is that....

I am reposting this find from notarysojac's journal--


Jim and I were watching Chopped on the food network when the following shot appeared at the end of their as for their upcoming Halow'een Wars show.



It went right past me, but Jim (notarysojac) was laughing so hard he almost fell out of his lazyboy.

"DId I just see the Goatsee pumpkin?" he gasped, and grabbed the remote to go look. OMG! Now it cannot be unseen.....

Jim's theory is: Obviously the carver knew what they were doing, but their Standards folks must not surf the unsavory underbelly of the Interwebs...

twin spica

I have a long standing rule about not reading a series if I can't get all the parts.

It's Julian May's fault, but others are not blameless -( I'm looking at you, Tales of Alvin Maker....)

It's not a hard and fast rule, but I am almost always full of regret when I break it.


I don't hold manga to that rule however - reading them as they are released here is part of the experience. And most of them are plotted to be a little more episodic.

Twin Spica was an Amazon recommendation (they seem to have an especially high percentage of hits when recommending for me. Jim thinks that might be because I'm interested in so many things that a hit is fairly easy to get.) I already had several desktops in my rotation that feature Twin Spica, so I was already sold on the art touching me.

Thirteen-year-old Asumi lives in Japan in 2024 as the country's space program is resurrecting itself in the wake of a launch tragedy 10 years earlier, and Asumi aims to be among the first wave of young astronauts to take Japan into the stars. Raised by her construction worker father, Asumi is the apple of her dad's eye and he will do everything in his working-class power to make her dream of attending the Tokyo Space School come true. The relationship between father and daughter is very moving, and Asumi's interaction with her equally ambitious schoolmates is also compelling stuff. There's no action to speak of, instead each page contains more genuine emotion than an entire space fleet's worth of similarly themed stories.

I knew right away that both Jim and I would love it. But when it arrived, I couldn't get around to reading it. Jim took issue 1 into the bath, and came out captivated (and a little sniffly) But I was waiting till I had my hands of a few more issues.

I don't know why I picked it up the other night when I couldn't sleep, but it was no help on the sleeping front. We currently have 9 issues (the last two doubles) and I couldn't stop till I had devoured them all. Now I am stuck waiting with Jim for November and vol. 10.

There are a lot of references to the space age I grew up in, mixed through the years of these new dreamers. Since you are left to recognize most of them on your own, I wondered if I had spotted one that is not so well known -

When Asumi moves into her girls dorm at the space school, it is in an old building called The Seagull. That's Valentine Tereshkova in Vostok 6 - Seagull was her call sign, so when she made contact from space she said "It Is I, Sea Gull!"

I wonder if that is an intended reference in Twin Spica. It made me teary whether it is or not.

puzzled

why do so many tumblr posts consist of a single question when there is no way to leave a comment?


(this is something I'm too old to get, isn't it?)