As the evening turned out yesterday, I ended up in front of the tv to watch the space-launch of the first Swedish taikonaut. I’ve never watched all that many things live on TV (the reruns usually are edited better) but it was kinda neat to see the countdown start and then you get the ignition and the takeoff and boom and a lot of lights.
When the event wasn’t narrated by the space-groupies in the studio (“my company developed this space yoghurt. Try it!”), we sat and listened to space control at Kennedy space station. I’m curious how many millions they put in to get that static-sounding, very clippy sound. Gazzilions I imagine – it’s sort of part of the whole thing. if they actually would use regular microphones instead of the NASA brand noise phones half the experience would get lost.
Anyway. It was a blast (har).
And to brighten my evening I just heard that Augusto Pinochet just died in hospital, 91 years old.
Now, if we could just reanimate him and kill him a couple of more times, maybe take a collective shit on his face, well, then I might believe in karma. As it is, the fucker didn’t stand trial nor face the consequences of any of his actions.
The orbituaries are mentioning his dictatorship, the one million refugees, the economical boom. They are not telling of US/western support of him (maggy suck-my-crusty-ass thatcher?), but that might start showing up tomorrow.
He started to decompose with enough time for the editors to put together an interesting retrospect for the morning edition (although I’m quite sure they’ve had one laying around for a bit already). I might actually buy that.