1st Day Issue wiggle.gif: Transit of Venus 2012 / It's not over till the substantively massive planetary embodiment of the female principle sings / 3 Happy Freezing Blue Nerds in Hawaii

If Venus is not moving across 

the face of the Sun, click RELOAD.

1st Day Issue

Right-Hand Mitten Postal System

animated wiggle.gif

Transit of Venus 15 June 12

Copyright (c) 2012 Ron Bizer

It's not over till the substantially massive panetary embodiment of the female principle sings.

Did you forget to set the alarm or just get beer-drunk or stoned, or just forgot, so you blew off the Transit of Venus last week?

Sucks to be you, Jack or Jill. Your next opportunity to witness a Transit of Venus -- when the planet Venus, appearing as a small black circle, glides sublimely across the face of the Sun -- will be 11 December 2117. Moiself, I shall be 170 years old when I'm wheeled to the Big Panasonic Hologram in the Day Room to watch it. If you are still perky and bouncy and have all your original adult teeth and almost no accumulated cottage-cheese-like cellulite, and like to text your bff whilst careening up the Interstate in your bitchin Camarro, you will be a mere 124 years young when you see the Transit of Venus again.

They come in pairs, so if you fuck up and miss the 2117 show, you get another chance in 2125. Whoever gets a lucky 2nd Chance at the Transit of Venus will almost certainly be bigtime incontinent. 

Awaiting VleeptronZ on our return home from a quick AMTRAK adventure to see kin in Silver Spring, Maryland USA, was this remarkable wiggle.gif commemorative of last week's Transit of Venus, issued by Right-Hand Mitten Postal System (R-HMPS). The stamp was issued where the right hand is attached to the wrist (see Figure 2, above). The artist is the True Authentic Genuine & Talented Professional Visual Artist and U.S. Army War Veteran Ron Bizer, lifelong buddy of SP5 Joe Schlobdowski. VleeptronZ takes credit/responsibility/culpability for contaminating him with Mail Art & Faux Postage.The artist reports:


How’s it going? Basically things are OK here.
The University Lowbrow Astronomers had a presentation Tuesday at one of the Ann Arbor branch libraries and a bunch of telescopes set up on a high point in a local park. How cool was the Transit of Venus event! Chris was worried that we would burn our eyeballs out but everything was alright.
 
I’m attaching my Transit of Venus animated commemorative stamp. Should work in a browser.

Ack! I had to sign up for Medicare. What’s the world coming to?

Heeding wise astronomical advice not to spend 48 minutes staring directly at the Sun, we caught a live satellite TV broadcast from the summit of Mauna Kea extinct (everybody hopes) volcano and its supercallifragialisticexpialidocious optical telescope as Venus glided magnificently across the disk of the Sun. 

The Mauna Kea show was narrated by three young astronomer nerds dressed in Arctic gear and homemade knit wool caps -- Hawaii or not, it's fucking-A cold up there on the summit -- and you never saw Happier Nerds ever. They were shivering, their skins were turning blue, you couldn't wipe the grins off their faces with undiluted sulfuric acid.

They were witnessing the Transit of Venus through one of Earth's newest, most powerful, most remarkably sophisticated optical telescopes.

And now, thanks to Right-Hand Mitten Post, you can, too. Over and over again. And you can send cornbread recipes or porn to your friends and relatives throughout the Five-Planet System using the nifty wiggle.gif stamp.

So, like, who didn't watch the Transit of Venus? Raise your hands, stand up, tell us your names, make sure your Mom and Dad know that you slept through it.

A friend got me a poster of a group of knuckledragging mouth-breathing trogolodytes of all sizes, ages and genders in bowling shirts, and it said

WE DIDN'T SEE HALLEY'S COMET

AND WE DON'T CARE

and it graced my office wall for decades. Because I DID see Halley's Comet -- and spent a gazillion US bucks to get my butt to the desert near Alice Springs, Australia to see that sucker. (Best seats on the Planet in a place not on the verge of a violent popular uprising.)

So if you were sleeping off a cheap domestic beer (for cheap, try a case of Golden Anniversary) drunk and missed the Transit of Venus ...

You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!

-- Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar"

This amazing astonishing supercallifragialisticexpialidocious once-in-a-lifetime crap in the Heavens is FREE! All you have to do is set an alarm, dress appropriately, bring binoculars or a cheap telescope, and stand outside for an hour or so. It's FREE! and IMPORTANT!

Friend of mine went to a ritzy private high school in Manhattan, and the algebra teacher was attempting to cram the Quadratic Formula into 20 nincompoop brains, and he suddenly snapped and started screaming THIS IS IMPORTANT! YOU HAVE TO KNOW THIS! and young Chris Noth (now the deservedly famous actor) said, "Mister Kaplowitz, the only thing we HAVE to do is die." I don't know if Noth ever mastered the Quadratic Formula, but I don't think he got a high mark in Mr. Kaplowitz's gradebook that day.

(I know the Quadratic Formula, and I can Complete the Square all by myself without Googling. Mr. Kaplowitz was right: This stuff is IMPORTANT!)

But what are all such gaieties to me

whose thoughts are full of indices and surds?

x² + 7x + 53

= 11/3

-- Lewis Carroll 

(a math(s) professor)

This is the only poem I know which must be solved for x.

Recent Transits of Venus

Date ...... Time UTC .. Something Else

======================================

1631 Dec 07 05:19 939 "
1639 Dec 04 18:26 524 "

1761 Jun 06 05:19 570 "
1769 Jun 03 22:25 609 "

1874 Dec 09 04:07 830 "
1882 Dec 06 17:06 637 "
2004 Jun 08 08:20 627 "
2012 Jun 06 01:28 553 "
2117 Dec 11 02:48 724 "
2125 Dec 08 16:01 733 "