Strange, weird or odd or whatever beach finds thread….
- Thread starter Stonedfish
- Start date
That’s the official story because that’s what they want you to think.
Rainforest Gump
Steelhead
I’m voting for giant Ratfish model .
(all of the following is to be read in a Drunk History style....these words may represent the true provenance of the items above...which may be vintage space junk, specifically parts of the MIR soundsystem...)
This one time....on MIR.... a fight broke out
After the Berlin wall came down Mikhail Gorbachov helped lobby for West and East German Astronauts to get their space ticket punched. See no German had ever been in space before. Ever since Wernher Von Braun left for the US, their whole German Space Shot plans were basically set back a notch or two. The closest you could get to Space in Germany was buying this from Playmobil:
(Stonefish may have found most of the parts to this during his beach pickups BTW)
Anyways, Mikhail Gorbachov, a forward thinker, and at the height of his powers says: "let's do this, let's get some Astronautin, that's what they call Cosmonauts in Deutschland, which is called Germany, they call them Astronautin, can you believe they call Cosmonauts Astronautin? Anyways, You know, let's get Sauerkraut ....in Space!.............. Can I get a HELL YEAH! .......We're talkin' Space KRAUTS....That's what I'm talking about"
All Germany, West and East, were psyched because they finally had something cool to look forward to and be proud of. And back in the late 80's you had to give that old Russky some credit, it was a good idea too, they needed something to bond over, to feel good about.
They were all shouting "Hell's yeah, let's do this! Fuck yeah, America, USA USA" except it was in German so it was more like this "Verdammt, lasst uns das machen, Deutschland, Deutschland" and there was much raising of big-ass steins to the heavens. Beer spilled, Lederhosen and Dirndles were shed and across the new/old country that evening, spirits were high and many children were conceived (and many more were not) in this spirit of Euro-Asian optimism!
Gorbachov said this the next day, after his hangover had worn off a little. He couldn't exactly walk it back, even if he said it when he was drunk and couldn't recall the specifics:
"We'll send these guys up to Mir as a kind of let's rebuild Europe in the spirit of Glasnost"
That whole attitude played poorly in Russia, but man, those Germans ate it up like a big ole bottomless plate of schnitzel and cabbage.
Anyways, it wasn't exactly perfect plan. These guys, the German Cosmonauts, or the ones they chose at least, basically hated each other. How could they not? They were legit petty, internecene style viciousness. One from East and one from West Germany. it was like Stepbrothers before they got the idea about Prestige Worldwide. Anyway, word around Roscosmos and the Baikanur Cosmodrome was they got in a series of escalating scuffles even before they were all up in Mir.
The worst of the feuds was up in the heavens though, in geostationary orbit. And the reason behind it?
It involved Mir's Stereo.
Apparently on Wednesdays (Mittwoch) the German's got to DJ/choose the music on MIr. The one thing they agreed on, these guys, the Germans that is, Dieter and Gunter, they always wanted to play the avant gard synth masters Kraftwerk, and only Kraftwerk, who in case you don't know look like this in real life:
Everyone else- Yuri, Laika Jr aka The Space Dog, Ivan, Maksim, these guys were all like: "Again? No? How's about a little Gorky Park? No? Scorpions? Motley Crue? Bon Jovi? Jesus, fine, whatever. You Germans are full of shit, your music blows."
Yuri, the one sorta sane astronaut on the whole space can reminided everyone, in his best JFK
"We do not choose to go to the moon and do other things like listen to Kraft-VERK NAAHHT because it is easy, we listen to Kraft-VERK because it is HAHHDD"
Pretty much nailing the super-Hyannis patrician accent part of the JFK impression.
Everyone on Mir hated the Germans just as much as the German's hated one-another. Some of it ran pretty deep, like Eastern Front Winter sorta deep.
All of em, the Russians and one soon-to-be-Ukrainian (Maxim) that is (who double hated everyone), took some serious swigs of vodka, and tried to get through the rest of the day listening to this nonsense and playing farkle, which is particularly hard in space btw.
Anyway, the West German, Dieter, a lantern-jawed Bavarian, insisted on only playing the 22-minute Kraftwerk synth "masterpiece" Autobahn. He had patiently mixed and looped this tune on one of his two TDK D90's his Girlfriend Esther had given him as a "good luck in space, don't die, and listen to what I taped on these, but only, like, when you're alone and horny." Anyways, Dieter immediately took these tender gifts, and without listening to anything his girlfriend had said, re-recorded over it. Esther's ASMR style seductive mumblings were lost forever.
Autobahn's a 22 minute long song, so, doing the math on a 90 minute tape, that's well, hang on a minute, lemme do the math..... that's pretty much four times a side. Dieter did his mixtape during his mandatory one-week, pre-launch Baikonur Immunologic lockdown. Of all the tapes and records smuggled into the Cosmodrome's pre-launch lockdown by the German attache, four were requested: Autobahn (Kraftwerk), Night Rocker ( David Hasselhoff), Looking for Freedom (Hasselhoff) and Lovin' Feelings (Hasselhoff).
See, even you hate Dieter too.
His first tape was the looped Kraftwerk song. Which has a lot of stereo like effects of what a synthesizer might make a car sound like, as it passes by that is. The second? David Hasslehoff's finest, a mix Dieter named Hits und Shitz von Hasselhoff complete with some hand drawings on cassette liner. The pictures featured a jawline that could have been Hasselhoff, coulda been Dieter. (I mean, they have the same jaw.) Crudely done, the drawing that is, Stars in his eyes, on account of being an Astronaut or a Pop Star, or something like that. Big Starry-eyed Dieter, Hasselhoff-loving German Space Hero, in a jean Jacket (which Germans pronounce yeen-yack-a) drawn on the cassette liner. He thought he might, on return to earth, give this one back to Esther, and when he thought that a big tear rolled down his giant mandible and onto his Adidas tracksuit that he had not changed out of all week.
The Russian crew, on inspecting Dieter's onboarding bag after climbing out of the Soyuz on his first day, immediately seized his jean jacket and aviators for a "space station tax" along with all his gummy bears and clean underwear. The Hasselhoff tape stopped them cold though. They looked at the hand drawn art, compared it to Dieter, flipped it over a few times, before nodding to one another and swiftly ejecting out the air-lock before Dieter even realized what was happening.
"Mein Yeen Yack-a, Mein Hasselhoff, Nein, NEIN, NEIN" Meanwhile Gunter snickered in the background, ran his hand down his black gold and red Addidas space tracksuit, which the Russians would never steal, see above, on account of hating the Germans.
So, independent of the musical recordings thought best to represent the human race that are on the Voyager Module, which has now travelled billions of miles, there is a mix tape of Hasselhoff up there...moving through space....endlessly riding through the night..... showing other worlds what we are capable of, what Dieter curated for other sentients as a best of.
(In retrospect Dieter was secretly proud that he had an astral legacy. And yet, he remained, unaware (remember: handsome, not necessarily bright) that magnetic tape subject to relentless bombardment of cosmic rays unprotected by atmospheres, would become ever more dull very swiftly. It would only be his artwork, his tremendous jaw, his eyes, eyes as stars, blue with ballpoint extra work, the jean Jacket carefully cross-shaded, metaphoric, that would puzzle an alien life force.)
Anyway, back to the conflict on MIr, which was later, well after the Hasselhoff tape was ejected on day one to the infinites of outer space.
Day 36, Wednesday:
Dieter was annoyed
Kraftwerk didn't sound right. It took him a while- five Wednesdays- to figure out what was wrong with it. It wasn't the gas powered speakers, it wasn't the fact the tape was stretched in places on account of Esther being sorta cheap and having re-recorded those D90's a bajillion times (the German Equivalent to Kasey Kasem- lots of Nena, Falco, more Nena, and more Falco, a lot of jockeying between those two for the top of the pops). It wasn't the degradation the Cosmic Rays and unrestrainable protons and neutrons had already caused in audio quality. No, the thing that bothered him, the thing that annoyed him, aurally that is, was the version he knew he recorded, in stereo, on the tape, back in his dormitory in Baikonur, in the Cosmodrome, was not, in fact, in stereo, on Spaceship Mir.
Gunter, Das ist MONO ! Das ist scheiss! Mein Kraftwerk ist scheiss!
He turned to the Russians to express his frustrations
MIR ist Scheiss!
Like a Baviarian who can't pull his big boy lederhosen up to his nipple line on his own, he threw his astronaut ice cream in a hissy fit his nation fortunately never saw.
Gunter, meanwhile, disagreed because his entire life, all of the audio they ever had in East German was in Mono, on account of it coming out on Crystal Radios, or failing that a giant loudspeaker mounted on a truck, and he wouldn't have know what Stereo was other than when the KGB Kommandant used to hit you in one ear and then subsequently smack you in the other, repeatedly, alternately, on account of insolence or some other transgression. In so doing the Kommandants, plural, caused scientifically verifiable hearing loss with every new blow. So, maybe Stereo, for Gunter, truly was mono.... But, on general principles of being a jerk to Dieter (which he was very good at by the way- example, hiding his astronaut ice-cream) immediately and strongly vouched for how this was, yes indeed, Kraftwerk's finest, and that, yes, in fact, it was in Stereo.
Dieter was so mad, shouting, that the cheap astronaut ice cream/sawdust he HAD managed to find and eat, some of the parts of which were still in his mouth were now ejected from his mouth, flying out on varied particulate tangents or vectors, spackling MIR in gray sticky aerosolized ice cream + Dieter DNA. Even the spit seemed both strangely adherent AND angry. The Russian contingent, including Laika Jr (Space Dog), barely stirred, they didn't disagree with Dieter, he spoke truth, but no one wanted to talk down a Bavarian with psychological issues, and a mouth full of paste, it wasn't worth it. They just kept trying to roll dice in zero-g in a manner that suggested they had A LOT of time to kill.
Maxsim, channeling Yuri imitating JFK started to say "We don't play space dice not because it is easy, we play spice dice because it is HAAAHD" but Yuri waved him down, interested to see what would happen next, as though he knew some cosmic tipping point was nigh. (Maxim added this snub to a long list of resentments that would motivate him for decades to come)
Meanwhile Gunter, the East German, a volatile Thuringian convinced of his Teutonic Origins more than the merits of any modern, "artificial" nation state, a man who had risen quickly through the KGB, when that was still a thing, on the strength of, well, his strength and resilience to repeated head trauma, plus old Teutonic notions of loyalty above any version of reason.... Anyway, Gunter, who knew not of what joys stereo could bring his ears and brain says, just to piss of Dieter:
"yeah, Dieter this, like, definitely IS Stereo, you jean-jacke, discotek loving WestDeutch Cretin, anyone can tell, even Laika Jr Space Dog, because.... "
And here's where Gunter played his trump card, slowed down his delivery, jacked the volume up to 11, looking him dead in those widely set, saucer blue eyes....
"because......there's.... the.... stereo.... knob"
Repeatedly jabbing his giant astronaut ice cream covered finger at it like Dieter is a moron who can't read. Which admittedly, given the absolute lowest rent shitty font the MIR fabricators used, is a mite blurry, even if Dieter used his corrective glasses with their custom built Leica lenses from the heart of Stuttgart's eyeball district.
But Gunter wasn't done.
"and this.... THIS here.....THIS HERE.... is precision Soviet Hi Fi"
Taps his hand on the heavy wooden veneer.
" and everyone, EVERYONE, even musical genius Jon Bon Jovi, knows that's like.... the best there is..."
Meanwhile Yuri, the only legit badass Cosmonaut with any bone density left, and the most sober of all of 'em any started laughing and shaking his head, because even for Yuri, that was absurd, and dangerous. I mean, to assume anything in MIR was quality, and say what you will about Russians, Cosmonauts from the late 80's had danced with death and lies so often they knew everything there was to know about bullshit. And this was one cheap-ass awful bullshit sound system, just like the Germans were awful cheap-ass roommates in what he believed was his cheap-ass, awful, fart stink of a space station that nonetheless, he was strangely and fiercely proud of.
Dieter, infuriated now at Gunter und Yuri, who he had wrongly assumed of as a friend (Yuri? Friends? Back at Baikonur, during "Bone Recovery Months" he would tell this tale and spit on the ground and laugh at that part). Anyway Dieter, realizing he is now friendless above the earth in geostationary orbit listening to Autobahn- in Mono, his fit not yet done, reached back for anything to grab and throw. He pulled up the gas-powered speaker right out of its duct-taped socket and threw it at Gunter's habitually close-cropped Dolph Lungren style head
But when he threw it forward, Deiter moved backward, on account of that's how things go in space, in turn bumping the super volatile electronic ignition Spark Unit to the gas powered speaker, which was now leaking hydrogen through a lousy duct tape valve. Basically filling Mir and a bunch of the Soyuz supply ships and so on with volatiles and, well, obviously, it sparked a little fire, not the first, not the last, which had Yuri not been drinking some water instead of Vodka, was able to relatively swiftly extinguish by spitting it out, along with some of Dieter's stolen astronaut ice cream, in a manner that extinguished the flames that surprised even that osteoporotic Cosmonaut....
Yuri says "I should join the circus" laughing at first, but then crying, because life on board Mir with these clowns was a tragic circus, a Solzhenitsyn shit show set in space ....
All of this, because Autobahn was "allegedly" not in stereo
Maxim meanwhile, muttering "We light fire in MIR not because it easy, But because Fire in Mir are Haaaahhd"
Space dog Laika barking applause, tail wagging for the fun of it all, then licking some of the ice cream off the walls....
Pretty much a typical German DJ Wednesday in Geostationary Orbit....
(@Mingo here's some blatantly ridiculous stuff...)
(it is historically true that Bon Jovi was huge in 1989-1990 era USSR.....)
This one time....on MIR.... a fight broke out
After the Berlin wall came down Mikhail Gorbachov helped lobby for West and East German Astronauts to get their space ticket punched. See no German had ever been in space before. Ever since Wernher Von Braun left for the US, their whole German Space Shot plans were basically set back a notch or two. The closest you could get to Space in Germany was buying this from Playmobil:
(Stonefish may have found most of the parts to this during his beach pickups BTW)
Anyways, Mikhail Gorbachov, a forward thinker, and at the height of his powers says: "let's do this, let's get some Astronautin, that's what they call Cosmonauts in Deutschland, which is called Germany, they call them Astronautin, can you believe they call Cosmonauts Astronautin? Anyways, You know, let's get Sauerkraut ....in Space!.............. Can I get a HELL YEAH! .......We're talkin' Space KRAUTS....That's what I'm talking about"
All Germany, West and East, were psyched because they finally had something cool to look forward to and be proud of. And back in the late 80's you had to give that old Russky some credit, it was a good idea too, they needed something to bond over, to feel good about.
They were all shouting "Hell's yeah, let's do this! Fuck yeah, America, USA USA" except it was in German so it was more like this "Verdammt, lasst uns das machen, Deutschland, Deutschland" and there was much raising of big-ass steins to the heavens. Beer spilled, Lederhosen and Dirndles were shed and across the new/old country that evening, spirits were high and many children were conceived (and many more were not) in this spirit of Euro-Asian optimism!
Gorbachov said this the next day, after his hangover had worn off a little. He couldn't exactly walk it back, even if he said it when he was drunk and couldn't recall the specifics:
"We'll send these guys up to Mir as a kind of let's rebuild Europe in the spirit of Glasnost"
That whole attitude played poorly in Russia, but man, those Germans ate it up like a big ole bottomless plate of schnitzel and cabbage.
Anyways, it wasn't exactly perfect plan. These guys, the German Cosmonauts, or the ones they chose at least, basically hated each other. How could they not? They were legit petty, internecene style viciousness. One from East and one from West Germany. it was like Stepbrothers before they got the idea about Prestige Worldwide. Anyway, word around Roscosmos and the Baikanur Cosmodrome was they got in a series of escalating scuffles even before they were all up in Mir.
The worst of the feuds was up in the heavens though, in geostationary orbit. And the reason behind it?
It involved Mir's Stereo.
Apparently on Wednesdays (Mittwoch) the German's got to DJ/choose the music on MIr. The one thing they agreed on, these guys, the Germans that is, Dieter and Gunter, they always wanted to play the avant gard synth masters Kraftwerk, and only Kraftwerk, who in case you don't know look like this in real life:
Everyone else- Yuri, Laika Jr aka The Space Dog, Ivan, Maksim, these guys were all like: "Again? No? How's about a little Gorky Park? No? Scorpions? Motley Crue? Bon Jovi? Jesus, fine, whatever. You Germans are full of shit, your music blows."
Yuri, the one sorta sane astronaut on the whole space can reminided everyone, in his best JFK
"We do not choose to go to the moon and do other things like listen to Kraft-VERK NAAHHT because it is easy, we listen to Kraft-VERK because it is HAHHDD"
Pretty much nailing the super-Hyannis patrician accent part of the JFK impression.
Everyone on Mir hated the Germans just as much as the German's hated one-another. Some of it ran pretty deep, like Eastern Front Winter sorta deep.
All of em, the Russians and one soon-to-be-Ukrainian (Maxim) that is (who double hated everyone), took some serious swigs of vodka, and tried to get through the rest of the day listening to this nonsense and playing farkle, which is particularly hard in space btw.
Anyway, the West German, Dieter, a lantern-jawed Bavarian, insisted on only playing the 22-minute Kraftwerk synth "masterpiece" Autobahn. He had patiently mixed and looped this tune on one of his two TDK D90's his Girlfriend Esther had given him as a "good luck in space, don't die, and listen to what I taped on these, but only, like, when you're alone and horny." Anyways, Dieter immediately took these tender gifts, and without listening to anything his girlfriend had said, re-recorded over it. Esther's ASMR style seductive mumblings were lost forever.
Autobahn's a 22 minute long song, so, doing the math on a 90 minute tape, that's well, hang on a minute, lemme do the math..... that's pretty much four times a side. Dieter did his mixtape during his mandatory one-week, pre-launch Baikonur Immunologic lockdown. Of all the tapes and records smuggled into the Cosmodrome's pre-launch lockdown by the German attache, four were requested: Autobahn (Kraftwerk), Night Rocker ( David Hasselhoff), Looking for Freedom (Hasselhoff) and Lovin' Feelings (Hasselhoff).
See, even you hate Dieter too.
His first tape was the looped Kraftwerk song. Which has a lot of stereo like effects of what a synthesizer might make a car sound like, as it passes by that is. The second? David Hasslehoff's finest, a mix Dieter named Hits und Shitz von Hasselhoff complete with some hand drawings on cassette liner. The pictures featured a jawline that could have been Hasselhoff, coulda been Dieter. (I mean, they have the same jaw.) Crudely done, the drawing that is, Stars in his eyes, on account of being an Astronaut or a Pop Star, or something like that. Big Starry-eyed Dieter, Hasselhoff-loving German Space Hero, in a jean Jacket (which Germans pronounce yeen-yack-a) drawn on the cassette liner. He thought he might, on return to earth, give this one back to Esther, and when he thought that a big tear rolled down his giant mandible and onto his Adidas tracksuit that he had not changed out of all week.
The Russian crew, on inspecting Dieter's onboarding bag after climbing out of the Soyuz on his first day, immediately seized his jean jacket and aviators for a "space station tax" along with all his gummy bears and clean underwear. The Hasselhoff tape stopped them cold though. They looked at the hand drawn art, compared it to Dieter, flipped it over a few times, before nodding to one another and swiftly ejecting out the air-lock before Dieter even realized what was happening.
"Mein Yeen Yack-a, Mein Hasselhoff, Nein, NEIN, NEIN" Meanwhile Gunter snickered in the background, ran his hand down his black gold and red Addidas space tracksuit, which the Russians would never steal, see above, on account of hating the Germans.
So, independent of the musical recordings thought best to represent the human race that are on the Voyager Module, which has now travelled billions of miles, there is a mix tape of Hasselhoff up there...moving through space....endlessly riding through the night..... showing other worlds what we are capable of, what Dieter curated for other sentients as a best of.
(In retrospect Dieter was secretly proud that he had an astral legacy. And yet, he remained, unaware (remember: handsome, not necessarily bright) that magnetic tape subject to relentless bombardment of cosmic rays unprotected by atmospheres, would become ever more dull very swiftly. It would only be his artwork, his tremendous jaw, his eyes, eyes as stars, blue with ballpoint extra work, the jean Jacket carefully cross-shaded, metaphoric, that would puzzle an alien life force.)
Anyway, back to the conflict on MIr, which was later, well after the Hasselhoff tape was ejected on day one to the infinites of outer space.
Day 36, Wednesday:
Dieter was annoyed
Kraftwerk didn't sound right. It took him a while- five Wednesdays- to figure out what was wrong with it. It wasn't the gas powered speakers, it wasn't the fact the tape was stretched in places on account of Esther being sorta cheap and having re-recorded those D90's a bajillion times (the German Equivalent to Kasey Kasem- lots of Nena, Falco, more Nena, and more Falco, a lot of jockeying between those two for the top of the pops). It wasn't the degradation the Cosmic Rays and unrestrainable protons and neutrons had already caused in audio quality. No, the thing that bothered him, the thing that annoyed him, aurally that is, was the version he knew he recorded, in stereo, on the tape, back in his dormitory in Baikonur, in the Cosmodrome, was not, in fact, in stereo, on Spaceship Mir.
Gunter, Das ist MONO ! Das ist scheiss! Mein Kraftwerk ist scheiss!
He turned to the Russians to express his frustrations
MIR ist Scheiss!
Like a Baviarian who can't pull his big boy lederhosen up to his nipple line on his own, he threw his astronaut ice cream in a hissy fit his nation fortunately never saw.
Gunter, meanwhile, disagreed because his entire life, all of the audio they ever had in East German was in Mono, on account of it coming out on Crystal Radios, or failing that a giant loudspeaker mounted on a truck, and he wouldn't have know what Stereo was other than when the KGB Kommandant used to hit you in one ear and then subsequently smack you in the other, repeatedly, alternately, on account of insolence or some other transgression. In so doing the Kommandants, plural, caused scientifically verifiable hearing loss with every new blow. So, maybe Stereo, for Gunter, truly was mono.... But, on general principles of being a jerk to Dieter (which he was very good at by the way- example, hiding his astronaut ice-cream) immediately and strongly vouched for how this was, yes indeed, Kraftwerk's finest, and that, yes, in fact, it was in Stereo.
Dieter was so mad, shouting, that the cheap astronaut ice cream/sawdust he HAD managed to find and eat, some of the parts of which were still in his mouth were now ejected from his mouth, flying out on varied particulate tangents or vectors, spackling MIR in gray sticky aerosolized ice cream + Dieter DNA. Even the spit seemed both strangely adherent AND angry. The Russian contingent, including Laika Jr (Space Dog), barely stirred, they didn't disagree with Dieter, he spoke truth, but no one wanted to talk down a Bavarian with psychological issues, and a mouth full of paste, it wasn't worth it. They just kept trying to roll dice in zero-g in a manner that suggested they had A LOT of time to kill.
Maxsim, channeling Yuri imitating JFK started to say "We don't play space dice not because it is easy, we play spice dice because it is HAAAHD" but Yuri waved him down, interested to see what would happen next, as though he knew some cosmic tipping point was nigh. (Maxim added this snub to a long list of resentments that would motivate him for decades to come)
Meanwhile Gunter, the East German, a volatile Thuringian convinced of his Teutonic Origins more than the merits of any modern, "artificial" nation state, a man who had risen quickly through the KGB, when that was still a thing, on the strength of, well, his strength and resilience to repeated head trauma, plus old Teutonic notions of loyalty above any version of reason.... Anyway, Gunter, who knew not of what joys stereo could bring his ears and brain says, just to piss of Dieter:
"yeah, Dieter this, like, definitely IS Stereo, you jean-jacke, discotek loving WestDeutch Cretin, anyone can tell, even Laika Jr Space Dog, because.... "
And here's where Gunter played his trump card, slowed down his delivery, jacked the volume up to 11, looking him dead in those widely set, saucer blue eyes....
"because......there's.... the.... stereo.... knob"
Repeatedly jabbing his giant astronaut ice cream covered finger at it like Dieter is a moron who can't read. Which admittedly, given the absolute lowest rent shitty font the MIR fabricators used, is a mite blurry, even if Dieter used his corrective glasses with their custom built Leica lenses from the heart of Stuttgart's eyeball district.
But Gunter wasn't done.
"and this.... THIS here.....THIS HERE.... is precision Soviet Hi Fi"
Taps his hand on the heavy wooden veneer.
" and everyone, EVERYONE, even musical genius Jon Bon Jovi, knows that's like.... the best there is..."
Meanwhile Yuri, the only legit badass Cosmonaut with any bone density left, and the most sober of all of 'em any started laughing and shaking his head, because even for Yuri, that was absurd, and dangerous. I mean, to assume anything in MIR was quality, and say what you will about Russians, Cosmonauts from the late 80's had danced with death and lies so often they knew everything there was to know about bullshit. And this was one cheap-ass awful bullshit sound system, just like the Germans were awful cheap-ass roommates in what he believed was his cheap-ass, awful, fart stink of a space station that nonetheless, he was strangely and fiercely proud of.
Dieter, infuriated now at Gunter und Yuri, who he had wrongly assumed of as a friend (Yuri? Friends? Back at Baikonur, during "Bone Recovery Months" he would tell this tale and spit on the ground and laugh at that part). Anyway Dieter, realizing he is now friendless above the earth in geostationary orbit listening to Autobahn- in Mono, his fit not yet done, reached back for anything to grab and throw. He pulled up the gas-powered speaker right out of its duct-taped socket and threw it at Gunter's habitually close-cropped Dolph Lungren style head
But when he threw it forward, Deiter moved backward, on account of that's how things go in space, in turn bumping the super volatile electronic ignition Spark Unit to the gas powered speaker, which was now leaking hydrogen through a lousy duct tape valve. Basically filling Mir and a bunch of the Soyuz supply ships and so on with volatiles and, well, obviously, it sparked a little fire, not the first, not the last, which had Yuri not been drinking some water instead of Vodka, was able to relatively swiftly extinguish by spitting it out, along with some of Dieter's stolen astronaut ice cream, in a manner that extinguished the flames that surprised even that osteoporotic Cosmonaut....
Yuri says "I should join the circus" laughing at first, but then crying, because life on board Mir with these clowns was a tragic circus, a Solzhenitsyn shit show set in space ....
All of this, because Autobahn was "allegedly" not in stereo
Maxim meanwhile, muttering "We light fire in MIR not because it easy, But because Fire in Mir are Haaaahhd"
Space dog Laika barking applause, tail wagging for the fun of it all, then licking some of the ice cream off the walls....
Pretty much a typical German DJ Wednesday in Geostationary Orbit....
(@Mingo here's some blatantly ridiculous stuff...)
(it is historically true that Bon Jovi was huge in 1989-1990 era USSR.....)
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Holy shit. That was amazing.
I really debated whether or not I should bring this home for @Wadin' Boot but I know how much he enjoys finding his own beach fruits and vegetables, so I passed. 
Unhusked beach corn is kind of a rarity.
SF
Unhusked beach corn is kind of a rarity.
SF
They are timid until they decide to attack….
SF
SF
DimeBrite
Saltwater fly fisherman
Uli Kunkel was in a techno band called Autobahn in this era. Knox Harrington, the video artist, found it amusing.
Any idea what this might be?
It had a strap on it and an opening. Kid of padded on one side and hard plastic on the other side. Maybe something for wakeboarding or waterskiing?
SF
It had a strap on it and an opening. Kid of padded on one side and hard plastic on the other side. Maybe something for wakeboarding or waterskiing?
SF
Kayak back rest?
PELICAN | Medium Ergofit G3 Backrest | PS1769-1-00
Replace your Ergofit G3 seat backrest with this new one.
www.confluenceoutdoor.com
PELICAN | Medium Ergofit G3 Backrest | PS1769-1-00
Replace your Ergofit G3 seat backrest with this new one.
You guys nailed it. Hopefully nothing bad happened to the person in the kayak it came from.
SF
I cheated. I used Google Lens. Shockingly accurate using just that picture and "Pelican". That link was the first result.
I have done a little kayaking here and there.
He maybe got taken out on the falling tide that morning? If I recall, the low was a big minus but way early, which would have put the high about 8:45-9:00ish, but I don't recall the late morning exchange being more than a few feet.
Whatever happened, it sucks and I'm sorry for his family and friends. Puget Sound is not the safe pond many think it is, and this is a sad reminder.
Whatever happened, it sucks and I'm sorry for his family and friends. Puget Sound is not the safe pond many think it is, and this is a sad reminder.
Picked this up on a beach this week. I know zero about rocks. Does this qualify as an agate or is it something else? It’s translucent but not very transparent.
Roughly 1.25" tall, 2" long, 1.5" wide.
Edit: A quartz crystal I picked up in ONP barely scratched it.
Roughly 1.25" tall, 2" long, 1.5" wide.
Edit: A quartz crystal I picked up in ONP barely scratched it.
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Looks like an agate to me. Nice find!
