A Random Assortment

~ I love this designer's jewelry (above). And I want some right away.

~ Oh my goodness! I unfortunately saw this groupon deal too late: $24 for one love letter a month for a year. This combines two things that I really love: love letters and good deals. The description:

For one year, each new month will bring with it a hand-typed love letter, semi-personalized to profess undying affection for everything you are, were, and will be. Swoon as you learn more about your admirer as he or she (you choose the gender) grows less guarded and lets you into their world. One letter will even contain a lock of hair*. At the end of each month, you may begin to worry that your love has grown distant and cold, like a dying star, only to sigh with relief as a new letter arrives and the love is reaffirmed. As you cradle the correspondence against your bosom, you may find that food tastes better, birdsong rings sweet and true all around you, and the world becomes a less dismal cesspool. At the end of 12 months, the romance will end in beautiful melancholy, like the sinking of a great schooner or the last line of a poem about a sick horse. You will be saddened, yes. But your life will be all the richer for the experience.
*Hair may not be human.

I don't quite understand--are you supposed to write back each month? Also, I'm dying to know what sort of hair they send. (via Francisco)

~ Religious experience on the moon. This article talks about translating religious practices made for earth into space--"Muslim astronaut Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor had to figure out how, exactly, one faces Mecca during prayers when you are moving at about 17,000 miles per hour and its location relative to you is changing minute to minute, sometimes as much as 180 degrees in the course of one prayer." Buzz Aldrin brought a little bit of communion up to the moon and took it when he was on the moon. Religion and the moon is fascinating and makes me think of Hannah Arendt--I think our urge to take religion with us to the moon tells us something about what sort of beings we are (hint: not just conditioned ones).


~ Speaking of space, I didn't get to see the Northern Lights this time around (stupid clouds), but these pictures and video from people who did gave me at least a little Northern Lights fix.