Nothing like Vampires on a Sunday

Hmmm, very brief essay

I'm 12 years old. It's unseasonably fresh for a Summer afternoon in my hometown, which means that it is about 80 degrees in the shade. I'm browsing through a pile of books that my neighbor is thinking about giving away. I grab a novel, it's written in English... I wonder if my reading skill is up to this one (after all English is my second language and this is England's English). How difficult can it be? I've watched the movie already... after a quick Thanks, I rushed out of Aida's house into mine to read Bram Stoker's DRACULA.

It rocked my world.

Eversince I've pursued the vampire in every shape and form.
Through High School he was the Outcast.In college, while at the Psychology Department, it became the embodiment of the Id. Later when love for dead poets got the best out of me, I found it to be one of the most alluring figures in literature, an inviting, safe look at the ultimate destructive capabilities of human nature.

It's been a little over 20 years since I first read DRACULA and, as a hardcore fan that I am, I have seen the Vampire explode in every bit of conceivable media during the eighties, reborn through Anne Rice's eyes, through the humanization of the myth. Then, quite unexpectedly the vampire decay prsented itself under the weight of it's own reinvention.

Writers had forgotten that vampires where not meant to be human. If the monster longs for what is lost, eventually with eternity stretching before it, it will succumb to desperation, and madness, above all. Anne Rice knew this... that is why the Chronicles are no more.
Vampires are no good at beating dead horses ...
Just as I was resigned to witness the irony of the death of an eternal archetype. Hirano comes about and brings Hellsing...

I have said it before, but then I wouldn't be a fangirl if I don't say it again. The Vampire is rising, out of the depths of self pity and identity loss. He moves, slowly but surely to claim his spot among true monsters. Someone has to discover this and adapt it to the screen in a decent, yet uncompromised way... in the meantime, I'll keep watching these weird japanese cartoons and reading Hirano's manga.
Sometimes in horror, sometimes with a chuckle of agreement I catch a glimpse of the vampire destroying every single other in his way, strugling to reconcicle with the original father of all modern archetypes, the beastly, inhuman Count that made me jump off my skin more than once when I was twelve.

Gotta go now, if I'm lucky, I'll catch GRINDHOUSE.


"Eternity is wasted upon the likes of you.
Try as you might, immortality slips away.
And you remain with only your shame." - Alucard (from HELLSING) to all vampires who don't live up to their names

Aha!, leave this one alone and go mess the new one

OK today's quote is out of place and in comic strip format and about a whole different planet, but it certainly applies

Potentially habitable planet found
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science

WASHINGTON - For the first time astronomers have discovered a planet outside our solar system that is potentially habitable, with Earth-like temperatures, a find researchers described Tuesday as a big step in the search for "life in the universe."
The planet is just the right size, might have water in liquid form, and in galactic terms is relatively nearby at 120 trillion miles away. But the star it closely orbits, known as a "red dwarf," is much smaller, dimmer and cooler than our sun.
There's still a lot that is unknown about the new planet, which could be deemed inhospitable to life once more is known about it. And it's worth noting that scientists' requirements for habitability count Mars in that category: a size relatively similar to Earth's with temperatures that would permit liquid water. However, this is the first outside our solar system that meets those standards.
"It's a significant step on the way to finding possible life in the universe," said University of Geneva astronomer Michel Mayor, one of 11 European scientists on the team that found the planet. "It's a nice discovery. We still have a lot of questions."
The results of the discovery have not been published but have been submitted to the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Alan Boss, who works at the Carnegie Institution of Washington where a U.S. team of astronomers competed in the hunt for an Earth-like planet, called it "a major milestone in this business."
The planet was discovered by the European Southern Observatory's telescope in La Silla, Chile, which has a special instrument that splits light to find wobbles in different wave lengths. Those wobbles can reveal the existence of other worlds.
What they revealed is a planet circling the red dwarf star, Gliese 581. Red dwarfs are low-energy, tiny stars that give off dim red light and last longer than stars like our sun. Until a few years ago, astronomers didn't consider these stars as possible hosts of planets that might sustain life.
The discovery of the new planet, named 581 c, is sure to fuel studies of planets circling similar dim stars. About 80 percent of the stars near Earth are red dwarfs.
The new planet is about five times heavier than Earth. Its discoverers aren't certain if it is rocky like Earth or if its a frozen ice ball with liquid water on the surface. If it is rocky like Earth, which is what the prevailing theory proposes, it has a diameter about 1 1/2 times bigger than our planet. If it is an iceball, as Mayor suggests, it would be even bigger.
Based on theory, 581 c should have an atmosphere, but what's in that atmosphere is still a mystery and if it's too thick that could make the planet's surface temperature too hot, Mayor said.
However, the research team believes the average temperature to be somewhere between 32 and 104 degrees and that set off celebrations among astronomers.
Until now, all 220 planets astronomers have found outside our solar system have had the "Goldilocks problem." They've been too hot, too cold or just plain too big and gaseous, like uninhabitable Jupiter.
The new planet seems just right — or at least that's what scientists think.
"This could be very important," said astrobiology expert Chris McKay, who was not part of the discovery team. "It doesn't mean there is life, but it means it's an Earth-like planet in terms of potential habitability."
Eventually astronomers will rack up discoveries of dozens, maybe even hundreds of planets considered habitable, the astronomers said. But this one — simply called "c" by its discoverers when they talk among themselves — will go down in cosmic history as No. 1.
Besides having the right temperature, the new planet is probably full of liquid water, hypothesizes Stephane Udry, the discovery team's lead author and another Geneva astronomer. But that is based on theory about how planets form, not on any evidence, he said.
"Liquid water is critical to life as we know it," co-author Xavier Delfosse of Grenoble University in France, said in a statement. "Because of its temperature and relative proximity, this planet will most probably be a very important target of the future space missions dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life. On the treasure map of the Universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X."
Other astronomers cautioned it's too early to tell whether there is water.
"You need more work to say it's got water or it doesn't have water," said retired NASA astronomer Steve Maran, press officer for the American Astronomical Society. "You wouldn't send a crew there assuming that when you get there, they'll have enough water to get back."
The new planet's star system is a mere 20.5 light years away, making Gliese 581 one of the 100 closest stars to Earth. It's so dim, you can't see it without a telescope, but it's somewhere in the constellation Libra, which is low in the southeastern sky during the midevening in the Northern Hemisphere.
"I expect there will be planets like Earth, but whether they have life is another question," said renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking in an interview with The Associated Press in Orlando. "We haven't been visited by little green men yet."
Before you book your extrastellar flight to 581 c, a few caveats about how alien that world probably is: Anyone sitting on the planet would get heavier quickly, and birthdays would add up fast since it orbits its star every 13 days.
Gravity is 1.6 times as strong as Earth's so a 150-pound person would feel like 240 pounds.
But oh, the view. The planet is 14 times closer to the star it orbits. Udry figures the red dwarf star would hang in the sky at a size 20 times larger than our moon. And it's likely, but still not known, that the planet doesn't rotate, so one side would always be sunlit and the other dark.
Distance is another problem. "We don't know how to get to those places in a human lifetime," Maran said.
Two teams of astronomers, one in Europe and one in the United States, have been racing to be the first to find a planet like 581 c outside the solar system.
The European team looked at 100 different stars using a tool called HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity for Planetary Searcher) to find this one planet, said Xavier Bonfils of the Lisbon Observatory, one of the co-discoverers.
Much of the effort to find Earth-like planets has focused on stars like our sun with the challenge being to find a planet the right distance from the star it orbits. About 90 percent of the time, the European telescope focused its search more on sun-like stars, Udry said.
A few weeks before the European discovery earlier this month, a scientific paper in the journal Astrobiology theorized a few days that red dwarf stars were good candidates.
"Now we have the possibility to find many more," Bonfils said.

"Be Ready to be Amazed... and Confused"

Although I have a general lingk to teh Wonderful World of Gaiman, sometimes the man will come up with the silly and the bizarre to the point taht I have to scream it to the four corners of the Earth... I have discovered the maning of my life through teh most sphisticated toll of divination ever conceived: The Oracular Journal Eight Ball
http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/8ball/

Here are words of Wisdom
"When one plays with archetypes one should know what the archetypes are one is playing with."- Neil's Ball

Yipeeeeeeeeeeee!

I just bought the tickets to Italy. That's all I have to say.

RIP KURT VONNEGUT 1922-2007

"I like to say that the 51st state is the state of denial,"

That basically says it all. One of the, perhaps the greatest American Humanist writer died today. The Literature Major in me will stop for a moment and say, this is a sad, sad day

WEEKEND

This is me, or at least this has been me for the last month or so. I needed a break. I was so in need of a break that when the Usual Suspects said Miami, I didn't groan in disgust. I just closed my eyes and said DRIVE.

There was a stop in our way to Miami because Lysania knows how I feel about it. She OWED me some quiet time. Thank you guys for the short stop at lake Okeechobee. This is what I mean, this is what I am talking about.... Clewiston, "the sweetest town in America", home to Florida's sugar production, over 100,000 acres of farmland and this :

Lake Okeechobee, 40 miles of peace and quiet, Florida's biggest water resource home to all types of fabulous wild life, specially gators. Gators and unexpected critters gave away to our homage to the late and great Steve Irwing. We noticed there are few Latino wild enthusiast so ,we decided the world was ready for "Buscando Bichos con Eddie Zelaya" If you are puertorrican , our excuses, it's really meant to mean "Looking for Critters"

Our lack of expertise with live creatures lead us through the safer path of basically salvaging fish on their way to become fossils... here our carcass expert, Mr. Zelaya, proudly showcased... the amazing mud preserved catfish

Here's a close look, just to prove that we had a lot of time in our hands.

After staying overnight at Clewiston, we decided to take on Miami. I usually hate Miami and that is why there will be no pictures here.

If cities have a personality of their own, Miami is a kid that grew too fast, through hard knocks. I cannot deal with this city, but this weekend I gave it a try and it was fun. Went to Bayside, that I hadn't visited in about 7 years, eat at a wonderful Nicaraguan Restaurant, came back relaxed as I hadn't been in a while. The only thing I hate is that I have to go back to work tomorrow and right now, I would like to give thorough details of this wonderful weekend, but I have to go to bed early... but I'm smiling as I sign off. 10-4 people of the Internets.

Holy...Week : The Little Theology Corner

Arrgh, this is got to be the longest Monday that never ends. Literally thanks to Jesus I'm off tomorrow. It's Miami for me. Like a good Protestant, I'll chow down on a juicy steak while pondering the marvels of the Gospel and avoiding Max Von Sidow at all costs. Charlton Heston, now THAT'S ANOTHER MATTER.

This particular Easter I've had the chance to get to know a wonderful , funny, quick to quote and quite not into the Yeshua is the Messiah mood Jew, that had made me sharpen my knowledge of the book of Isaiah and Jeremiah... I'll leave all discussions of the Law for next week and for this couple of days, I'll celebrate what unites us instead of what brings us part.

My dear friend Ben, Jew or Gentile, this week is much about blood and wood as it is about life.

Blood in the frames, blood on the cross, life out of bondage for both of us and a promise of next year in Jerusalem that is quite literal for you, a bit more symbolic for me and yet we both wait for it with the same passion.

When you drink on your Passover Seder, save one for Elijah (I'm waiting for him too, you know) and drink one for me, when all the rite is done and the wine that is left has no purpose.

Shalom to all who celebrate Passover, Happy Easter to those who celebrate Jesus and a Very Merry Hmmmm those Crazy Peeps Day! to the rest of the world.

"In that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples--of him shall the nations inquire, and his resting place shall be glorious.

In that day the Lord will extend his hand yet a second time to recover the remnant that remains of his people, from Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Cush, from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the coastlands of the sea."

Isaiah 11:10-11