The Bigger the Bang the better Theory

Happy Birthday America.

What do you get the country that has *everything?
Oh I know. We usually throw this gigantic cook out and set the night time sky on fire. Some of us get really drunk and blow up 1/4 sticks of dynamite (with varying degrees of injury). But when you reach 229 it's time to shake things up.

*everything except: peace, social compassion, equality, realistic standard of living, leaders who represent "we the people", and a crystal nut dish.

This year NASA really out did themselves
(it put my girl-in-a-cake to shame).

NASA went out and got America some comet tail.
You really out did yourselves. You just has to be the big shot. The biggest fireworks weren't enough for you were they?
Who but NASA (and the American taxpayers) would spend over $267 million on a gift. Which reminds me, you know I still had to pay the cake girl AND the pastry chef, either you guys go in on it with me or I'm not chipping in on the comet.

Alright I admit it. I watched it and it was really cool. I saw it on the NASA channel and the *pictures were almost as cool as the roomful of geeks jumping for joy when the "820-pound module collided with Tempel 1" (large thing we threw hit flying thing we aimed it at).
The geek speak to english interpreter likened it to "...the astronomical equivalent of a 767 airliner running into a mosquito".
America countered with "It's the thought that counts"

*I think they let the geeks name the pictures. Don't the titles remind you of some bad songs? No? Just me?
And who named the project Deep Impact anyway?

As we (R and I) watched. R was frantically loading up pages on his laptop (NOW WITH NEW WI-FI, which I'm sure I'll have to tell you about later seeing as I'm going to hear about it until I learn EVERYTHING there is to know about it) so he could immediately post it on his blog (he is so devoted to his readers). He and I were both a little astonished that there was very little info and the NASA site couldn't even handle the number of hits it was getting. You would think that with all those geeks in NASA, ONE of them has the skills to set up a site just for this project.
Florida Today did a really good job. They must have had some reporter watching the NASA channel and then typing up a synopsis every other moment.
I did stay up a while watching it even after most of the pictures had been released. I kept waiting for the worm to pop it's head out of the crater it made.

Crater it made? Hey wait a minute. A mosquito can make a crater in a 767 airliner? I guess it's a good thing planes fly where mosquito's don't. Well, no one said it was a smooth translation from geek to english.
Anyhoo. I guess I'll just send bills out for the cake and girl since I don't have the legal eagles or the time to fight with the IRS over the whole NASA thing. Besides, I don't want to be that guy who refuses to go in on a gift that EVERYONE else went in on.