Suzy McHale’s Diary: 2002 – January-May
Events of note: Dawn Harbor’s youngest son, Tony, killed in a motorcycle accident in January. Michele’s budgerigar, Basil, died in March (bought in 1990, so he was quite old). Mum had a collision in her Toyota Starlet that month also. Dad got shingles in May. I was essentially a recluse, spending much of my time on the Internet. My spaceflight obsession continued, so most entries contain a lot of boring ramblings concerning that topic.
January
Tuesday 1/1
Did not get a good night’s sleep as some idiots let off fireworks around Bentleigh (in addition to the usual display in the city); two went off over our house with huge bangs and bright flashes. Would love to hunt down those morons with a shotgun; also the drunken louts who wandered the streets afterward. All the dogs and other animals were terrified, judging by all the barking (Sasha was certainly upset); they have no idea what stupid humans are doing. There’ll be a few pets missing today, having run away from their homes; it happens every time there is a fireworks display. I would ban them altogether, certainly the sale of them (which I thought had been outlawed years ago), and restrict public displays.
Some rain last night and today. I am not looking forward to the hellish hot weather to come in the next 2 months or so; 40° heat and humidity is utter misery. It’s the worst time of year to be in Melbourne. There is also a threat to power supplies with generators breaking down and having no reserve power available; so far we have been unaffected due to the unusually cool weather. Power blackouts are a worry when you have a computer! The Kennett government should never have privatized electricity; the same thing was done in California and residents there endured frequent blackouts and hefty increases in their power bills. It’s now beginning to happen here.
A dream from last night; I scribbled it down after waking up around 2:40 a.m.: I was in Bridge Street, where Gran’s home was, with some relatives. It was late afternoon or evening. I was looking at a collection of Russian rockets I had displayed; a couple were in Gran’s front yard. I then saw a huge one, lying on its side on a transporter, parked in the street! It was huge, several stories high, looming over the houses there. It was an N-1, the equivalent of an Apollo Saturn. I walked towards the rocket and I was then in a shed; I wanted the rocket moved to a hangar somewhere in the country. The rocket was then hauled off by a truck or train. I was then met by 5 Russian technicians whose job was to look after the rockets. That’s all I can remember. The rockets came from a space book I was reading the previous night. Gran’s home is embedded in my memory and appears frequently in my dreams. I kept a dream diary for a couple of years but tore it up. I might mention dreams of especial interest in here.
~ Ended 4:21 p.m.
Tuesday 8/1
Michele rang my parents on Sunday with news that their dog, Zach, had died after fleeing their backyard in terror when idiots let off illegal fireworks. Zach was found by a family near a river there with a broken leg, and was taken to the vet. Zach’s break was at the shoulder joint and he would have had to have the leg amputated, but he had a bad leg already so it was decided to euthanase him. Michele and Chris were given the dog by a friend last year as she was moving away; Mum and Dad took him up there in their car (he was a “nice little dog” according to them). Zach was middle-aged and part-Chihuahua; his legs were thus thin and fragile. A dreadful way to go. Michele and Chris have not had much luck with pets; Calvin, a purebred Doberman they bought in the mid-1990s had to be euthanized when he developed a genetic condition. There were reports in the newspaper of other pets running off in terror because of illegal fireworks; the morons who let fireworks off should be severely prosecuted.
Last October 16 I sent off an order to World Spaceflight News in America for a CD-ROM and book about the ISS. I still hadn’t received anything after 2 months so I sent them an e-mail a couple of weeks ago. Received a reply today:
Thanks for your message, and happy holidays. These documents are reproduced on an as-needed basis and are not “in-stock” items. We expect to ship your order in early January.
– Randy Schuler
Much relief; at least they got my order! I sent it during the anthrax scare and was worried the envelope had gone astray or been destroyed. So, hopefully, in a few more weeks I will receive my parcel (which cost a week’s wages – I ordered it before I decided to leave That Awful Place). I won’t be ordering any more items for a while, not until/if I find work (and I don’t know how I’ll manage that). I find it difficult to motivate myself to do anything.
Found another novel themed around the ISS at a book clearance sale: Gravity by Tess Gerritsen, a medical thriller writer. It was published in 1999. A lethal virus, which turns out to be extraterrestrial, escapes from an experiment on board the ISS and infects the crew; killing most of them off. The main character is Emma Watson, “a brilliant research physician” and her estranged husband, Jack. The novel wasn’t bad, with plenty of delightfully gruesome medical scenes and people dying horribly. But, as the author is American, the novel was inevitably very U.S.-centric and focused entirely on NASA; Russia barely got a mention. (A Russian and Japanese were on the crew, but were conveniently killed off.) So there were plenty of heroic antics from NASA astronauts and America saving the world. Ho-hum. She obviously asked a lot of experts to get all the details on the ISS (how does one go about this?). I wonder if anyone in Russia is writing novels featuring the ISS from their point of view? (Or any sci-fi novels at all?) Or perhaps no one there is interested.
~ Ended 7:05 p.m.
Thursday 24/1
Nearly the end of the month. Time is passing and nothing changes for the better; I am slowly going mad stuck here at home, increasingly frustrated but lacking the will and energy to do anything.
It’s been nearly 15 years since I went overseas, or anywhere. I have only been overseas 3 times in my life (twice to England; once to New Zealand). I wonder if I will ever go anywhere again.
I have ideas percolating around in my head for a series of stories, but I don’t know if I will ever manage to sit down and write them. There is so much I don’t know; all the technical details and general things about the subject matter. I can get some information off the Internet, but it isn’t adequate. I wish I could ask someone, but I don’t know where to go, and would be too shy to, anyway. What I don’t know I make up. I also get bogged down in all the details (“the devil is in the detail” goes a saying; how right that is); the scene which flows so easily through my mind splutters and stalls when I try to bring it into the real world. I wonder why I bother to create anything; I only end up destroying most of it after I lose interest. I don’t seem to have the patience to sit down and write or draw. The stuff I write is certainly not great literature; others might see it as rather simplistic and naive, which is the way I tend to view the world. I haven’t really grown up and am not particularly keen to, seeing how many adults become tired and cynical, giving up whatever dreams they had and resigning themselves to mediocrity.
My writing is really for my own eyes only. I feel constrained in what I can write as many of my daydreams (which my stories are derived from) are too personal and revealing to put into words. I wish I could, but I would be mortified if anyone else (especially my parents) were to read them.
I dread spending another 30 or 40 years feeling like this, until I become old, lonely and alone; someone who looks back upon their life with regret. I wish I could find the courage to end it. I have so many dreams inside my head, and no way of achieving them; a depressing and frustrating way to be. But I don’t want to resign myself to an ordinary, dreary life; I still vaguely hope that some sort of miracle might yet happen. I’ve been hoping that for the last decade, though.
As I have noted before, reading the biographies of astronauts and cosmonauts is a form of self-torment; unlike me they have made a success of their lives and are highly intelligent over-achievers. They are almost superhuman; demi-gods to a mere mortal like myself. I am a loser and failure; the only one in my school year group (1988) who failed – something which still haunts me. I have a recurring dream where I am back at Kilvington repeating Year 12; it’s both the present and past as my former classmates are there as I remember them. I usually sit some sort of exam but I feel I can’t handle it and walk out, to Ormond railway station or somewhere else to escape. The dream varies in details.
I still haven’t received my CD-ROM from America; I am wondering if I will ever set eyes upon it! It’s 2 weeks since I received the e-mail reply.
Savings are currently $2289.89.
~ Ended 7:17 p.m.
Friday 25/1
Weather is warming up at last; mid-30s on the weekend and today is quite warm also.
It was mentioned on the news last night that President Bush wants to spend an extra $49 billion or so (U.S. dollars) on defence, using the September 11 attacks as an excuse to increase it. This will mean that other areas will be affected, including NASA’s budget, and therefore the ISS. America is quite belligerent at the moment and has the attitude towards other countries that “if you don’t like our policies, too bad.” It’s the same arrogant attitude that led to those terrorist attacks in the first place. That $49 billion could easily pay for the ISS, or a mission to Mars … but no one is interested in such “frivolities”.
Had a brief dream this morning involving another of my characters, an assassin who makes guest appearances now and then. These dreams are action-adventure ones, involving car chases, shootings and running away from the authorities, and I quite enjoy them. The character, I guess, represents my dark side (see my poem “Deadly Friend”). I like to read crime/serial killer-type novels now and then as a change from my other interests. As a teenager one of my fantasies was to become an assassin; I don’t think I would have done too badly at it, given my dislike of humans in general! If you believe the movies, a top assassin can command a few million dollars in fees. It’s a profession I have long had a fascination with; the image of the lone assassin stalking his (or her) prey. It is, in fact, an ideal job for the solitary type. It’s not the sort of job that makes for dinner-table conversation, though! The assassin/hitman I am talking about is one who does the job professionally, not the wierdos who take pot-shots at celebrities or politicians. In fact, perhaps it should be legalized; create an “Assassin’s Guild” like in some fantasy novels I read! It might be an incentive for politicians to do their job better …
~ Ended 2:59 p.m.
Tuesday 29/1
More tragedy for Mum’s cousin Dawn on Sunday. Her youngest son, Tony, was killed when riding his motorcycle on the Deans Marsh Rd out of Lorne around 2:58 p.m. He was going to overtake a car but saw one coming in the opposite direction and dropped back, only to have his motorcycle veer out of control and hit a tree. He was killed but his girlfriend, who was riding pillion, survived. Tony was Dawn’s “baby” and she is devastated, of course. Her sister, Pat, rang Mum last night with the news as Dawn was under sedation. Anthony was one of Dawn’s 5 children; the others are Ian, Dianne, Greg and Jenny.
Tragedy earlier struck the family on Friday 11/1 when Warren, 42, died after his 4WD rolled down an embankment at Kookaburra Rd near Lal Lal. He was the youngest son of Jack, Dawn’s deceased older brother (she is the 2nd in a family of 13 – Mum isn’t quite sure of how many there are). And in 1999 Jai, son of Geoff (a younger brother of Dawn’s) committed suicide in November by driving off into the bush and gassing himself; he was not found until 2 months later. He was Geoff’s only son (had 3 sisters). The family seems to be having more than its fair share of ill-fortune.
Dad is snuffling and snorting from some sort of cold, which he seems to get regularly. I continue to remain annoyingly healthy despite vaguely wishing for some sort of terminal illness to end my useless existence.
Had a dream this morning involving Osama bin Laden (Number 1 bad guy, who still eludes capture). It is, inevitably, only hazy now; I should have written it down upon waking. I was initially walking across the desert and I saw some men on camels. In a subsequent scene I was inside a building with a luxurious interior laid out like a tropical indoor garden, with a waterfall and pond. I was trapped in a room and the floor began to rise, threatening to crush me. Something about this happening because I was part of bin Laden’s group. Managed to get out of the room somehow. That’s about all I can remember.
~ Ended 6:49 p.m.
Thursday 31/1
6:14 p.m.: A bit of excitement next door (Number 95) at the moment. John and Thomasina Taranto hired a pest controller to destroy a European wasp nest under their bedroom. The man who was doing this was found unconscious on the naturestrip a little while ago! So 2 fire engines and the police are currently parked outside; they came because of the toxic materials used. Dad called the owner at his workplace to tell him.
Dad was just talking to them. The man, from Dawson’s Pest Control, didn’t get the nest sprayed; he opened up a canister of the toxic chemical he was to use and the pressurized contents vented out into his face; he got a lungful. He was coughing up blood when a person driving by in a car found him (we didn’t hear anything or know he was out there, even). So he might not even survive. The emergency services have left now.
A curious dream I had early this morning; I scribbled down some details after waking at 4:40 a.m. I was in a casino which was somehow in our house. I put my money in two poker machines and a whole lot of coins – silver change in one, gold dollar coins in the other – came tumbling out. As I gathered them up, management became suspicious. A security man came over to question me. He became angry, convinced I had cheated somehow, though I indignantly denied this. He tried to take the coins off me; I resisted and ran out with them. I was now outside our house; I ran east up the street going up the hill opposite, then right up a side street, hiding from others who gave chase. I found myself passing outside the casino (now located there) through a crowd of people, but no one noticed me.
6:52 p.m.: A man in a gas mask and yellow biohazard suit just went in the house, presumably to finish the job of spraying the wasp nest. Thomasina is home and is standing out the front (I don’t know her personally as I tend to avoid talking to neighbors, being shy, but Mum and Dad do; the Tarantos have lived there for several years).
~ Ended 7:09 p.m.
February
Saturday 2/2
A totally awesome thunderstorm raged last evening! The day had been hot (35°) and it clouded over ominously in the afternoon with puffy cumulus clouds; this time of year tends to be hot and humid monsoonal-type weather (the worst time to visit Melbourne is January to early March if you dislike such weather). The storm swept in after 6:30 and raged for the next 4 hours or so. There was heavy rain, huge hailstones and hundreds if not thousands of lightning flashes. I stood outside around 9 p.m. for around ½ an hour to watch the light show; there was sheet lightning flickering almost continuously through the clouds, lighting up the sky and thunder rumbling. It got dazzling after a while, like those strobing disco lights! It’s the first full-size storm we’ve had since last year; first one I’ve seen in a long time. If the ISS had been passing over those on board would have been treated to a spectacular sight if they saw the storm cloud cover over Melbourne. There was a bit more thunder and lightning after 12 a.m., but not as severe.
The pest control man who was found unconscious on the naturestrip next door got a brief mention in the next day’s Herald-Sun; he was taken to Monash Medical Centre and staff there refused to treat him until he had been decontaminated. He was listed as being in a critical condition. A policeman called while we were out at Chadstone and left his card, saying to ring him about the incident, but Dad could tell him little as we saw nothing.
President Bush is pissing off the world again; in his State of the Union speech this week, vowing that America would continue its war on terrorism and that opponents had better get out of America’s way. He named three countries – North Korea, Iran and Iraq – as an “axis of evil” which did not make them happy. “It is a clear state of American unilateralism. In essence, there are 3 choices: lead, follow or get out of the way, said one analyst.” Prime Minister John Howard of course supports the U.S. President, slavishly sucking up to the all-conquering Americans as always.
Although I, like most, felt sympathy for America after September 11, that has faded under President Bush’s continued belligerency. I have felt dislike for America since my teens; to me they were the world bullies or like those annoying classmates at school who were popular and good at everything (I obviously wasn’t one of them). I also felt sorry for the Russian villains in the movies who always got their arses kicked by the all-conquering American heroes. A simplistic and naive view but it’s the way I saw things (and still do).
One movie released this week which reflects America’s mood is Behind Enemy Lines, about a Navy pilot who is shot down while on a reconnaissance mission over Bosnia (it’s set during the 1990s Bosnian war). He then must evade capture from nasty Serbian soldiers (described in a review as “nothing more than cardboard cutout villains with appalling shooting skills and insatiable tobacco addictions”). It’s a “blatantly jingoistic concoction” but what else can you expect. It might be worth seeing for the flying scenes, but I haven’t seen a movie for a couple of years so I don’t know if I’ll bother – I’ll only find it extremely irritating and end up barracking for the Serbs!
A similar movie I rented today (only $2.15 for a video) was Air Force One, released in 1997. I saw this at Southland with Michele and Chris when it came out. It features Harrison Ford as a heroic U.S. President who must save the day when his presidential transport 747, Air Force One, is hijacked by Russian nationalist terrorists. After much bloodshed and mayhem he does, of course, and the Free World is safe once again. The creators found a “politically correct” way to make Russians the villains – the “baddies” are nationalists and “goodies” support American policies. I liked it at the time but find it irritating now for reasons previously mentioned. One scene depicted Russian MiG pilots who supported the terrorist leader flying up to shoot down the 747. So USAF F-15 pilots arrive like the cavalry to save the day and shoot down two of the MiGs, who of course didn’t stand a chance against the highly-trained American pilots (the bad guys are always poor shots in these movies). I wonder how that would turn out in reality – probably much the same result due to the dismal state of the Russian military. It’s training that makes a skilled fighter pilot; given adequate training a Russian would match an American for sure. The Russian fighter jets are as good as anything currently serving in the West, though they probably wouldn’t match the next-generation American jets like the F-22 Raptor.
I still like fighter jets; have since my teens, and aviation in general since (as I can recall) my second trip to England in 1978.
~ Ended 4:02 p.m.
Sunday 3/2
A cool day, like yesterday – this in the middle of summer! At least the unusually cool weather has saved the state from power cuts, so far.
Tomorrow is Mum’s 64th birthday; Uncle Brian’s 75th. Michele and Chris are taking her out to dinner somewhere in Mentone; as their kids will be there I won’t come as I would feel uncomfortable.
To continue yesterday’s topic. As a teenager I saw various action movies like Top Gun, starring Tom Cruise as rebellious F-14 carrier pilot “Maverick,” and Sylvester Stallone single-handedly taking on the Russians in Afghanistan in Rambo III. All purile male fantasies, but I loved them at the time! They provided fuel for my imagination. I actually saw Rambo III twice in the cinema – once with my cousin Heather, and another time with a friend, Charmaine. Both of whom undoubtedly weren’t interested but endured the movie to humor me! I can’t recall when I first saw Top Gun, but did a large painting inspired by it in 1987 of an F-14 fighter pilot in the cockpit of his jet, and this won the annual art competition at Kilvington – my sole moment of glory there in my otherwise dismal education!
A series of books I read then were the Mack Bolan books by Mark Pendleton (if I recall the author’s name correctly); these were action-adventure novels featuring the all-American heroic title character taking on various villains who threatened the American Way of Life. Simplistic and obviously aimed at a certain type of male (think of them as the men’s equivalent to Mills and Boon romance novels). There was usually a beautiful woman character somewhere whom Mack got to bed in the end. I again used them for ideas, but found the blatantly jingoistic, sanctimonious patriotism irritating in the extreme. The number of books in the series ran into the hundreds; I wonder if they’re still going? I’ve seen them in secondhand book stores but am not interested in reading them (or any novel set during that era) now. There were a couple of spin-off series featuring other American male military characters.
Such books continue to proliferate today, and will be especially popular after September 11. America has mostly finished its military operations in Afghanistan (though Osama bin Laden remains at large), having ousted the Taliban. The country is still in a sorry mess, though, and it will take years to repair the damage of decades of conflict. It’s a contrast to Russia’s miserable experience in their war there – over a decade fighting, thousands of lives lost and all for nothing as they withdrew in ignominious defeat. Losing that and the Cold War was totally demoralizing for them.
I don’t read “literary” novels – the type of “sophisticated” novel that wins literary prizes and gets reviewed in newspapers like The Age. I’ve tried a few but couldn’t get into them; they just don’t interest me. This sort of novel is highly personal and focuses on obscure topics, unlike popular fiction. I prefer an easy-to-follow storyline, as is found in the techno-thrillers mentioned previously. My main complaint with such novels is that as they are mostly written by American authors they are invariably parochial, with Americans as the “good guys” saving the world from villains of various nationalities. A storyline which gets extremely tedious and predictable and, for me, irritating. There doesn’t seem to be, for example, any techno-thrillers by Russian authors; none published in the West at any rate. It would be a nice change if there were stories from the other side’s point of view, with Americans as the bad guys.
A little more on that fighter jet conflict scene from Air Force One. It was a brief confrontation between USAF F-15s and Russian Air Force MiG-29s. After 2 of their group were shot down the others turned and “bugged out,” fleeing with their tails between their legs. One F-15 pilot heroically intercepted a missile that was headed for the President’s 747 and got himself blown up. The Russian pilots were depicted as craven cowards and bad shots – something that would no doubt piss off any real RAF pilot! The F-15 pilots were the usual arrogant and cocky Top Gun types.
I really wish I could write something that would be a counter to all those America-centric techno-thrillers; something that would thoroughly kick the Americans’ arses. Like that Air Force One scene in reverse.
~ Ended 6:33 p.m.
Tuesday 5/2
Mum’s 64th birthday yesterday; Uncle Brian’s 75th. Everyone is getting older … Michele and Chris took my parents out to dinner at an Italian restaurant in Mentone. They then came here with their kids; I took refuge in my room as usual. They are noisy, chaotic and messy – they made a mess of the toilet – and I hate being anywhere near children.
I decided not to see that movie; not worth the money and I would only get pissed off at it. Another author writing techno-thrillers is Dale Brown, who was formerly in the USAF, in SAC. Although he obviously knows his subject, he – through his characters – has a patriotic American “them-verses-us” mentality which gets very offensive; he portrays Russians, for example, in a very negative light. I can never finish the novels as I get so irritated. A quote: “Smith had all the stops out. He wasn’t flying the F-15C as if it were a Sukhoi, with its limited avionics and conservative flight regimes. He’d tossed aside the flight protocol and briefed plan and was flying like an American – balls-out, over the line.” (Sukhoi is a maker of Russian jets; another famous one is MiG.) Dale Brown has his own website (Megafortress if I remember rightly) and I am rather tempted to send him an irate e-mail … but I am too timid to. What I have been writing about in my last 3 entries, though, has been eating away at me since I was a teenager.
I’ve just got to tell you about this short story I found concerning the ISS that appears in the March 2002 edition of Analog (a monthly American sci-fi fiction publication). It’s called “Hearts in Darkness” by H.G. Stratmann; I don’t know if the author is male or female as no information is provided about them (I’ll assume they’re male). The story would have worked better as a comedy as it’s so over-the-top, but it’s written in all seriousness (as far as I can tell). It reads like a bad romance novel in places, and wouldn’t be out of place appearing in Playboy – it should have been subtitled “Orbital Orgy”!! It concerns a dysfunctional ISS crew some years into the future (the ISS is completed and humans are occupying the Moon and Mars; the Station is an “orbiting relic”). The main protagonist, whose point-of-view the story is told from, is Stone, the ship’s physician. And what an uptight, humorless character he is … but more on that in a moment. The rest of the crew (6 altogether) are Americans Morita and Newkirk, French commander LeBeau (depicted as a stereotypical seductive Frenchman), and Russians Boris and his wife Valentina. Her amorous advances towards everyone cause much mayhem. The others, being bored and sex-starved, are quite happy to accommodate her, but morally virtuous Stone (married with 2 kids) gets all indignant and huffy about the goings-on.
I might note that in many American techno-thrillers and spy novels I’ve read (the aforementioned Dale Brown included), Russian women main characters tend to be depicted as sluts who will sleep with anyone to achieve their goals (eliciting information, etc.). American women, in contrast, are of course too pure and virtuous to engage in such activities. (I think it reflects the American Puritanical view of sex; they have a real hang-up over the subject. Yet a lot of the world’s pornography emanates from that nation … go figure!) Valentina is thus depicted as the ship’s whore, presented in a very unflattering light.
So Stone withdraws to be by himself, the others participate in an orbital orgy (which is not described), then Boris, the oldest (in his 60s) has a heart attack from his exertions and Stone has to rush over to their module to try to save him. He, Boris and Valentina then have to evacuate in the Crew Return Vehicle. Boris snuffs it and Stone is reunited with his loving and virtuous family; poor Valentina is rebuffed. And so it ends. The story also contains derogatory remarks about the Russian space program. The author seemed to be venting some of his opinions through Stone (he certainly dislikes Russians). I’ll quote some extracts:
Maybe it was just another symptom of how sick the Russians’ space program was. For over twenty years they’d extorted most of the cash to build their modules and keep Progress supply ships coming to the station from NASA and the other partners. Now the Russian Space Agency even threatened to withdraw from the ISS … if they didn’t get more bribe money. They didn’t realize nobody needed them anymore …
Read this description of Valentina in seductive mode and you’ll see what I mean about the author reading too many Mills and Boon romances:
… She was a phantom of angelic delight, gently wafting before his bedazzled sight. Her supple legs were bound tightly in black fishnet stockings, their warmth palpable this near him. The frilled edge of a radiantly raven-hued diaphanous negligee fluttered just beneath her slim waist. Its silk and satin molded her upper body into a thrilling landscape of taut flesh, gentle curves, and rounded breasts constrained and accentuated by the fabric’s sensuous embrace.
Valentina smiled at him invitingly with full vermilion lips, parted to reveal a hint of brilliant white teeth. Her cheeks were delicately dusted with rouge to bring out their natural vitality. Green-tinted eyes shone like scintillating twin suns, surrounded by a dark corona of finely-tapered eyelashes. A slow descent of blue-blushed eyelids sent them into brief eclipse, only to shine again in torrid glory. Cascading ebony hair was tamed and woven into a complex braid coiled behind her head.
… Her bright eyes pored deep into his, as if reading the diary of his soul.
… The blurred faces focused into those of his five crewmates – their clothing scattering like drifting clouds around the claustrophobic module. Vali’s wadded-up negligee brushed his arm. Then its owner, dressed only in shredded fishnet stockings, floated forward to face him. Again his senses reeled, stunned by the Praxitelean beauty of her flawless figure.
And so forth … the descriptive language is so florid that it is unintentionally funny. There’s also a lot of rather irritating references to obscure operas, philosophers and such. And here’s an extract from near the end:
Valentina rose from the chair and stood in front of him, her face scarlet and ugly with rage. She hissed, “All you care about is your ‘duty’! If you were a real man, with any human feelings, you would have made love to me with everyone else. Maybe, if you’d been in TransHab when Boris became sick, you could have begun treating him sooner – and he’d still be alive!”
Her palm swung like a scythe and slapped his cheek viciously. She laughed at the thread of blood trickling from his mouth. “See, you don’t even react! You are a rock – a stone!”
Vali made a tight fist, drew it back to strike his other cheek –
And tumbled back into the chair like a broken puppet.
“How dare you hit my husband!”
Stone looked up to see his wife towering menacingly over Vali – ready to shove her again if she dared to rise.
Vali stared at the other woman’s face for a moment before recognizing it. She pointed an accusing finger at Stone. “He killed my husband!”
Donna sat down beside Stone, and wrapped a supportive arm around his waist. Her voice was low and firm. “No, he didn’t. I don’t know everything that happened on the station. But I know my husband cares about other people. He always tries his best to help them, no matter how much it hurts or costs him. He’s the most loving man I’ve ever known – and if you don’t see that too, you don’t understand him at all!”
Vali gazed at the two lovers sitting close together on the bed – and began to weep. Her heartrending sobs faded away as she ran from the room, into the darkness without.
… As the soulful opening melody of the “Sunrise” quartet shimmered in the room, the first rays of dawn filtered through its tiny window. Their golden glow enfolded two broken hearts beating again as one, caressed by light.
And so it ends. Can anyone take such silliness seriously? Not me, for one! Still, the author has done well just to get published. I doubt I ever will – that’s if I ever manage to write all the stories in my head, which are still locked in there.
~ Ended 7:35 p.m.
Thursday 7/2
A warm day with a change approaching; puffy cumulus clouds are massing in the west. One huge cloud has the distinct anvil shape of a forming thundercloud. Wonder if there’ll be a storm like last week?
Haven’t heard any more about that pest controller who was injured last week (see 31/1/2002 entry); no mention in the local paper. I presume he’s still alive as his death might else have rated a mention.
I received another e-mail from World Spaceflight News last week (30/1):
We wanted to let you know that your order was shipped today via the Post Office. The paper copy you requested is no longer available, but in its place we substituted the ‘ISS Guide’ CD-ROM which contains that document, and many others. As a bonus, we included our Shuttle Mission Report and also Apollo Program Document CD-ROMs.
So how much longer to wait – 2 to 6 weeks? It will soon be 4 months since I sent my order off! Still, as long as I eventually get it …! I won’t be able to send off any more mail orders, though (till I get a job …?); too expensive given Australia’s dismal currency exchange rate.
I’ve still made no effort to look for work, but am living in a reclusive dreamworld. My savings are down to just above $2000. A few more months, then …? The C. Bank is also introducing a monthly $5 fee to the Streamline account (which mine is) in April, which will mean more money haemorrhaging from my account which I can’t afford to lose. Might have to consider changing banks. I’ve been with the C. for years (the State Bank before that, until it collapsed) and I (like many others) am pissed off with the way they treat small account-holders now. The banks really don’t want these accounts as there is little profit for them. There is also a surcharge if a person’s account drops below a certain amount ($500, I think). I earn negligible interest; once I earned about $20 or so a year in interest.
My Health Care Card expires in March; if I want it renewed I’ll have to report to Centrelink and tell them I’m unemployed. I did not ask for a reference from That Awful Place; I don’t want to go anywhere near That Awful Place again. So I don’t know what will happen then, either.
I could drop out of society altogether. I am not employed and thus don’t pay tax. I could close my bank account and keep my dwindling savings at home. My life is so limited and worthless now … I still can’t find the courage to end it, though. I feel terrified of the outside world; a hostile uncaring place. I dread going through the demoralizing procedure of looking for work. I hate it all; hate this dreary and limited existence I have.
~ Ended 2:37 p.m.
Friday 8/2
I have a cold and I feel miserable; spent most of the day lying in my bed. There was some thunder and lightning last evening, but nothing like last week. I was also awoken unpleasantly at 3 a.m. by a clap of thunder that seemed to come out of nowhere. Some more thunder and lightning, but not much. I hate it when storms come in the depths of night; they seem to do it deliberately to wake people up and nearly give them heart failure.
~ Ended 3:39 p.m.
Thursday 14/2
A hot day, around 35°C; tomorrow is set to be 38°. Compared to last year, though, we’ve been spared much hot weather; a relief!
Bumped into Charmaine at the library; she was with her two children, Stephanie and Erica. We had a short conversation; a bit awkward. I didn’t say anything to the children as you know how uneasy I am with them in general. Charmaine lives with her husband John near her parents in Bentleigh, west of the shopping centre. We don’t have the same interests or lives and I am not entertaining company so I don’t think we’ll get together again.
My parents are getting the house’s carpets cleaned tomorrow; they desperately need it!
Today is Valentine’s Day, an event which I have never had reason to celebrate, and likely never will. I’ve glasses, bad skin, ordinary looks, a nondescript figure and am thoroughly messed up in the head. Not to mention having no skills or interesting career. No man would want to go out with me if I were the last available woman on Earth. As a human I am worthless; I have nothing to contribute to society. I am not likeable or loveable. I don’t know why I bother to perpetuate my existence.
~ Ended 6:45 p.m.
Monday 25/2
Nearly the end of February, and summer. Somewhat humid today, with a change due in the evening. What a relief this summer has been; unusually cool with only a couple of days in the high 30s; none of the threatened power cuts so far. People have complained about the lack of heat, but we (parents and I) certainly haven’t!
Went to Centrelink to renew my Health Care Card last Friday. Lady who did it didn’t say anything about my lack of a job. I should probably have registered as unemployed as the card will otherwise still be classified as Low Income (I can’t use that category to get train ticket discounts), but I didn’t think to when I was there.
I’m stuck at home with my parents all the time and I am frustrated and bored witless. No one my age to talk to or socialize with. I’ve been like this for so many years that I don’t think I’m capable of doing that. I need to lose some weight but can’t motivate myself to do anything; I’ve no money to join a gym, anyway.
I’m still waiting for my CD-ROM order to arrive from America; it’s 4 months since I ordered it and 4 weeks on Wednesday since they sent that e-mail! They are sending it by sea obviously. I hope it’s worth the heinous amount of money I spent on it … if I ever get it!
~ Ended 3:55 p.m.
March
Wednesday 6/3
Saw the ISS last night, finally! Just low in the south at 8:55 p.m. Would have had a good view last week but every evening and morning was cloudy. We’ve had warm weather too, from Monday to today – high 20s – after a week of below-average temperatures.
Nothing of interest here, except increasing frustration and despair. My savings are down to $1089. If only I could find a job where no questions about my past would be asked.
Found this article on the Internet Spaceref concerning the “Space Mafia”– NASA – and its sneaky behind-the-scenes manipulations to ensure it remains the dominant space power:
Mir’s Heroic Death
Press Release
Date Released: Friday, March 23, 2001
Cato Institute
by Edward Hudgins, director of regulatory policy studies at the Cato Institute.The Mir space station was born as a symbol of communist strength and died as a noble experiment in private space commerce. NASA officials helped kill it. Its odyssey provides lessons concerning why so few individuals live and work in space today, and what must be done if space is to truly become a domain of human activity in the future.
Mir went into operation in 1986. When the Soviet Union collapsed, President George Bush decided that a good peace gesture would be an astronaut-cosmonaut exchange program with Americans living on Mir. During the 1990s, with Americans onboard, Mir acquired the reputation of an accident-prone orbiting antique. There were indeed problems with the station, in part because Russia was out of money and trying to dig out of the ruins of socialism. Energiya, the mostly privatized Russian space agency, had decided to scuttle Mir and to accept NASA’s invitation to become a partner in the International Space Station (ISS). But then private parties came to the rescue in the form of MirCorp, a company 40 percent owned by private Western investors and 60 percent owned by Energiya. It planned to make the station financially self-supporting. As MirCorp CEO Jeffrey Manber said, “There is nothing wrong with Mir that a little money can’t fix.” Mir would be a platform for commercial activities such as in-orbit advertising, satellite construction and repair, and telecommunications services.
MirCorp footed the bill for the first privately funded manned space flight – a resupply mission to Mir. American Dennis Tito planned to pay MirCorp a reported $20 million so he could be the first private passenger in orbit. Mark Burnett, producer of the hit television show Survivor, had an agreement with MirCorp to allow contestants to train and compete at Russia’s Star City; the winner would go on a 10-day mission to Mir.
But behind the scenes top NASA officials pressured Energiya to abandon Mir, threatening to cut Energiya out of the ISS contract. Those officials claimed that if Energiya continued to provide services to Mir, the Russian company would not have enough resources to meet commitments to the ISS. This was not true. Several Russian Progress supply rockets were sitting unused. MirCorp wanted to purchase them to support Mir. The money would have been used to build more rockets. But under a treaty with the Russian government NASA had the final say on the rockets, and it said “No.”
MirCorp also wanted to import from the United States a tether that would have provided power to Mir, reducing the need for re-supply rockets and saving the space station. But the U.S. State Department, under pressure from NASA, delayed the export license for 10 months, until after Energiya decided to bring down the Mir. Top NASA officials did not want competition.
Energiya is still fighting with NASA officials over commercialization. Energiya announced that it would allow Dennis Tito to pay to travel to the ISS on a Russian rocket. Even though Tito has undergone training just like the cosmonauts, NASA has protested that Tito’s presence could endanger the station (but had had no qualms when it sent Sen. Jake Garn and Rep. Bill Nelson into space to keep taxpayer dollars flowing into the NASA budget).
Energiya has also struck a commercial deal allowing a module for television and Internet services, produced by the private American company SpaceHab and Russia’s Korolev, to be attached to its module on the ISS. NASA should welcome that move as a way of providing needed funds and space. The projected cost of the ISS has risen steadily since the 1980s, from $8 billion to at least $50 billion. All the while, the station’s capacities have been shrinking. A recent budget-cutting move makes the ISS into a mere three-person station. The principal job of ISS astronauts may be reduced to merely maintaining the station, with little science or other work of value. Now, ironically, NASA might be forced to rent sleeping quarters on the SpaceHab module for a couple of extra astronauts.
MirCorp struggled heroically to convert a money-losing relic into a private, moneymaking success. Its tragic failure was due in part to NASA officials who seem more comfortable with a Soviet space model than a free market one. So raise a final funeral toast to the noble, lost station, and let’s hope Mir’s spirit will inspire future entrepreneurs to make space enterprise a paying proposition.
– Spaceref.com
Doesn’t that just make your blood boil? Well, it does mine. NASA wants to remain the dominant space power as America wishes to dominate Earth, and they will stop at nothing to maintain this. The Americans are as ruthless as the Soviets were and even more deadly, being so wealthy, technologically-advanced and well-organized. History has proven so far that no empire lasts forever, but at the present time America’s dominance looks set to continue for decades, if not centuries. Perhaps only a well-placed asteroid will end it!
America is still bombing Afghanistan after several months, concentrating on mountain tunnels in a remote section where al-Qaeda fighters are still putting up resistance. Osama bin Laden still hasn’t been caught; he seems to have vanished altogether. The alliance of nations which was initially so strong just after September 11 has inevitably fragmented somewhat, though Mr. Howard still kowtows to President Bush, saying Australia will continue to support America’s actions. Both those men really piss me off.
I feel so powerless and frustrated. I wish I could make my views on topics such as the “Space Mafia” known to others, but I am too shy to try to communicate via newsgroups, or whatever. No one else around here gives a f**k.
Had an awful dream two nights ago that I had returned to That Awful Place and was putting on my uniform. A nightmarish prospect! I don’t ever want to do that sort of work again. A total waste of 12 years of my life. I might as well have spent that time in jail, in a mental asylum or in a coma – I have absolutely nothing to show for that gap in my life.
~ Ended 4:34 p.m.
Friday 15/3
I have decided to eliminate the name of my previous job from my life history, so I’ve just gone back and erased everything! It’s referred to only as “That Awful Place” or “The Job From Hell”. I would like to erase it from my memory altogether, as well as eliminate all records of my working there. Told Mum this and she went off at me. She is totally clueless. She and Dad, and everyone in this family. I wonder what crime I committed in a previous life to end up stuck with this lot of dysfunctional humans. Parents’ annoying habits incite extremely violent thoughts in me at times, I am so tired of enduring them.
The beauty of keeping a journal, life history, etc. on a computer word processor is that I can effortlessly go back and alter or erase my notes, as I just spent time doing! I don’t know how durable the electronic format is in the long term, though – hard drives deteriorate over time.
My savings are now down to $1809. Got my new Health Care Card and it is still registered as Low Income, so I would have to register as unemployed to change it. My savings will only last a few more months … then what? I’m tired and I don’t have the will to do anything. I spend a lot of time lying in bed – just under my doona quilt, not fully in. I feel safe there, hiding from the world.
Not safe from spiders, though! On Wednesday morning I got up and when making my bed found a small (2-3 cm) black spider between the sheets! I squished it with a tissue. I found another of these spiders in a corner of my bedroom wall a few weeks ago, and found a couple in the lounge room last year. I think they are white-tailed spiders; I don’t come close enough to them to look! The bite of these spiders can cause nasty ulcerated wounds. I have an awful phobia of spiders so you can imagine that finding one in my bed was decidedly unpleasant! I don’t know how it got there – perhaps it came up out of the central heating duct and crawled up the woollen blanket which hangs onto the floor from my bed (I keep it tucked up now). Does that mean it was in bed with me? I really don’t want to know … I sprayed my room with insecticide later that day.
~ Ended 4:11 p.m.
Saturday 16/3
Rather a lot of drama today. First, Basil the budgerigar, a caged bird which Michele bought around 1990, snuffed it – I found him dead in his cage. I wasn’t very upset as he was a nuisance to look after; he made a filthy mess and cleaning his cage every day was a tedious chore. If I were by myself I wouldn’t have any pets.
On the way back from Southland, we had a collision with another car! Mum was driving her Starlet along the usual route, down Hillston Road after turning off from the Nepean Highway. A middle-aged couple in a larger car came out of a side-street (Biscop Rd), turning left and kept pulling out despite us having right-of-way. The male driver was middle-aged; he seemed to glance at us but not really register that we were coming. Mum’s reactions were also slow; she didn’t brake in time and the cars bumped front fenders. The couple’s car only got scratched, but the Starlet’s front left fender panel was badly dented and will need replacing.
Of course, we all got a fright, but Mum jumped out and began screaming at the man, totally losing it – Dad was initially angry, too, but had to calm her down. The man probably thought he was about to be attacked! Talk about road rage. Dad and he exchanged names and addresses, then we drove back home. Both the man and my parents are RACV members, so the organization will take care of insurance, repairs, etc.
My parents are both getting rather dangerous to drive with, as they are ageing. Mum’s reactions are slow (as the accident proved) and Dad is extremely impatient – I hate going with him when he drives as he is always muttering and cursing other drivers. I can’t drive, so I am stuck with them! I’ve got no friends to go out with.
My favorite kind of music for some time has been techno-dance-type music, the sort that is played in nightclubs and at rave parties. There are various styles, going under the names of techno, house, trance, ambient and so on; there are differences between these, but all are characterized by a incessant rhythmic electronic drumbeat, overlain with layers of different melodies and sounds. (It’s hard to describe music in words!) The aim of this type of music is to induce a trance-like state in listeners and dancers, so they transcend reality and enter an altered state of consciousness. This music doesn’t usually have a vocal soundtrack, though there can be repeated words or phrases. More mainstream dance music (“Top 40” music) can also use a similar style.
I find this music induces a trance-like state in me – a “flow” state – and greatly aids in daydreaming. I can transcend my dreary reality for a little while – though it is quite unpleasant when I have to come back down to it.
I’m bored and frustrated at my limited existence. I have no friends, no different faces to see.
Tuesday 19/3
The CD-ROMs I ordered finally arrived this morning, delivered with a thump on the doorstep. I actually ordered one CD-ROM on the ISS and an operations booklet, but the latter was out of print, so 3 other CDs were substituted instead. I opened them on my computer and all seem to work OK. There is far more information than I can use (or read) – hundreds or thousands of pages’ worth. It is inevitably biased towards NASA – not as much about the Russian side as I would like. I don’t think I’ll order anything like that again, though – not while I am unemployed, at least. Reading from a computer screen is also somewhat uncomfortable; hard on the eyes. Books are still superior, here.
Got a good view of the ISS on Sunday night at 8:42 p.m., moving S to SSE at about 32°; I watched until it vanished into the Earth’s shadow.
Had a talk to Michele on the telephone last night; just the usual innocuous things. She says she is happy being a wife and mother; that she prefers it to having a career – or regards it as just as important – and doesn’t mind sacrificing her needs to raise children. Sounds like she’s trying to justify this to herself! She’s probably convinced herself that she really means this, with some encouragement from Chris. In her place I would go mad with boredom and frustration; I would feel trapped. When a woman becomes a mother she usually loses some of her identity; she is “the mother of –” and/or “the wife of –”. But who is she? If a woman doesn’t have a career before marriage and motherhood, how does she define herself?
These issues concern me too as I have no skills and have never had a career of any sort – I thus feel I have no identity. I can’t describe myself as anything; all I say is that I am “nothing,” which is the truth as I see it. About all I am good at is daydreaming, which has little practical value in this society.
The drongoes next door had a party on Saturday night; they erected a marquee tent and invited what sounded like a whole lot of relatives over. It wasn’t as bad as the last time they did this (1999); I got some sleep, but I could hear them talking outside early the next morning, which was annoying. Wish I could live somewhere far away from neighbors.
~ Ended 4:12 p.m.
Saturday 23/3
It’s one year since the Mir space station was deorbited, at after 5 p.m. I was doing a shift at That Awful Place then; it was a Friday afternoon. Those in the Russian space program are probably feeling morose today. They are now the subordinate partner to the USA in the ISS program and Mir-2 does not look like it will ever be built. I wonder if things will ever improve, or if they will continue to sink into Third-World status, becoming a backwater again as they were a couple of centuries ago.
I’ve had some good evening sightings of the ISS this week: Tuesday, 8:28 p.m., Wednesday 9:09 p.m. and Thursday 8:13 p.m., with one more to hopefully follow tonight. I saw a news article on the Internet saying that the current Expedition 4 crew will have to stay another month (making their stay 6 months) as the next Shuttle flight going up (STS-110) needs to dedicate its mission to fixing a troublesome robot arm. This crew are rather boring; they are very tardy in posting photos on their NASA gallery site! Only 7 pages’ worth so far, none particularly outstanding. I suppose they are busy with their chores. The next crew to go up, Expedition 5, consists of 2 Russian men (one the commander) and a female American astronaut! Should be interesting … (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) oh, they’re too “professional” for that!
I would love to go up there just to take some decent photos; I’ve planned what I would photograph if I could! I’d take detailed interior views of all modules for reference purposes; a few humorous posed shots and – if I could do an EVA – detailed exterior views – as well as shots of spacewalkers in the Russian Orlan suits (photos of which there are almost none). I would also like to use a jetpack to zoom a distance away from the Station for more distant views. And I would love to take some exterior shots of the ISS when on the Earth’s dark-shadowed side, out of the sun’s glare, preferably when the Moon was full. Imagine night shots of the ISS glimmering like a ghost ship in the moon- and starlight! I don’t know if the camera film could capture this, though; you might need a really fast (800) film, which would come out all grainy, and/or a long exposure time, which would mean blurring. I’m not a photography expert, so I wouldn’t know.
I’d just like to quote an extract from the Expedition 1 NASA Press Kit, concerning the Space Mafia and their wish for dominance of space:
In addition to serving as a research laboratory, the ISS will sustain and strengthen U.S. leadership in other areas. It will provide opportunity to enhance U.S. economic competitiveness and create new commercial enterprises … The ISS will maintain the U.S. leadership in space exploration that has inspired a generation of Americans and people throughout the world … Education and inspiration will couple to maintain U.S. economic leadership by raising a new generation of science-, math- and technology-savvy children who will invent 21st-century products and services.
Now, if I were one of the other partners (Russia, Japan or the European Space Agency), I would find that assertion very offensive. The Americans seem to regard themselves as having a God-given mandate to dominate Earth and space, and display a condescending attitude towards other nations that the American way is the best way, an attitude that is even more prevalent after September 11 and under President George W. Bush. I don’t know what can be done to combat this; I certainly can’t do anything, being powerless and utterly insignificant. If I were in charge of a space program, though, I would seek to form alliances with other space agencies – including China’s – to combat NASA’s dominance by any means possible!
China has its own space program and is hoping to launch a person in space sometime next year – only the third nation to do so, if its attempt succeeds. Russia has aided the development of China’s space program. It has tested a couple of spaceships based on the Soyuz launcher; its version of this is called Shenzhou, or “Heavenly Ship,” a nice name for a spaceship. They even have ambitions to land their own taikonauts on the Moon! I hope they do (and Russia, too) and put NASA in its place.
Today also marks 13 years since I quit my ASTA apprenticeship, 2 months after beginning it. A rash decision which ruined my life; any chances of an interesting and worthwhile career. If I had stayed and completed the 4 years there, I doubt I would be here now, alone and depressed with no future.
~ Ended 3:20 p.m.
Friday 29/3
Good Friday today, and a full Moon. Dad’s 69th birthday tomorrow – next year, 2003, he will be 70! Officially old – a scary prospect. Mum and Dad are driving up to Rochester tomorrow to visit Michele, staying overnight at a motel as they usually do. It is nice to have a break from each other, if only for a night.
One of my interests in the Russian space program is – or was – the Buran shuttle, the equivalent of the American shuttle. Sadly, the program was canceled in the early 1990s due to its expense, but if the Buran shuttle had flown, it would have taken cosmonauts to Mir and they wouldn’t have had to rely on the Americans. The Russians did the equivalent of selling their soul to the Devil when they, out of desperation, signed the partnership contract with NASA. America, through NASA, did keep the Russian space program from collapsing, but at a cost to the Russian program’s independence. As I noted in the last entry, Russia is now subordinate to NASA in the ISS program, and NASA is gaining long-duration spaceflight experience from them, which Russia had the advantage in before. Now they don’t have anything. A demoralizing position to be in. (But no one around here cares about this.)
The Buran prototype orbiter made one unmanned, automated test flight in 1988, launched on 15 November. Six days after my 18th birthday, and I never even was aware of it! I wasn’t interested in space at that time; my interest seems only to have come in the last few years, though I’ve been interested in aviation since late childhood. So I missed out on the launch of the Mir core module in 1986, and everything up to the last year or so. I did find a National Geographic magazine in a Bentleigh op shop – the October 1986 issue featuring a lengthy article: “Soviets in Space – are they ahead?” Well, sadly, that turned out to be an illusion. It would be a painfully poignant read for anyone in the program now. Proposals for lunar expeditions and bases, missions to Mars, bigger space stations to replace Mir. But look what happened instead …
An interesting quote from that article: “Mr. [Deke] Slayton spoke of the cosmonauts’ lofty social status. ‘They’re heroes – almost revered. The Soviets have been playing at being atheists, and the cosmonauts seem to fill a vacuum.’ And so it seemed to me. Exploits in space stir the Soviet soul like a religion – stirrings fanned by a government immensely proud of space successes.” And another extract on this theme from a novel, A Cold Red Sunrise by Stuart M. Kaminsky (1988):
And so, this morning as every morning, Boris Manizer took the metro to the VDNKh Station and walked past the massive Space Obelisk pointing into the sky to commemorate the progress of the Soviet people in mastering outer space. Five years ago on a summer day, Boris had heard two educated men in front of the Obelisk saying that religion had been replaced in modern Russia by the Soviet space program. It had struck Boris as a wonderful, secret truth. He began to notice how many space stamps, space ashtrays, space desk ornaments were being sold. Even grocery stores and beauty shops had names like Cosmos and Sputnik. It had, in the last few years, begun to change a bit, but it was still evident that the people were waiting for something new to happen in space …
That would, I thought, make an excellent theme for an essay or thesis: “Realm of the Gods: Space as Religion in the Soviet Era” or some such title. When a person goes into space, they enter another realm outside of dreary Earth-bound reality. The sky has always been viewed as the home of the gods in nearly all mythologies. In ancient Egypt, for example, the Pharaoh was believed to ascend to the stars after his death and dwell there.
Astronauts and cosmonauts do have an aura about them which sets them apart from mere mortals. When they don their spacesuits – like a knight donning his armor – they become something more than human. In ancient pagan religious ceremonies, the shaman-priest would don a mask of some sort – depicting an animal or some mythological god – in order to disguise his human form and become that god or supernatural being. The spaceman, in his gold-visored spacesuit, similarly conceals his mortal humanity.
In Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff, I read of the “astronaut groupies,” women who idolized the “Mercury Seven” like they were pop stars, and made themselves freely “available”! No doubt the cosmonauts had (have?) their “groupies,” too! Plenty of people also attend conventions where spacefarers make an appearance – men and women drawn to their aura.
Two issues of Asimov’s Science Fiction – an American science fiction monthly magazine which has been published for decades – also addressed such themes in a story and two articles. The June 2001 edition contained a story by Andy Duncan which was an eulogy to Sergei Korolev, the “Chief Designer” who was the driving force behind the Soviet space program before his premature death during a botched operation to remove a bowel cancer in 1966. His death ended any hope of the Russians beating NASA to the Moon. The story, “The Chief Designer,” is lively with likeable characters.
In the “On Books” section, Norman Spinrad addressed the topic of space flight as a way of experiencing transcendence – an elevated, ecstatic state of mind where you escape yourself and your thoughts into what mystics might call “nirvana”. When I daydream about doing an EVA, floating in the void of space surrounded by the Universe, and listen to trance/ambient music, I experience something resembling that state. Also, when writing, I sometimes enter this “flow state” where things flow effortlessly. I’ve read of this elsewhere – people exercising, for example, might experience a “runner’s high”. Whatever the name, it can be a magical experience – one which I think people using drugs might try to attain. But if they could train their mind to reach such states naturally (it involves the production of endorphins, a hormone endemic to the brain) there’d be no need for harmful drug-taking. This mind-state enhances creativity, I’ve found – but I only experience it for a short time (I am somewhat in that state now). The worst thing about the experience is, as with drugs, the coming “down” afterwards into cold grey reality – it can be quite awful.
In the March 2001 Asimov’s was another essay by Norman Spinrad. It included a book review of a novel by Michael Cassutt, Red Moon, about the Soviet space program told to a fictitious American reporter by the first-person narrator, Yurii Ribko. It details the convoluted, vicious political infighting between various factions in the Soviet program which arguably stalled and destroyed it, and suggests the mysterious deaths of S. Korolev and Yurii Gagarin were really murders as a result of this infighting. I ordered the book from overseas – heinously overpriced, nearly $18 for an average-sized paperback (sadly, the norm these days), but it’s an excellent read.
In the essay, Mr. Spinrad compares the raison d’être of the Soviet/Russian program as compared to NASA. He says the Russians were unashamedly idealistic and romantic about space travel – they had “visionary passion” – contrasting with the pragmatic, “business-as-usual” attitude adopted by NASA. If I am able, I’ll type out relevant extracts and insert them in here. It’s a thought-provoking essay:
The right (and wrong) stuff
… for the elusive something that seems to have been attenuating in science fiction is not unrelated to something similar that has gone south in the American space program in roughly the same timeframe, the upward trajectory of science fiction commencing about the time of JFK’s ringing challenge to the Soviet Union to a space race to the Moon, its apogee trailing not that far behind the success of Project Apollo, and the beginning of its decline with the Challenger explosion.
Or perhaps it was something that science fiction had that the American space program never really had, but that the Soviet program, though it lost the Moon race to the Big Red, White and Blue machine, always had, and which its impoverished latter-day Russian remnant wistfully retains still.
They might call it the Russian soul. We might call it romantic visionary passion.
Read Red Moon by Michael Cassutt if you want to understand it, a novel with all the right stuff as it tells the story of the people of the Soviet version of Project Apollo somehow retaining the right stuff of the spirit even as all the wrong stuff you would imagine in a penurious bureaucratic communist state and more tumbles down upon them.
… If the beginnings of the American space program might be said to be the rocketry experiments of Robert Goddard in the early years of the twentieth century and Goddard therefore its grandfather, the roots of the Russian program are not just the experiments but the speculations of Konstantin Tsiolkovskii which began toward the end of the 19th century.
Though Goddard speculated on travel to other planets, his work was centered on the creation of the hardware, while Tsiolkovskii, very much a hardware creator himself, was much more of a visionary speculator.
Curiously, or not so curiously, the dichotomy between the American and the Russian mirrored the dichotomy between the hard science fiction of the Frenchman Jules Verne and the more socially and politically-centred science fiction of the Briton H.G. Wells beginning to be published in roughly the same time frame, the roots of the two main branches of science fiction that persist even today.
But if Verne was a fairly close cognate of Goddard, Wells the utopian socialist cynic (and yes, that is possible) was something quite different from Tsiolkovskii. For if there were one thing he were not, it was romantic, which was something Tsiolkovskii emphatically was.
Which was and is something NASA’s raison d’être never was and still isn’t, and something the Russian space program’s raison d’être always was and no doubt still is, as Red Moon makes touchingly clear …
The Russian program, operating under a bureaucratic communistic dictatorship, in a wheezing economy, was constrained to deal in endless bureaucratic infighting and evasions, endless jury-rigging, endless chewing gum and baling-wire jobs; a clunky kluge of political obfuscation, petty intrigues and problematic machinery, a far cry from NASA’s state-of-the-art bells and whistles on the beach in Florida.
Yet to read Red Moon is to emerge with the feeling that the Russians were the guys engaged in trying to carry the torch of science fiction’s true spirit to the stars. You end up rooting for them to beat the well-financed, smoothly-running NASA to the Moon with their collection of lower but robust tech cobbled together out of bits and pieces of this and that, even though beneath their cynicism and contempt for the bureaucratic machinery of the system, they are nationalistic Russian patriots and some even idealistic communists.
… Somehow, folks, these Russian cosmonauts, more than the NASA astronauts, were our team.
… there is something in the Russian soul that allows them to be unashamed and unabashed romantics. I’m no expert, but somehow I doubt that there is an exact translation in Russian for “corny”.
Perhaps this up-front and unapologetic romanticism is also what attracts the culture to ideologies, from pre-revolutionary Pan-Slavism to Marxist utopianism, and now, with its demise, to the renaissance of the always nationalistic Russian Orthodox Church.
Russia, it seems, abhors an ideological vacuum, and perhaps it is no accident that in English the words “ideology” and “idealism” are so similar. For, for good or evil, for better or worse, you cannot be a passionate believer in any ideology – which might be defined as a method of achieving a good that transcends the individual and the quotidian conditions of the here and now – without being an idealist.
… Which is why I at least found myself rooting for what I knew were the foredoomed efforts of the losing Russians in Red Moon rather than for those of NASA … and even coming close to shedding a tear at Andy Duncan’s elegy for Sergei Korolov. And I suspect many adult American SF readers will find themselves doing likewise.
From the very beginning, indeed from before the beginning, going back to Tsiolkovskii’s 19th century speculations, the true goal of the Russian space program – of the engineers and cosmonauts and of its guiding light Korolov, if not all of the bureaucrats and politicians above them – was the exploration of the solar system and beyond by humans, the expansion of the species out into the great universal yonder. Why?
As a famous jazz musician one said in a somewhat different context, if you have to ask, you’re never gonna get it.
The Russians never had to ask, any more than the science fiction devotee sticking to the stuff into mature adulthood. But though the title of the book and film The Right Stuff refers to the NASA program, not the Russian one, on this level, the Russians had it and NASA never really did.
Recently, the mavens of the impoverished, decrepit, Russian space program – so desperate for cash to keep things running that they sold a jaunt to the unfinished “International Space Station” to an American for 20 million bucks, to the ire of NASA – unveiled a proposal for an international manned expedition to Mars.
This, while NASA and others it has conned into joining the venture are pissing away the 100 billion dollars that would just about finance such an adventure on a space station that is a gateway to nowhere and will scarcely accommodate more people than did the recently-dumped Mir with 1980s Russian technology so “primitive” that they could only keep it in space for a decade past its expected expiration date with the aforementioned chewing gum and baling wire – and so robust that they could.
What does all this have to do with the science fiction of the last decade or so losing its readers as they mature into adulthood?
Visionary passion.
The Russian space program always had it, would seem to retain it even under the present horrendous conditions, and I suspect, if only they could afford it, there would be a large public constituency in Russia in favor of putting it into practice.
Maybe there were those in the American space program who had it on the way to the essentially political, nationalistic goal of beating the Russians to the Moon – Wernher von Braun and his spiritual sons and daughters – but it was never the raison d’être they dared present to the American public, and it disappeared soon thereafter. Maybe there are those who still have it, but if they do, they know better than to talk about it in public, lest they be laughed out of the Congressional appropriations committees.
But American science fiction had this visionary passion from its very beginning. And to the extent that the American space program had it at all during the Project Apollo era, that was where it came from, certainly not from the politicians, and certainly not from the general public, to whom such matters were never even broached when the time came to appeal for funding and support.
And so the NASA program never achieved the visionary dimension for the American people that the Russian program had for the Russians. It was a great technological achievement and a cause for national boasting, but it never really touched the heart.
And indeed, from the middle of the 1960s into the 1970s, it became symbolic to a generation of a cold technocratic Establishment employing much the same species of aerospace boys’ toys in Viet Nam, not the romantic opening of an infinite new frontier as the Russians saw it, but its antithesis, the colonization of space by business as usual.
Sadly, the idealistic attitudes Russians displayed towards their space program seem to have mostly faded during the traumatic 1990s, and the young people of now have little interest in it and only display cynicism towards it, if the impressions I’ve got are correct. The Russian government appears also mostly indifferent, starving the program of funding (I read in NASA Watch that the Energiya corporation is having to lay off hundreds of workers due to funding cuts). So, NASA and the Americans have won here, too.
Back to Buran after all that digressing. There’s a couple of good websites; one is by the Molniya company which designed the orbiter – www.buran.ru – with lots of info and photos. Unfortunately, it’s mostly in Russian! Another, Australian site is http://k26.com/buran/.
There was an article in New Scientist last year about the possible resurrection of Buran and the huge rocket which carries it, Energiya. I don’t know if that will come to anything, though, given Russia’s chronic money shortages.
A daydream I have – being converted into a story – is of the resurrection of Buran by a privately-funded, secretive consortium of billionaires. I don’t want to say much about it – I’ll probably never finish it – but the characters who fly the new Buran appear in previous (still-unfinished) daydreams/stories. Some of these include me! The Buran tale – “Phoenix Rising” – is one of triumph after years of despair and adversity (and reflects how I wish my life could turn out). If only it could come true!
I am frustratingly limited in my daydreams and stories, though, by my lack of technical knowledge. I don’t know how to fly the Shuttle or a Soyuz. I don’t know how computer systems operate, I don’t know what people say to each other in radio communications in space, what all the switches and valves on a spacesuit are for. It’s all the little things which aren’t mentioned in most textbooks or on the Internet – or the CD-ROMs I ordered. The latter have a mind-numbingly huge array of information, some of which is helpful, but is too much for me to read, and it doesn’t answer the above questions. I wish there were someone, or some people, whom I could ask about all of this, but I don’t know where to go.
~ Ended 7:28 p.m.
April
Wednesday 3/4
Into month 4, Easter is over and chocolate eggs eaten. Warm weather the last couple of days. I had some vivid dreams last night, the usual odd assortment of images, which I wrote down afterwards, so I’ll note them here.
I awoke at 11:41 p.m. after the first set. I was initially in a car driving home and we drove through a huge stadium, eastwards towards the rising sun. Seemed to be in Melbourne. We then drove past another reserve which seemed to be derived from one near Gran’s home, in the Brighton area. It was called St. Trinian’s in the dream, and is one I’ve seen before in previous dreams. Next, I was in the country near the sea, somewhere where Dad was when he was young, and I saw him in the distance. I then climbed some cliffs near the beach. This bore a vague resemblance to a school camp I went to at Anglesea in 1984. After that I was in a country town in a valley; it was early morning with fog floating about. In the distance I noticed a woman grooming a horse. She left it for a minute to pick up a chainsaw and cut some branches with it, then she went back to the horse, but she had left the chainsaw running. It worked its way up a wooden ramp then fell down upon the girl, cutting her. I could see this was going to happen, but felt too lethargic to warn her. I ran to her with a couple of other dream characters and bathed her cut arm under a tap.
In the dream I had before I awoke this morning, I boarded a passenger jet with my Kilvington classmates; we were headed off to America. The interior of the jet resembled a restaurant, with seats and tables. I couldn’t find anyone to sit next to at first. I finally found a rearwards-facing seat; I had a large window to look out of and I was happy that I’d be able to take photos out of it during the flight. Next, we were in America. I walked through a newsagent with a classmate. We glanced through a pile of discounted books; I remarked that the titles were similar to ones found in Australia. This dream of flying off on a journey with school classmates is a recurring one; a memory of my long-ago trip to New Zealand in 1987. I’ve been nowhere since.
~ Ended 3:41 p.m. (UTC +10)
Saturday 13/4
Yesterday marked 41 years since Yurii Gagarin was launched into orbit, and 21 years since the Space Shuttle’s first flight. On the Internet I discovered a website called www.yuriisnight.net, a worldwide organization which holds celebratory space parties on this date. It was started last year. People can link up through it and broadcast their own parties. The Expedition Crew on the ISS even got into the act this year, sending down a message. The aim of the site is to make space relevant to young people (my generation and those following) by holding rave parties and such. I like the idea, though I can’t join in, being isolated and reclusive. I wish I could.
STS-110 launched this week carrying the S-0 Truss to attach to the ISS, which will form the backbone of the strut carrying the 8 solar panels. Whether these will be put into place remains to be seen! The Station project has been going for 10 years or so with delays, and the initial enthusiasm of the various partners involved is waning as the ISS has gone way over budget.
We’ve had warm weather all week but it ended yesterday with an afternoon change, and rain today.
~ Ended 6:35 p.m.
Thursday 18/4
The second space tourist, Mark Shuttleworth, is going up next week on the 25th. His crewmates are Italian ESA astronaut Roberto Vittori and Soyuz Commander Yurii Gidzenko – his last flight was as part of the Expedition One crew in 2000. Mr. Shuttleworth is paying $A38.3 million for the trip – only a portion of his billion-dollar or so fortune. There was also a report on space tourism on last night’s Foreign Correspondent. NASA doesn’t seem to be snubbing Mark Shuttleworth like they did Dennis Tito last year – Mr. Shuttleworth is mentioned on the NASA site, unlike Dennis Tito, who has neither name nor photo anywhere to be found there.
The S-Zero Truss was also installed by STS-110 astronauts. One veteran astronaut, Jerry Ross, became the first person to be launched into space seven times on the Shuttle, though his accumulated time in space is still relatively short.
You can guess how all this is making me feel – utterly despondent. These people seem to live in another reality inaccessible to people like me. I would have no idea how to make as much money as Mark Shuttleworth. Some people seem to have that ability; others don’t.
My savings are down to $1569. The bank will also be charging $5 per month for access fees from this month. Though I was being charged more than that before for withdrawal fees, so perhaps, if I don’t go over the withdrawal-per-month limit, I’ll be having less taken out.
Next week, on the 26th, I will have been unemployed for 6 months. Half a year gone already! The dreadful years at That Awful Place are receding like a bad dream.
I feel worthless, utterly worthless. I am never going to achieve anything, my life has amounted to exactly nothing so far. I have wasted what should have been some of the most productive years of my life. I can see no future for myself, only a grim existence of isolation, poverty and loneliness. Another 30 or 40 years of depression and inner torment is nothing to look forward to. I daydream of things which are impossible to attain, and it is a form of torture. I can’t accept that I may only ever live an ordinary, mundane life. I want something more.
I spend most of my days hiding in my bedroom. I have become a semi-recluse, frightened of the hostile world outside which I can’t cope with. Is the rest of my life going to be like this? It will not be worth living if it is, but I still lack the courage to end everything.
~ Ended 4:10 p.m.
Wednesday 24/4
Near the end of another month … my savings continue to decrease.
The space tourist Mark Shuttleworth goes up at the end of this week on Soyuz TM-34. I discovered his website at www.africaninspace.com, and it’s quite good, with lots of training photos and information via a diary he kept. It’s a world I can never enter, though, and it hurts to read about it. He has made a real success of his life. I feel worthless; lowlier than a worm.
Read the latest book by Elizabeth Wurtzel called More, Now, Again. She is the author of the previous Prozac Nation, which came out a few years ago. She was given an unflattering profile in an interview published in the Sunday Herald Sun a few weeks ago, but her book is quite compelling. She’s an American – born in New York City – and has wealthy but dysfunctional parents (they divorced when she was a child). She consequently suffered a lot of mental problems and addictions to various drugs over the years. Despite this she managed to finish school, went on to Harvard University, gained a degree in journalism, wrote well-received articles for Rolling Stone magazine, worked as a freelance pop critic and has so far had three books published. Her latest book details her addiction to Ritalin, a drug normally given to hyperactive children. I whizzed through it in a couple of days. She is quite self-aware – aware of the effect her addictions have on conce rned friends and relatives – but she just can’t help herself. She must have tried every drug in existence. She has the sort of personality or mentality which makes her prone to addictive and self-destructive behavior.
I recognized a lot of myself in her. Unlike me, she has a career, money, friends, boyfriends, a social and love life, and is attractive. But like me she seems to have low self-esteem, is a bit self-centred and immature, and is messed-up in the head. I know I have an addictive personality – I would, for example, end up a drug addict if exposed to that sort of environment. I am seriously depressed, have no self-esteem and feel utterly despondent about my life, and life in general. I would indulge in self-destructive behavior if given the opportunity. I just don’t care about myself or my life. I feel I will never amount to anything, so it doesn’t matter what I do (as long as I don’t end up in prison). The sooner my useless existence is over, the better. I have a passive approach to life and long ago lost the will to do anything; to take any more risks.
In my daydreams, though, I am a different person – it’s like another, more confident and daring personality emerges there which I can never bring into reality. Of course, I am not restrained by reality in my daydreams – there I can do anything, be anyone. I wish I could exit reality for the world in my head.
~ Ended 3:18 p.m.
Monday 29/4
Mark Shuttleworth was launched on Thursday, spent 2 days orbiting in the Soyuz and docked late on Saturday. He looks like he’s having fun. Lucky him. He does go on a bit, though, in his website – blathering on about how his experiments are going to help humanity, how his flight will inspire all African children, etc., etc. (The NASA Watch site criticized him for this self-promotion, too.) Interestingly, one of the congratulatory e-mails he received from a former school friend mentioned that he’d had “Asperger’s syndrome” (a mild form of autism, one which I show some of the traits of). He’s had a mention or two on the evening news.
A more dismal bit of news concerns Russia’s ISS funding problems. Because of these, the Station might not be able to have a permanent crew after Expedition 5 leaves near the end of the year – crews going up for short stays instead in either the Shuttle or Soyuz spacecraft for a week or two. The Russian government is not adequately funding its manned space program – in particular, Energiya hasn’t enough money to complete the Progress spacecraft which bring up supplies every 2 or 3 months. It won’t do much for Russia’s reputation. You have to wonder if the current government even wants to maintain a manned presence in space. If Russia’s manned space flight program collapses completely, then NASA and the USA will totally dominate space as well as the Earth. :-(
It rained nearly all day on Thursday, Anzac Day. I personally find all the patriotic fervor surrounding that day increasingly tiresome. It’s irrelevant to me and rather boring. Because of all the media attention focused on it, the Soyuz-34 launch did not get a mention that day.
The weather is now clear and sunny, but with a chill in the air – the best time of year. Wish I could be somewhere peaceful to really enjoy it. I hate living in a suburb with nearby neighbors; in the last decade or so it has become increasingly noisy and overcrowded. The traffic along Tucker Road outside our house is horrendous in the peak hours. I wish I could live somewhere by myself, away from the city, near but not in a small town, perhaps. Somewhere where I would not be disturbed by others, where there was no light pollution or vandals roaming the streets.
~ Ended 3:37 p.m.
May
Saturday 4/5
I’ve had a good week for ISS sightings this week! Every day has been clear and sunny – perfect Autumn weather – though the lack of wind has meant smog, also. Seen the ISS every night since Tuesday – 5 nights in a row!
I also decided to try some satellite spotting, so I went to the www.heavens-above.com website (developed by Chris Peat) and got details for Melbourne. I’ll concentrate mainly on the Russian “Cosmos” satellites. Saw one earlier (Cosmos 1437) at 6:19 p.m., a faint point of light going from S to NNE, its highest point at 70º. The ISS came over at 6:10 p.m., high overhead also on tonight’s pass, NW to SE at 86º. I’m sure I also saw an Iridium satellite flash a few minutes before I saw the ISS, high overhead from the N, though I did not record these for tonight. There’s sightings of various satellites – including another of the ISS – until just before 8:00, so I’ll be rushing outside every so often to see if I can spot them.
I rather wish I had someone else – or a group – to share this interest with, but I am alone here. It’s just a fun thing; it’s kind of satisfying to look up and be able to spot the object you’re looking for. I don’t know anything about the satellites themselves, though – what they do or look like. There’s hundreds of them in orbit, so you’re bound to see a few on any given clear night if you stare up at the sky for long enough!
The Soyuz TM-34 crew is due to come down tomorrow (Saturday in the USA), with its no-doubt-happy space tourist Mark Shuttleworth. I feel so envious and depressed reading his website; he’s one of those high achievers who have made a success of their lives – unlike myself. If only …
My periods are due anytime soon, so I’ve had the usual PMT, where I am even more moody and irrational than usual, for about a week before they start. It can be hell, for me and those around me. My moods are up one moment and down the next, and it becomes unbearable. I did not get to sleep until around 1 a.m. last night because of my tormenting thoughts.
Went outside to look for the other Cosmos satellites, but couldn’t see anything because the light pollution is so bad. There is a strong ambient glow around the horizon. Saw one satellite, but it moved from N to S, so I don’t know what it was. Also saw another Iridium flash.
I’ll finish for tonight, as my neck is tired from straining to look up!
~ Ended 7:20 p.m.
Tuesday 7/5
Michele and Chris marked their 10th wedding anniversary on 5 May. 10 years already! Where has it gone? 10 years ago I was in the midst of an eating disorder.
Dad is ill, this time with shingles, a condition where nerve endings on certain parts of the body lose their protective coating and become exposed. It is very painful, and people who have had chickenpox – which includes all of us – are susceptible. Older people with weakened immune systems are more vulnerable. It can produce a rash and blisters if not treated in time. Dad got it a couple of days ago and went to the GP for some tablets. He has spent yesterday and today lying down – very unusual for him! – but that demonstrates how bad it is. His pain is around the eye, a bad place to get it as the condition can cause blindness there if not treated in time. I looked up shingles on the Internet today and printed out some information. There’s quite a few web sites – you can look up almost any illness on the Internet. Stress can contribute, and Dad tends to repress his emotions – “bottle things up” – which perhaps caused the outbreak. He also rushes to and from the Bentleigh Church every day doing various jobs – he is perhaps too involved there.
As I am useless with sick people I am avoiding him; I have no idea how to deal with them. I would not make a good nurse! Mum is of course looking after him. They are both getting old, their bodies are beginning to fail, and I don’t like to think of how they will be in another 10 years, if both are still alive.
The Soyuz TM-34 crew landed safely in Kazakhstan on Sunday.
The fine sunny weather continues; an unusually warm Autumn, perhaps making up for the unusually cool summer! I saw the ISS again yesterday evening; it’s been coming at a convenient viewing time for the last week, between 6 and 8 p.m. I’ve seen some more satellites, but they are hard to spot due to the light pollution here.
My mood has calmed down a bit as I have my periods now. I hate going through that inner torment every month; it is unbearable.
I did a silly thing last night. I usually have a glass of water by my bedside to drink at night. I went to drink it last night when half-asleep and, instead of putting it back on my bed head as I usually do, for some reason I put the half-full glass in between the bed sheets, standing it upright! So it tipped over and spilled some water on my sheet; I then woke up fully and got my heater to dry the spill. I have never done that before!
~ Ended 4:52 p.m.
Saturday 11/5
I awoke at 3:10 a.m. this morning from a vivid and rather upsetting dream. I was at home and a party or gathering of some sort was taking place. I wandered around the house and saw a person whom I like there, but who is unobtainable in real life and whom I am never likely to meet. He was first in Michele’s room with some others, then I saw him in a chair by himself. He was dressed in a blue jumpsuit. I was initially going to stab him with a kitchen knife which I was holding, but he saw me and said something in a friendly voice, so I took his hand and led him out into the back yard – initially looking upwards at the sky for satellites; it seemed to be early morning or evening – and put my arms around him, holding him tight. It felt very nice and comforting; quite real. I pushed my face against him; there was so much longing in this gesture. He seemed bemused in a friendly sort of way. I reluctantly had to let him go, and then woke up, feeling anguished and lonely. I have never had a boyfriend and it hurts, but I feel I am so mentally damaged now that I doubt I could cope with any relationship, assuming anyone would want me, which is unlikely, given my unattractive appearance (glasses, bad skin, etc.).
I was outside a few minutes ago, satellite-spotting. I’ve seen a few over the last few nights. Some of these are defunct satellites or boosters from various rocket launchers. I’ve seen flares from some Iridium satellites, and even a meteor last night. The ISS won’t be visible again until next week.
Dad seems to be improving; he’s been eating normally again for the last couple of days. He did not go up to the Church all week, which is a record for him! He is usually up there every day; rather too much.
The Bentleigh Library got in a copy of another book, Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel (I mentioned her latest, More, Now, Again, in my 24/4/2002 entry). This was her first book, published in 1994 when she was 27 (she was born in 1967), and details her various mental health problems – depression and related disorders. Despite these she manages to graduate from high school and go to Harvard University, doing various writing and literature courses – much more than I ever did. The book is compelling, but you become somewhat overwhelmed by her litany of misery. My parents wouldn’t like these books – they are explicit in some places (i.e. details of her love life) – but so much of what she writes reflects my own despair. She seems to have become a drug addict only in her late twenties, after this book. I guess she comes across as selfish and narcissistic – you just want to shake her sometimes and tell her to snap out of it! I guess others would feel the same about me. But overcoming depression can make climbing Mt. Everest look easy.
I have been like this for over a decade. I think the last time I was happy – feeling hope for the future – was that time in late 1988 when I visited ASTA with Dad, then got the apprenticeship after being interviewed there. Dad took 3 photos of me during that visit; there is one of me crouched in the cockpit of a 747 which was being serviced there. I was losing weight – I still look a bit chubby – but was overcoming my depression of then as I was seeing the psychiatrist Dr. Leo Murphy, and I have a really happy smile on my face (how long is it since I have smiled like that?). But only a year after that photo I had dropped out of the apprenticeship, had anorexia and was in the Job From Hell in which I would remain mired for the next 12 years. A waste, an utter waste. Where would I be had I remained at ASTA? Surely not stuck at home with my aging parents with no future to look forward to, no skills, no worthwhile job. The thought of what I could have been torments me. Perhaps some sort of antidepressants or a drug like Ritalin (given to hyperactive children to help them concentrate) might have helped, but I’ll never know now. I hate myself and this life I am trapped in. To see others making a success of their lives – such as the astronauts with their formidable achievements and intelligence – torments me. I am worthless, a nobody.
… but I am crying because whatever my gifts, the pieces of good buried inside and under so much that I feel is bad, is wrong, is twisted, are less clear than the ability to hit a ball with a bat and break the scoreboard or do a triple pirouette in the air on ice. My gifts are for life itself, for an unfortunately astute understanding of all the cruelty and pain in the world. My gifts are unspecific. I am an artist manqué, someone full of crazy ideas and grandiloquent needs and even a little bit of happiness, but with no particular way to express it. I am like the title character in the film Betty Blue, the woman who is so full of … so full of … so full of something or other – it is unclear what, but a definite energy that can’t find its medium – who pokes her own eyes out with scissors and is murdered by her lover in an insane asylum in the end. She is, and I am becoming, a complete waste.
… And here I am, years later, when it is supposed to be clear that I am a writer, that it is through words that I will escape this sense of having no art form, and it is Saturday night … I am lying in bed in the infirmary watching TV.
That is, I remind myself, all I can do right now. I am depressed to the point of being incapable of much else … I know I can do so much more than this, I know that I could be a life force, could love with a heart full of soul, could feel with the power that flies men to the moon. I know that if I could just get out from under this depression, there is so much more I could do besides cry in front of the TV on a Saturday night.
That extract from Prozac Nation expresses so much of my own feelings. Somewhere inside me, buried deep, is another personality, the woman whom I could have been, who only emerges in my daydreams. She is a powerful, intelligent, formidable personality who could take on the world. I have such wonderful – or, sometimes, such terrible – visions and I wish I could bring them out, but they are trapped inside me with this other personality. I feel so frustrated and helpless; I am fearful of the world and of life; of the rest of humanity.
~ Ended 7:35 p.m.
Sunday 12/5
Did a word search for “Sutekh” then “Dr. Who” on the Internet today. I mentioned being fascinated by the villainous character in my 11/12/2001 entry when I saw him in an episode of that series in the 1970s on ABC TV. The episode is “The Pyramids of Mars,” Dr. Who Season 13, screened in 1975-76, featuring Tom Baker as the Doctor. And, at last, I found a photo! I have wondered for years what he looked like as I had only a vague memory, but now I know! I wish they would re-screen the original series, but I guess it would seem too old-fashioned now. It has a huge cult following, though – sort of an English version of Star Trek. Sutekh still looks quite menacing – I recall trying to draw that elongated mask, which fascinated me.
The sky is clouding over and rain is on the way, so no satellite-viewing tonight. Saw a few last night.
~ Ended 3:37 p.m.
Tuesday 14/5
Some devastating news reported in the media concerning the Buran shuttle. At Baikonur cosmodrome on Sunday, the roof of the building where the Buran orbiter and its Energiya booster were stored collapsed while being refurbished; eight workers were killed (fell to their deaths). The orbiter and rocket were buried under the debris, and the walls of the building are unstable.
BBC News | EUROPE | Inside the Baikonur cosmodrome
Monday, 13 May, 2002, 16:23 GMT 17:23 UK
Eight people died when a roof collapsed at Russia’s main space launch site, the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The eight were repairing the roof of one of the hangars – used for assembling and testing space vehicles – when three out of five segments crashed 80 metres (260 feet) to the ground. Built in 1955, the location of the Baikonur cosmodrome – Russia’s only base used for manned launches – was kept secret from the West for many decades. It remains the world’s largest space launch facility. The cosmodrome runs for 85 km (52 miles) from north to south, and for 125 km (77 miles) from east to west – an area of land the size of Moldova. The base includes dozens of launch pads, five tracking-control centres, nine tracking stations, and a 1500 km (932 miles) rocket test range.
This Buran orbiter was the one which made a single unmanned flight into space in 1988. In New Scientist last year it was reported that the Energiya company was planning to revive their shuttle program. I don’t know what the condition of the orbiter is yet; I will keep checking various web sites. But I have a bad feeling it is destroyed or, at least, irreparably damaged. I felt devastated when I read of this disaster; the revived Buran shuttle is the star of one of my stories which I mentioned in my 29/3/2002 entry. There was also mention of another Buran test model being sold for $6 million in an online auction (if I had $6 million I would buy it!). There are almost no Buran orbiters or prototypes left. Why do these bad things have to keep happening?
~ Ended 1:32 p.m.
Friday 17/5
Not much more news on the Baikonur hangar collapse; only that the victims’ bodies were given a funeral. Here’s some postings from the Buran forum at http://k26.com/buran/:
Terrible News! - The Buran-Energia Forums
Author: discovey1
Topic: Terrible News!
New Member
Posts: 2
From:
Registered: May 2002
posted 12 May 2002 19:19ALMATY, Kazakhstan (AP) – The roof of a 260-foot-tall hangar at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Russia’s main rocket launching site, collapsed Sunday, trapping eight workers in the debris, officials said. An eight-man construction crew was on the roof of the cosmodrome’s main hangar when it caved in, said Kairzhan Turezhanov, a spokesman for the Kazakh Emergency Situations Committee. Russia rents the facility from Kazakhstan for its space program.
It was unlikely any of the workers could have survived the fall, Sergei Gorbunov, a spokesman for the Russian space agency, told RTR state television. Russia would not allow Kazakh rescuers to approach the building, which was still unsteady, Turezhanov said. The hangar, which served as a storage facility for the remnants of a scrapped shuttle program, was cordoned off because of fears that the walls could collapse. There was no information about the condition of the eight workers, he said.
A special Russian rescue team left Moscow for Baikonur, some 1300 miles southeast of Moscow, at 11:40 a.m. EDT (1540 GMT), said Marina Rykhlina, a spokeswoman for the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry. The plane was to arrive three hours later, or 13 hours after the accident took place. RTR broadcast still photos of the hangar that showed the roof and upper wall of the concrete structure crumpled in two places.
Baikonur is Russia’s main commercial rocket launching site. The hangar that collapsed was built in the late 1960s for the Soviet moon program and was then used for construction of the Buran space shuttle. It had not been used since the Buran program was abandoned in 1993 after making one successful unmanned flight in 1988. A Buran ship was in the hangar at the time of the accident, RTR said.
– Space.com
IP: 63.93.61.47
nurtanio
New Member
Posts: 1
From:
Registered: May 2002
posted 13 May 2002 10:33More terrible news: Latest news says that the buran orbiter and parts of the Energia rocket were buried in the collapse. I don´t want to say this but it could be the end of the Energia-Buran project. Even more if the news of an auction of one orbiter in Internet (the information says that the orbiter was never in space) are true. Today is a really sad day in the history of space
IP: 212.22.34.77
WytKnight
New Member
Posts: 3
From: vancouver, wa usa
Registered: May 2002
posted 13 May 2002 15:13This is indeed tragic. Our hearts go out to the construction workers And their families.
Those who use power without wisdom can not claim courage …
IP: 12.225.213.40
WytKnight
New Member
Posts: 3
From: vancouver, wa usa
Registered: May 2002
posted 13 May 2002 17:33Hopefully the unit is not too badly damaged. Its sad that the Buran never got its chance to fly a manned crew before its shutdown. The Energia in the hangar was a mockup from what i read. Of course if the entire building collapses all that hardware is lost and so is the Buran. I heard that the 1.01 and 1.02 were both in the hangar. These are the most valuable of the shuttles as i see it. If not usable as working orbiters they would make excellent engineering models for a 3rd generation shuttle. The Energia HLV looks like it could carry just about anything that could attach to it and didn’t exceed its weight/de mention limits. I would love to see one of the russian shuttles put to good use. Why waste good engineering. If the Buran was able to be used again I would happily ride in it. I have faith in the russian design. I’m an american and I hate watching NASA fall apart. The Buran/Energia could be saved by the people as long as we can keep the beaurocrats out of the cookie jar. If 1 billion people contributed 100 dollars a year that’s 100 billion dollars a year, or 8.33 a month, or .27 cents a day. There’s my 2 cents.
– JohnIP: 12.225.213.40
discovey1
New Member
Posts: 2
From:
Registered: May 2002
posted 13 May 2002 18:52ALMATY, Kazakhstan (AP) – Emergency workers carefully plucked six bodies from a heap of tangled metal Monday, following the collapse of a hangar roof at Russia’s main space launch site. Officials said there was little hope of finding the last two missing workers alive.
Sunday’s accident – which sent construction workers plunging from a height of 260 feet (80 meters) at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan – dealt a blow to Russia’s space program, already suffering from severe funding shortages. The accident could also revive tensions between Kazakhstan and Russia, which leases the launch site. Seven of the workers who fell were Kazakh citizens; the eighth was Belorussian.
Russia would not allow Kazakh rescuers to approach the towering building. A Russian rescue brigade of 64 people arrived at the site overnight and retrieved six bodies by midday Monday, said Viktor Beltsov, spokesman for the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry. The hangar remained cordoned off Monday because of fears that the walls could collapse. Rescue workers had to pick through the debris by hand, since the structure was too delicate to use heavy equipment, Russia’s ORT television reported. Television footage of the disaster site showed jagged breaks along the hangar’s upper walls and tangled metal hanging off the sides. The top panels of three of the outside walls crumpled along with the roof at the time of the accident. A Russian government commission was appointed to investigate the accident.
Russian space agency spokesman Sergei Gorbunov said it could have been prompted by something falling on one of the massive fuel tanks kept inside the hangar, which would have produced a huge blast of air that caused the roof to swell and collapse. Gorbunov insisted that the accident would not hinder Russian rocket development. Kairzhan Turezhanov, a spokesman for the Kazakh Emergency Situations Committee, said one possible cause being investigated was a design miscalculation when the building, built in the 1960s, was renovated in the 1980s. Space officials ruled out terrorism or poor building maintenance as causes of the accident.
The enormous building stands in the middle of the sprawling cosmodrome, a collection of Soviet-era concrete structures scattered across the steppe and connected by potholed roads. The hangar was originally built for the Soviet moon exploration program and was later used for assembling Energia booster rockets and the Buran, the Soviet copy of the U.S. space shuttle that only flew once in the late 1980s before the program was abandoned for lack of funds. A full-scale test model of the Buran was trapped beneath debris after Sunday’s collapse, Russian space agency spokesman Konstantin Kreidenko said.
Baikonur, built when Kazakhstan and Russia were part of the same country, has been a source of tension since the Soviet collapse. In recent years, launch accidents have caused chemicals and rocket parts to rain down on nearby Kazakh villages. The cosmodrome was a major player in the space race, launching the world’s first satellite in 1957 and the first space traveler, Yurii Gagarin, four years later. It claims that only a aerodynamic test model was trapped.
I hope the info from Space.com is accurate.
IP: 66.42.97.243
Kumba
New Member
Posts: 14
From:
Registered: Jul 2001
posted 13 May 2002 22:24Odd, just how many “aerodynamic” test models of Buran does Russia have? I thought that version had Turbo-engines attached, a kerosene fuel tank in the payload bay, and was currently sitting in downtown Sydney, Australia, with a cheap tarp covering it. All I’ve read stated that the Buran that got launched is the one now trapped underneath the rubble. I’ve also read another Buran is gonna get gutted and setup as a monument in a nearby Kazakh city, and another orbiter is sitting out on an abandoned runway in Baikonour … so … Does anyone know just how many of these things Russia actually got away with building? --
– KumbaKill -9’em all and let root@localhost sort’em out!
[This message has been edited by Kumba (edited 13 May 2002).]
IP: 68.50.152.42
WytKnight
New Member
Posts: 3
From: vancouver, wa usa
Registered: May 2002
posted 14 May 2002 02:44There were 5 meant for space, 1 for normal air travel only, and maybe a dozen different mock-ups in varying scale. Some were for training simulations, others for testing equipment. The first shuttle “Buran” is the one which made an unmanned test mission in orbit and flew back all automated in perfect condition. The second named “Ptichka” was being set up for final prep for a manned mission it would seem. The program ran out of funding and the second shuttle never flew. Too bad too, it would have been nice to have a human observation of the crafts performance in space. The other 3 were a minor upgrade variant but were never finished. Those were the first to get turned into scrap and parts and rust outside today or sold on e-bay it seems. The first shuttles, “Buran” and “Ptichka,” as far as anyone knows are still in Baikonur. The inner atmosphere test vehicle is the one in Sydney i think. The auction stuff comes from mock-ups and various misc. parts from what i hear.
“Fly like the wind, fight proud my son, your the defender god has sent ….”
– Man O War-The Defender-IP: 12.225.213.40
skyprop
New Member
Posts: 1
From: Pittsburgh, Pa. USA
Registered: May 2002
posted 14 May 2002 09:52It’s Truly Is a sad time For Buran. If reports are true, It’s sad that The orbiter suffered damage from the very building used to protect it and keep it safe. It is also sad not to see the Buran project really mature and reach it’s potential … Just think of the thought of seeing the Buran and the shuttle working together on the I.S.S. that could have been a wonderfull sight to behold. I find it disturbing to think that such a great piece of engineering skill and ability has come to this, and that the Buran orbiter’s fate may now lie amid the rubble of building 112. Yes, it is a sad day for all those concerned …
IP: 198.49.241.2
Kumba
New Member
Posts: 14
From:
Registered: Jul 2001
posted 14 May 2002 16:32
Heh, ironically, maybe this incident will save the Buran too. All the articles, from CNN to Space.com constantly mention the fact that Russia also had a space shuttle … maybe when Russia and Kazakh get around to removing the debris, and the extent of the damage to Buran is assessed (perhaps the orbiter suffered very little), maybe they’ll be motivated to actually do something with the ship rather than just keep it in storage. Similar to you find like, a hole in the wall in a closet, so you clean it out and fix the hole, and then sit down and mess with stuff that’s been stored in the closet for years.
– KumbaKill -9’em all and let root@localhost sort’em out!
And this later posting:
Hanger Collapse Not Related to Energia-Buran - The Buran-Energia Forum
From: Guelph, Ontario, Canada
Registered: Jul 2001
posted 15 May 2002 16:31ATTENTION, ATTENTION: THIS IS RUMOR CONTROL. The sky is not falling. Most mainstream press articles that have be showing up regarding the collapse of a hanger at the Baikonur Cosmodrome are EXTEMELY MISLEADING and INACCURATE. The hanger whose roof has caved in is Building 112. This is indeed one of the many large structures at Baikonur, but it has never had anything to do with the Energia-Buran programme. Buran is currently in storage together with three complete Energia cores and about half a dozen Zenit boosters at the giant N1/Energia assembly hanger called MIK. Building 112 is not part of MIK, nor is it related to the orbiter processing building constructed for the Buran shuttle progamme. The second space rated orbiter to be completed is “Baikal,” not “Ptitcka” (Little Bird) which appears to be the unofficial name of the third space rated orbiter that was about 75% complete when funding was halted. Baikal is also safe in storage, probably in the MIK, or possibly in the orbiter processing building. The third spacecraft never left it’s factory in a Moscow suburb, and is still there today.
There were at least half a dozen full-scale engineering test vehicles completed for the Buran programme prior to construction of the actual spacecraft. Of these, the turbojet equipped “Aero Buran” is currently in Australia, another mock-up is in Gorky Park. Five orbiters, starting with Buran, were ordered. The last two of the five were scrapped after funds ran out. These had only reached an early stage of construction. Details of the present status of all full-scale mock-ups, the actual space-rated craft, and the An-225 are available in by clicking the gray buttons along the left hand side of the “Today” (see link button at top of this page) section of this website.
Photographs from inside the collapsed hanger show no wreckage of anything related to Energia or Buran. It is possible that a mock-up, subscale or otherwise was in the building. I have seen no firm evidence. The popular press has always been extremely unreliable in these matters. For example, there were hundreds of TV and press articles that described, and still describe, the object in Gorky Park as the actual Buran shuttle.
There has been no further mention of the accident in the mainstream press as it is obviously not headline news. This website, incidentally, is an Australian creation, and is quite good. The best Buran website is by the designers of the shuttle, called “Molniya” (lightning) at www.buran.ru. There is an English section; unfortunately, only a small portion of it is translated!
One thing that irritates me about some of those who put their writings on the Internet is their bad grammar. It’s amazing how many don’t know the difference between “its” and “it’s” (the latter is the abbreviation for “it is”). Another annoyance is using all lower-case letters (“i” instead of “I”) as the typists apparently are too lazy to use the CAPS LOCK key [I actually meant the Shift key. These may seem minor complaints, but they do make an impression!
Remember that novel, Cosmonaut by Peter McAllister, which I mentioned a few months ago? It gets more irritating on re-reading it, though I use bits of it (information on the ISS, etc.) as a reference source for my own work. An interesting tidbit mentioned:
An item of minor interest was that Matchev was one of the “space orphans” – the parentless kids taken into Soviet space-program creches and purpose-reared for cosmonaut training. Reynolds had heard of this. It was one of the crazier communist space-race schemes – the idea that children brought up in-house would somehow become “super cosmonauts”. Ceausescu had done the same thing in Romania, with the Securitate, to infinitely more savage effect. Reynolds wasn’t surprised by such excesses; anybody who’d checked the period’s history knew about them.
But he was amazed to find any of the unfortunate orphans had actually gone on to become cosmonauts.
The character (and author) seem to disapprove of this concept, but I think it’s cool. I tried looking up the phrase “space orphans” using an Internet word search, but came up with nothing relating to cosmonauts; just a lot of weird web sites. I wonder where the author found out about it? It’s something I’ll file away to use somewhere.
People in this age are entirely too sentimental about children. I can’t see anything wrong with “purpose-rearing” children in institutions. At least it would give them a sense of purpose and place. (I sometimes think that I wouldn’t have been much worse off as an orphan.) The Ninja assassin clans in medieval Japan used to train their youths from childhood in the Ninja martial arts, and they were by all accounts much-feared assailants. Gymnasts and ballet-dancers must begin their training in childhood to reach proficiency.
An excerpt from another web site:
Nations in Transit 2000
Communist governments encouraged ethnic minorities and poor families to give their children to state institutions where many believed their children would be better off than at home. Young single mothers and families that felt they could not care for a handicapped child also gave their children up to the state.
These orphanages and boarding schools remain in the post-Communist era, but they have lost most or all of their state funding, and as they struggle to survive, many children run away to live on the streets.
In the 1920s, following the Bolshevik revolution and the Civil War, an estimated seven million children whose parents were either dead or missing were institutionalized in Soviet children’s homes. The huge network and infrastructure of state-sponsored child rearing began with the inception of the Soviet state, and it helped confirm the Marxist notion that the family would “wither away” with the transition to full socialism. The reliance on residential institutions became an entrenched aspect of the Soviet social welfare system.
During the Gorbachev era, glasnost opened up a Pandora’s box of social problems that were previously considered to be peculiar to capitalism. Children’s homes became a focus of attention in the USSR as it was revealed that their buildings were collapsing, food and clothing were inadequate, and inmates were ill-treated. The USSR had 284,000 children in institutions: 35,000 in 422 infant’s homes, 84,000 in 745 children’s homes, 71,000 in 237 boarding schools for orphans and 94,000 children in Internats (boarding schools for children who were not orphans). In addition, 729,000 children lived with relatives or guardians.
There is obvious potential for abuse in such institutions, unfortunately, and the Soviet system has collapsed, as related in that excerpt. But properly-run institutions are a viable alternative to traditional families, and communal child-rearing is found in other animal species in nature (I can’t think of what ones, offhand). It would be preferable to, say, struggling to survive as a single mum, or having a child live with abusive parents. Of course, you still need to find staff to look after the institutionalized children.
~ Ended 4:25 p.m.
Saturday 18/5
Some more Buran news from the www.russianspaceweb.com site, which was off-line for a couple of days.
Baikonur collapse kills eight
Site 112 was originally developed in the 1960s, to support the Soviet lunar program and later the facility served as a part of the launch complex for the Energiya-Buran system. The mothballed elements of the Energiya rocket, as well as the Buran orbiter were buried in the collapse.
Posted: May 12; updated May 15
Six people are confirmed dead and at least two more missing, after a large portion of the roof of a processing building in Baikonur Cosmodrome had collapsed on Sunday, May 12, between 9:20 and 9:40 a.m. local time. A spokesman for Russian Aviation and Space Agency, Rosaviacosmos, said that eight repairmen worked on top of the building at Site 112, when several segments of the roof above high bays of the building had collapsed. Teams of Ministry for Emergency Situations and from Rosaviacosmos left for Baikonur on Sunday evening and Monday morning, respectively. Six bodies were recovered from the site by Monday. On Tuesday, recovery operations at Site 112 were interrupted by high winds, which made work of rescues too dangerous. By that time, seven bodies have been recovered from the site. One person was believed missing, however, authorities were verifying the number of people, who were on the roof at the time of the collapse.
Initial investigation concluded that prolonged rains caused the collapse. According to official sources, the Buran orbiter and Energiya boosters survived the accident with minimal damage and plans were made to move the vehicles to a different location. MIK 112 is expected to be demolished. The fate of the Starsem processing facility located in the undamaged low-bay portion of MIK 112 is unclear.
According to that, Buran and Energiya were stored there, but suffered “minimal damage”. This Buran appears to be the model which made a single flight into space – OK-1K – but a book on the Space Shuttle from which I copied a section on Buran states that “In 1990, the Russians announced that OK-1K Buran was retired after its 1988 test flight since it had been constructed in 1981 and would have reached the end of its ten-year service life before any possible second flight. Reportedly, the second orbiter (OK-2K) was readied for flight, but never launched.” This was the orbiter named Baikal.
Also, according to another page at Russian Space Web, the New Scientist report last year that the Energiya-Buran program was to be restarted resulted from “optimistic and mistranslated comments of a Russian guide” to the reporter. “However, more careful guests of Site 112 could notice water dripping from sky-high ceiling of MIK-112 on a rainy day … The keeper of Site 112, who often showed reporters around the building, said that he can hardly find funds to send up repairmen to patch the giant roof.”
Back after a break for dinner. Borrowed a novel by sci-fi author Anne McCaffrey at the library. It’s her usual stuff. She has written nearly 50 books, not to mention many short stories – a prolific output to envy! Her style could be described as “lite sci-fi” – it’s readable and you can get through a novel in an afternoon. But it gets repetitive – all her novels have similar types of characters, clearly-defined good and bad ones, and can be a bit simplistic in places, though they are not hard to read, at least. I think her earlier novels are better, somehow. I first read her novels as a teenager – the “Dragonrider” novels set on the planet of Pern, where colonists from Earth genetically-engineered a species of flying lizard there into full-sized dragon-type creatures. I seem to have gone off her in the 1990s, though.
I don’t read that much sci-fi and fantasy any more – I prefer novels set in the reality I know, or the near-future, with fantasy or sci-fi elements. I’m not much interested in other authors’ imaginary worlds, perhaps because I have my own! I find a lot of novels hard to get through – I lose interest in them before I finish them because of my short attention span. One novel which did keep me riveted a few weeks ago was Passage by Connie Willis, a noted sci-fi writer. This was about a group of U.S. scientists doing near-death experience research – asking those who have been revived from death by paramedics and so forth about what they saw. One of the researchers had developed a drug which took the subject into that near-death state. The place where the researcher and subjects went was the Titanic – a weird netherworld re-enaction of that disaster. I can’t explain it very well (it was a borrowed library book so I don’t have it with me), but I read it in an evening and into the next day – a big thick book! I could hardly bear to leave it to have dinner, etc. I rarely find such compelling novels these days. You’ll just have to read it. Unsettling and compelling, and I liked the link with the Titanic.
I saw that movie – the James Cameron one which was a worldwide hit a few years ago – when it was screened on TV a couple of years ago. It’s just over 3 hours, and ran for 4 hours on TV due to the pesky ad breaks. It got derisive reviews from some critics, but I found it compelling!
~ Ended 6:31 p.m.
Friday 24/5
Yesterday and today has seen some nice sunny late-autumn weather after 3 days of rain. Did something this afternoon that I’ve not done for a long time – I went for a bicycle ride down South Road to Beach Road, then along the bicycle track that runs next to the beach. A pleasant ride – the weather was calm and sunny, and there were few people around, it being a workday. The traffic is heavy along Beach Road – a lot of heavy trucks – and you take your life into your hands if you ride along there. I then rode back home up South Road – it is uphill going back, unfortunately – and was quite tired when I got home. I was out around an hour-and-a-half. Ten years ago I was doing this all the time – going out on lengthy bicycle rides and to the A-1 gym in Moorabbin (moved from there a couple of years ago) – but I am now quite out-of-condition. I have put on weight and estimate that I need to lose 5 to 10 kilos. It is very hard to motivate myself now, though, being depressed. I also can’t afford t o join a gym, being unemployed.
Saw the ISS yesterday evening at 5:46 p.m., passing over SW to NE at 67°, as well as a few satellites. It’s visible again tonight.
~ Ended 3:56 p.m.