Occulomency

Pluto.

The definition of "planet" set in 2006 by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) states that in the Solar System a planet is a celestial body that:

   1. is in orbit around the Sun,
   2. has sufficient mass to assume hydrostatic equilibrium (a nearly round shape), and
   3. has "cleared the neighbourhood" around its orbit.

Pluto, discovered in 1930 by Clyde William Tombaugh, fell foul of this ruling and became demoted to the status of 'Dwarf Planet'.

Much to everyones surprise, Pluto wasn't happy about this, stormed out of it's orbit and spent the next 3 years travelling countless million miles across the solar system (where it inexplicably picked up a grating northern accent) in order to campaign in person for it's reinstatment.

Pluto, however, is a moron and found itself in Nottingham. Last night to be precise.

To be even more exact, it spent last night sitting next to me at the Theatre Royal in Nottingham whilst I was trying to watch Bill Bailey.

Pluto may only be a dwarf planet, but it is still pretty bloody huge. From my initial observations I estimated it to be a roughly oblate spheroid with an equatorial diameter of 1,151 km and a mass of 1.3x10⁵⁵ kgs. Pluto appears to have been formed around the same time as Earth, some 4.54 billion years ago

Oh, but Pluto can talk. Fuck me Pluto can talk....

I made the mistake of acknowledging Pluto's existance after it had sat down next to me. Pluto's relatives were not sitting with Pluto, but in rows both behind and in front of mine. Pluto loudly spoke with them prior to the show.

Pluto was excited.

Very, very excited in fact. When Bill Bailey came out on stage, Pluto stood up, whooped and clapped. Pluto then repeated every word, every punch-line and explained every nuance of Bailey's performance.

The whole performance.

You have no idea how annoying it is to sit next to a Dwarf Planet that is repeating every word the famous comedian is saying, precisely four seconds after he had said it.

Pluto liked to sing along too.

Pluto didn't know the words.

This did not stop Pluto.

I wanted to hurt Pluto.

By the interval (which Pluto declared to be an intertitval) I was ready to kill.

I received no support whatsoever from my companions, no of whom would swap seats with me, and seemed to find my situation rather amusing.

Pluto continued in a similar vein for the second half of the show. Hooting with laughter, nudging me when something funny happened, which was a lot, due to the inescapable fact that Bill Bailey is a professional comedian.

Still, I have made my mind up about one thing.

I want a Tenori-On.

Yellow Stockings

Newstead Abbey was wet.

Very wet.

Wetter than a haddock's bathing costume in fact.

Full of wet folk who sniffed loudly when I tried to open my wet bag of cheese & onion crisps (they were quite posh crisps).

Anyway, the play was good.

Just a note to the folks who were sitting near us:

• Hyphenated surnames: pick one name, Mrs. Washington-Brown.
• First initials: J. Stuart Wankerbottom, you are a pretentious twat.
• Families whose first names all begin with the same letter. Judy, John, Jack and Josie. This is wrong.
• People named after American cities: Madison, Cheyenne... how about Asbestos?
• Parents who get cute with the spelling of mundane names. "OK, we'll name him Ronald, but we'll spell it Ronyld". Excellent.
• People who insist upon pronouncing their mundane names in a "special" way: "That's CLOW-dia, not Claudia".

Oh yes, when the revolution comes and I am returned to power in a blaze of glory, anyone who appreciates the artistry of Cirque de Soleil will be shot, through the back of the head, with a service revolver.

Not going anywhere.

Occulomency's attempt to take a break from all his worries didn't happen.

Occulomency is  sad about this for 27 reasons, none of which I am prepared to discuss with the likes of you.

Flanders questioned the use of the Omega Speedmaster on the moon.

Well.....

NASA's flight equipment buyer visited Corrigan's watch shop in Houston Texas to purchase five chronographs, all of different brands, including the Omega Speedmaster in 1961 for testing purposes.

Astronauts were permitted to and did wear personally purchased watches on Apollo missions as a backup to their NASA supplied Speedmasters.

It has been documented that Armstrong did not wear his Speedmaster during his EVA. An instrument had malfunctioned during the LEM's Decent and his Speedmaster was left in the LEM to serve as a replacement.

Armstrong quoted in the 1969 Technical Debrief -

"... our mission timer was out, and we decided we had better leave one wristwatch inside in case it (the one taken outside) got damaged. We would have at least one working watch to back up the mission timer or to use in place of the mission timer, in case we could not get it going again."

So Aldrin's Speedmaster was the first watch to be worn during a moon walk.

Jack Swigert, the command module pilot of the ill fated Apollo 13 probably wore two watches, his standard issue Speedmaster and a Rolex GMT (which was USAF standard issue for a while).

Dave Scott, commander of Apollo 15, wore a Speedmaster for the first two EVAs during the mission, but:

"I do not recall ever having looked at my watch after egress. In the cabin after EVA-2, I noticed that the crystal of my Omega had popped off  sometime during the EVA. Therefore, on EVA-3, I used my backup Waltham watch (which was) of a similar type. It worked just fine during the even higher temperatures of EVA-3."

Dave Scott had on board two timepieces (a wristwatch and stop watch) that were not part of the normal mission equipment. During the pre-flight training period, Scott had agreed to evaluate these timepieces for the manufacturer at the request of a friend. Thinking they might be useful, particularly for the possible emergency timing of a manually controlled propulsion maneuver, Scott carried them on the mission but without prior authorisation.  Scott was quite prone to carrying unauthorised items on flights and then selling them on at a profit. Indeed there was quite a fuss made at the time of Apollo 15 when it transpired that Scott had smuggled a load of first day cover stamps on board and then sold them off to a collector.

Aldrin was still a cock though.

Occulomency off to listen to the Bangles and fantasise.

Moon

Occulomency has Buzz Aldrin's autograph.

Occulomency wears the same watch that Aldrin wore on the moon.

Occulomency has the same sunglasses that were issued to the Apollo Astronauts.

Occulomency's first email address was "buzz@iol.ie".

Occulomency thinks that Buzz Aldrin is a cock.

The trouble was, Aldrin wanted to set foot on the moon before Armstrong. During Gemini, the Commander had stayed in the capsule whilst the Pilot did the EVA. So, Aldrin started making enquiries about who would go out first, according to him, jusr simply to clear the matter up.

Within the astronaut office this caused some friction with his fellow astronauts, Eugene Cernan being one such astronaut who in his book, 'The Last Man On The Moon' wrote the following on the whole matter.

"Buzz Aldrin had worked himself into a frenzy with his campaign to be the first man to walk on the Moon.  He came flapping into my office at the Manned Spacecraft Center one day like an angry stork, laden with charts and graphs and statistics, arguing what he considered to be obvious-that he, the lunar module pilot, and not Neil Armstrong, the mission commander, should be the first one down the ladder on Apollo 11.  Since I shared an office with Neil, who was away training that day, I found Aldrin's arguments both offensive and ridiculous.  Ever since learning that Apollo 11 would attempt the first Moon landing, Buzz had pursued this peculiar effort to sneak his way into history, and was met at every turn by angry stares and muttered insults from his fellow astronauts."

Cernan and Aldrin didn't like each other much.

Apollo 7's Walt Cunningham said, "We had always assumed Neil Armstrong, who was the spacecraft commander, was going to be the first man on the Moon.  We always felt like it was an unnecessary conflict that was created by Buzz and kinda left a bad taste in other peoples mouth about Buzz making this fuss about it."

Aldrin said in one of his books, "At one time I made the observation to Neil that I felt we needed a decision on this and that one way or the other, regardless of how I felt or he felt, we needed to have a decision made on this.  His observation was something to the effect that he realised the historical significance and that he was not going to make a decision that would rule him out of that opportunity."

Aldrin's books are the only ones that show him in a positive light.

In the end it was up to Deke Slayton, one of the original Mercury 7 Astronauts, to take the Aldrin aside and state simply that Armstrong would be first out followed by Aldrin and that was an end to the matter as far as Slayton was concerned. 

Slayton wrote: "It bounced back to me and I told Buzz I thought it should be Neil on seniority.  I felt pretty strongly that the ones who had been with the program the longest deserved first crack at the goodies.  Neil had come into the program in 1962, a year ahead of Buzz, so he had first choice.

If you read Tom Kelly's book about designing and engineering the Lunar Module, it turns out there was another reason Aldrin couldn't go out first. The Lunar Module had just the one hatch on the front of the lunar module and the it opened to the right, inwards.

Aldrin took the decision well. Then he took no decent photographs of Armstrong on the lunar surface.

Twat.

Yes, I know the second picture is of Al Bean, but you can see his Speedmaster really well.

Occulomency took some time off there.....

Forty to fifty group!' yapped a piercing female voice. 'Forty to fifty group! Take your places, please. forties to fifties!'

Occulomency sprang to attention in front of the telescreen, upon which the image of a youngish woman, scrawny but muscular, dressed in tunic and gym-shoes, had already appeared.

'Arms bending and stretching!' she rapped out. 'Take your time by me. One, two, three, four! One, two, three, four! Come on, comrades, put a bit of life into it! One, two, three, four! One, two, three, four! ...'

'Stand easy!' barked the instructress, a little more genially.

The instructress had called them to attention again. 'And now let's see which of us can touch our toes!' she said enthusiastically. 'Right over from the hips, please, comrades. One-two! One- two! ...'

Occulomency loathed this exercise, which sent shooting pains all the way from his heels to his buttocks and often ended by bringing on another coughing fit.

'Occulomency!' screamed the shrewish voice from the telescreen. '6079 Occulomency.! Yes, you! Bend lower, please! You can do better than that. You're not trying. Lower, please! That's better, comrade. Now stand at ease, the whole squad, and watch me.'

A sudden hot sweat had broken out all over Occulomency's body. His face remained completely inscrutable. Never show dismay! Never show resentment! A single flicker of the eyes could give you away. He stood watching while the instructress raised her arms above her head and -- one could not say gracefully, but with remarkable neatness and efficiency -- bent over and tucked the first joint of her fingers under her toes.

'There, comrades! That's how I want to see you doing it. Watch me again. I'm thirty-nine and I've had four children. Now look.' She bent over again. 'You see my knees aren't bent. You can all do it if you want to,' she added as she straightened herself up. 'Anyone under forty-five is perfectly capable of touching his toes. We don't all have the privilege of fighting in the front line, but at least we can all keep fit. Remember our boys on the Malabar front! And the sailors in the Floating Fortresses! Just think what they have to put up with. Now try again. That's better, comrade, that's much better,' she added encouragingly as Occulomency, with a violent lunge, succeeded in touching his toes with knees unbent, for the first time in several years.

Yes, Occulomency is doing Wii Sports Active's 30 day challange.

It is surprisingly hard.