News round-up for May 19th (as we approach the cycle of the Full Moon)

News round-up for May 19th (as we approach the cycle of the Full Moon):

Kristen Stewart & Robert Pattinson have called it quits for another time. Remind us again, who are they!?

Alexis Normand, a Canadian singer butchered “The Star-Spangled Banner” (the US national anthem) at a hockey game in Saskatchewan, Canada. It’s a rite of passage for singers to mangle the damn thing which is hard to sing &--trust me!--harder to listen to. Canadian hockey fans didn’t realize Normand was messing up her rendition & thought she was just baying ingloriously at the moon so they began howling & grunting in response. The Star-Spangled Banner never sounded so good!

Judging from Obama’s commencement speech chiding graduates at Morehouse College (an elite, Black men’s college) not to be irresponsible, his new speech writer is Bill Cosby who grew tedious 20 years ago with his rants blaming irresponsible Black men for white supremacy. Obama sermonized: “Sometimes I wrote off my own failings as just another example of the world trying to keep a black man down. I had a tendency sometimes to make excuses for me not doing the right thing.” He may be right that his failings have nothing to do with being Black in a white supremacist society. They may be entirely personal, having to do with his being a privileged, spineless, war-mongering, minion to the ruling elite.

Reportedly 78,000 people from ages 18 to 71 have applied for the one-way Mars One flight to the planet Mars scheduled for 2022. They are forewarned that life will be harsh since the planet is cold, barren, & can’t grow foliage or food. They will be hermetically sealed in artificial habitats with machine-made air & water. Reports say they’ll have to maintain their own sanity millions of miles away from their families but distance from relatives may be the very point of the trip. Applicants appear entirely normal & inspired by science fiction but their pointy ears wriggle in a curious way & there is suspicious caudal activity going on with some of them.

(Photo of moon by NASA / STScI)