" to "and now vinyl's not just a statement, but an accessible one again."

It was a bit odd to really start picking up on the "Canada 150" logo "out in the wild" by seeing it on packages in the supermarket, and that might only have got me thinking back to the centennial itself and its assorted construction projects having happened well before I was born. I know free passes to the national parks are available, but I have to confess to feeling "camped out" ever since graduating from Scouts in high school (even with having travelled up north in an RV last year). However, once I'd begun remembering of an anniversary celebration that had happened while I was alive, I could start to see some new perspectives.



It had also felt a bit odd at the time to mark a "hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary" with its own logo, but there had been that worried feeling in 1992 that the country as it stood would crack apart in the next few years (and things did get pretty close those few years later), sometimes followed up by the feeling it would be a subsequent inevitability the flag left over those of us speaking English would be replaced not that many years later. For all that back then I did manage to get into an anniversary project called the "Young Space Ambassadors," which sent high school students to Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal to see science museums and aerospace companies, I can think at least some feelings have changed and there might even yet be a reason or two to prefer now over then.

"Prequel Appreciation Day" has been moved up this year with the fifteenth anniversary of Attack of the Clones rolling around, but while I'm still away on vacation this does happen to be one of the days I can access wireless ashore, and while I didn't bring the movie with me memories are ready to hand.

I'd wound up feeling stuck between a sense I hadn't been triggered to hostility by The Phantom Menace the way what had seemed so many others had made such a deal of and the nervous fear watching that movie, the previous trilogy, or indeed just about any other movie would at last grind my face in how "obvious" the hostile reaction was, but the trailers for the next new Star Wars movie (one of which my brother had made a big deal of accessing by going online with the Phantom Menace DVD loaded in his computer's disc drive) had somehow managed to begin invigorating me again. After forming tentative theories and going back and forth on whether the "clones" in their white and black armour might even be on the side of the Republic, the opening crawl did jolted me by mentioning Amidala as "former" queen (the first hint other people could also be positive about the extension to the saga were "fanfics" that had speculated ahead with a great sense of Amidala being Queen, even if I hadn't looked beyond them yet to the group of positive people I would discover in the nick of time), but from there things managed to build, and the opening night audience had seemed to enjoy the movie in the end. I did overhear a "George Lucas has redeemed himself" comment from someone that did, after everything, provoke a sort of "I'm not that hostile to what came before" reaction from me, but I can still wonder if, in different circumstances, I might have wound up convinced "the real story started with 'Episode II.'"

I have to mention that as speculation because of the way certain people rallied to find something to be offended at even as I kept realising that while "shipping" doesn't do a lot for me I can get gooey and sentimental about the indisputable romances that don't match sheer imagination for others. By "the nick of time" I've already mentioned, I was stuck the same miserable distance from the then-latest Star Wars movie as from the others. In happening on the positive people who became "prequel appreciators," things managed to work out, although I can wonder yet if a "middle movie" caught between something with the freedom to look "different yet familiar" and the payoff for everything set up can feel somehow "overstuffed" and be a bit easier to just sort of take as part of the whole. At the same time, though, some recent comments noticed about Attack of the Clones being the most like the Flash Gordon serials at one root of everything do have a pleasant resemblance to thoughts I've had before about the movie being free in its variety to "be a Star Wars movie pure and simple."

It's one small sign of how long I've managed to keep posting things to this journal, and a small illustration of how history keys together too, that I've managed to get from the fortieth anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the Moon to the fortieth anniversary of Viking 1 landing on Mars. The two are linked on the calendar even if by accident; Viking 1 had been meant to land on the American Bicentennial, but its intended landing site had wound up looking too rough to the improved cameras of its orbiter. When it did make it to the surface, though, it pretty much set expectations; I was surprised and somehow invigorated when Mars Pathfinder had seen more prominent hills on the horizon two decades later, and surprised again whenever another rover doesn't find the sand at its landing site as littered with rocks as the Vikings did. At the same time, though, I did spend at least a bit of today remembering the Soviet probes that had reached the surface before the Vikings, even if the longest-lived of them only sent back a few seconds' worth of an indecipherable picture before it gave out in the dust storm it had managed to touch down in.

I was setting up to set down a pretty long and involved post when a simple anniversary I'd managed to miss for most of the day caught my attention at last. Today just happens to be the sixty-fifth anniversary of the first Peanuts comic strip appearing in newspapers. That might be simple enough to think about, but I did also happen to think it's been over fifteen years since the last comic strip appeared; lasting that long as a complete entity in a medium that in its simplest form might be supposed to be found afresh each day and then just sort of put aside until tomorrow seems sort of impressive.

There are times I've felt down or troubled and pulled forth particular moments of the strip as, indeed, a sort of "security blanket," but also times I've turned back to a collection or two while feeling good. If other people can keep finding the strip to do the same sort of thing, I hope it'll last for a while longer.

I suppose there won't be as quite many people reminding themselves it's "Star Wars Prequel Appreciation Day" today as were saying "May the Fourth be with you" two weeks ago, but then again, for me at least, today doesn't feel quite as arch about the whole thing. (Of course, there are those who follow up "May the Fourth" by mentioning "Revenge of the Fifth"...) I've tried to mark this day before, but at times haven't been able to say too much about it. For this particular day, though, knowing it's been ten years since Revenge of the Sith opened to general audiences has driven me to further efforts.
( Things were different for me with that movie. )

A while ago, I commemorated the tenth anniversary of a notable MSTing and then took the opportunity not that much later to mark the same anniversary for the first "solo MSTing" I'd written. I did write a few more MSTings after "Undocumented Features," but marking each of their tenth anniversaries did seem a bit grandiose. Now, though, it's been ten years since the last MSTing I completed going by the date stamp on my personal file of it, which does feel a bit more significant in its own if somewhat dowmbeat way. In accepting the opportunity, though, I did get to thinking I could say something brief about each of my solo MSTings preceding it anyway.
( 'When military schedules meet the MTV generation, something's got to give.' )

( 'The miracle acrylic bubble locks his hysterical sobs away.' )

( 'He's not even going to dignify that with a putdown, I see.' )

( 'Something of a war poodle cut, then.' )

( 'Abstract is this season's post-minimalist.' )

I knew that today is the anniversary of Apollo 11's landing on the moon, but perhaps hesitated to think about it too much, supposing it might be tricky to strike just the right tone. I did, though, take a look at its Wikipedia article linked off the main page, and there noticed a new tidbit of information. From what I'd read before, I'd supposed the awareness that this mission was to be significant had led straight off to seeking command and lunar module call signs more dignified (not to mention patriotic) than Gumdrop and Spider or Charlie Brown and Snoopy, but the article claimed an early document used "Snowcone" and "Haystack." I followed the link and downloaded a "Technical Information Summary" from the George Marshall Space Flight Center that, along with using those call signs, included some pleasingly hand-lettered drawings. The cover page had June 25, 1969 typed on it, so I do wonder now how close things came to being that little bit different.

In noticing comments about the fiftieth anniversary of the computer language BASIC, I decided I could skip the day of the official commemorations and wait until the day recorded as the one the first programs in it were run (at four in the morning) to set down a thought or two of my own.
( The thoughts )