Goddamnfuckingclouds.
Those fleeing Triffid infestations may seek shelter in the Portland area, which after several very nice days is thoroughly overcast.
A phrase to be repeated across time zones and continents this evening; may your luck hold, and never give you cause to speak it.
Per the movie, Triffids are dissolved by seawater. Stand on a rock and you’ll be quite safe.
Any chance you live in Southern California? Here in San Diego we’re experiencing May Gray. Next month we get June Gloom.
Could be worse. Could be raining.
Regrettably that was a cheap deus ex machina ending in the movie. IIRC the book’s ending was more like the movie version of “The Birds.”
The sky is actually clear here for once. I’ve checked a couple times (about 3:30 EDT and about 4:15) so far and haven’t seen anything except the normal stars.
I drove out to the hills above Chatsworth, CA and found a good dark spot. Saw about half a dozen was-it-or-wasn’t-it ones and one amazing full-shower-of-sparks-oh-my-god one. Was out for about 45 mins before the clouds rolled in at 12:30 or so.
Having watched the film as a kid, I’ve always avoided meteor showers… just in case
You obviously need one of these:
Clouds here too (VT). I found that a quick peek out the window, followed by falling right back asleep, led to a spectacular display of colored meteors. Too bad that even in my dream I knew it was a dream.
PS I still dislike the new bb page layout. What is this, Slate?
Yeah, great week to shut down HAARP. Thanks, Obama!
Yeah I went out into the cloudy seattle night and said fuck you pacific northwest. It had been sunny and clear all week and now we get cloud cover.
Sadly, Wilhelm Reich’s earlier work is overshadowed by his later looniness. “The Mass Psychology Of Fascism” is very insightful and nontechnical. Yes he starts to wander off into his later pet theories of sexual development, but those can be ignored.
Not just ignored.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich#Book_burning
Way, way, way off topic; Please, delete if offensive.
I saw one meteor in half an hour or so in bad viewing conditions.
It was mostly cloudy in SF Bay Area. Drove up to Santa Cruz Mountains near Palo Alto and found a north-facing gap in the clouds that let me at least see the brighter stars around the Big Dipper (not sure how much of the Giant Space Giraffe I could see, since it’s not a constellation I know. Besides the one meteor and some airplanes, I saw a few flickers that could have been really faint meteors, but were probably just stars getting blocked and unblocked by clouds.
Does anybody know if this meteor shower will be back every year, or if this is just a one-time event?
(Also, to the person who complained about BB’s new layout, try http://boingboing.net/page/1 for the old one.)
I had pretty excellent viewing conditions on the coast of Maine – no clouds, lots of stars visible – but I only saw one small meteor. I was out from about 12:00-12:30 am, so I may just have missed the shower.
