As you may remember, NASA recently crashed a multi-million dollar spaceship, on purpose, into the surface of the moon, essentially to see how big of a mess they could make. (And how cool of a job is that? I once accidentally damaged a printer toner cartridge at work. Got in all sorts of trouble.) Well, they’ve now looked through the debris and have announced they discovered water on the moon. And not just little dribbles, either. They found “a significant amount,” which since we’re talking about the moon, I’d say anything over about a teaspoon would qualify.

Naturally, NASA is frothing at the panties over this discovery. “We have a significant amount of excitement,” were their exact words. They say this is the first step towards creating colonies on the moon. They found “a significant amount” of water and now we’re talking colonization? I really don’t want to rain on their parade (another water reference!), but I would just like to point out that, while they may have found “a significant amount” of water, they also found “a complete lack” of oxygen. I mean, it’s great that people won’t be thirsty while they asphyxiate, but I’m not too sure that little concession is going to be much of a comfort to them.

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I got an iPhone. I love it. This thing is geek crack. But it has its share of problems, not the least of which is its “helpful” auto-type feature. Now, for the most part, it does a fairly good job of guessing what you’re starting to type and offers up a suggestion for the word which you can then tap and the iPhone will drop it into your email for you. However, it also “corrects” words automatically for you after you’ve typed them and that doesn’t always go so well.

Case in point, the Mrs. loves Starbucks’ frappuccinos. Have one every day if you let her. (And, word to the wise, it’s not a good idea to attempt to prevent her from doing so.) She’ll often ask me to bring her a frap on my home from work, or I’ll ask her if she needs one. Thing is, if I type into my iPhone, “Do I need to bring you a frap?” the phone will take it upon itself to change it to “Do I need to bring you a feap?” I have no idea what a “feap” is. Never heard of it. Neither has Miriam Webster’s. In fact, I checked four different dictionaries and none of them have an entry for “feap.” So the iPhone is automatically changing a word I meant to type into a nonsensical word that doesn’t, technically, exist.

Guess the iPhone is just thinking differently.

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I just sat through, for no reason other than it was on, the “Seth and Alex Almost Live Comedy Special” on Fox. Basically a vanity project for Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane, Fox allowed the egomaniac to do a “variety” show, which consisted of little more than him and Alex Borstein singing badly with an orchestra and telling unfunny jokes. Slow, turgid, and awful.

I’m not entirely sure when Fox decided to make Seth MacFarlane responsible for 95% of their programming, but this was simply too much. The guy has three shows to get his failed Broadway aspirations out, he didn’t need to be granted this masturbatory time block.

They pre-empted The Simpsons for this crap? Really?

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I wrote recently about how much of the joy of the fall season is sucked out of Seattle by the near-constant damp that mats the leaves into a sodden mess. You don’t crunch through these leave, you sort of moosh through them. They’re wet, sticky, heavy. They’re not kicked up by the breeze. They don’t playfully dance in the wind. They’re down and they’re staying there.

Doesn’t stop people from trying to move them.

Pretty much every morning, around 7:30 or so, you’re treated to a chorus of leaf blowers around our apartment, and pretty much all up and down the street, as maintenance guys engage in the futile battle against leaf-covered sidewalks. Yes, the loud, ear-shattering, pointless, ineffective spawns of Hell that are leaf blowers, destroying the early-morning quiet (as quiet as it gets here, anyway) as sullen men sweep them back and forth, over and over, trying to move solid masses of dead plant life with puffs of air. It doesn’t go so well.

I’ve never liked leaf blowers. They’re stupid-loud and don’t do the job they’re designed to do any better or faster than the rake they supposedly replace. And that’s with dry leaves. With the wet clumps we have here, the leaf blowers are totally outmatched. But still, unwilling to part with their cool little toys, even in the face of stark evidence that they’re useless, the workers continue to whip out their mechanized wands and attempt to blow the leaves away. And they’ll keep at it for the better part of a half-hour. That’s a joyous time to sit by the window, listening to the constant roar and scream of the engine as they accomplish nothing but feel cool doing it.

Can’t wait for winter and the half-inch of snow that will require them to break out the snow-blowers.

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Autumn has always been my favorite time of year. Growing up in rural Indiana, I loved this season. The gradual drop in temperature. The slow change of color in the leaves. The air had an edge to it somehow. Not the sharpened knife blade that winter winds brought, but just a sharpness, a tang. It was crisp in a way that is hard to define but easy to appreciate.

And the leaves… Mounds, drifts of them, spread and piled everywhere. Reds, oranges, yellows, an explosion of color in the trees and on the grounds. Sure, there was some grumbling about raking them up, but it seemed a small price to pay for walking ankle-deep through them on the way to school, listening to the crunch and rustle under your feet. And sometimes a small eddy of that crisp wind would pick up a handful and cast them into the air where they would catch the sunlight and turn into a blazing dance of color. A shifting, living stained-glass window, there for that one perfect moment and then gone forever. It was a time of magic.

Seattle in autumn is like walking through wet cardboard.

The air here, almost constantly damp, doesn’t have that traditional autumn edge. You don’t breathe it deep into your lungs because it feels like someone is pressing a wet gym sock into your face. The air coats you, weighs you down, and leaves you feeling like you need a towel at all times. And while there are leaves on the ground, they’re limp and lifeless, dull and dreary, matted down by the frequent rains. Even when it doesn’t rain, there’s still the aforementioned humidity that keeps them soggy, a sodden mass that doesn’t crunch underfoot, but merely makes a sound like walking in slightly damp mud. Instead of dancing into the air, they stick to your shoes and pants legs, giving you the joy of peeling dead, dripping plant detritus off your clothing.

Can’t wait to see what winter’s like.

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