Bedroom View From Paranal Residencia

So I run, a lot. I’ve dealt with assholes trying to throw soda on me to screaming as they drive by, or yelling ‘fag’ at my brightly colored 6 inch shorts (they do have an inner netting). The thing I hate the MOST is when people honk, not to alert me of their presence, but to try to scare me, I mean loud ass slam on your horn for 5 seconds types of honks.

Anyway, I noticed that a white camaro in my neighborhood always did this when he saw me running. It turns out to be some teenage punk. One day, I see the car coming up from behind me on a reflection on a parked car. So I prime myself for an Oscar worthy performance.

Sure enough, he honks as he passes. I stop, and clutch my chest, I mean, like informercial levels of dramatics. And I crumble on the street. The little jerk has a conscience, apparently, because he turns the car around and drives back. He gets out and is audibly freaking out.

I’m still playing dead and he gets closer to try to check on me. He crouches down next to me to try to check for breathing.

I SCREAM in his ear, get back up, and go on the rest of my run.

Haven’t had to deal with the white camaro since.

Elephants Trunk Nebula IC1396

Thursday was the first clear night in ages so I took Friday off and stayed up most of the night imaging this beauty. Taken using a Canon 700D and a Canon 200mm lens

Horsehead Nebula 

Next level backyard astrophotography!

“Amateur astrophotographer David Ellison captured this image **from his backyard** in Chattanooga, Tenn. Located approximately 1,500 light years from Earth in the constellation Orion, the Horsehead Nebula is simple to spot due to its unique shape resembling a horse’s head. A light-year is the distance light travels in one year, or about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers). This image is a narrow band photograph of four hours of exposure using a QSI camera and a 4-inch telescope. The star seen just above the Flame nebula is Alnitak. Goodnight, Earthlings! Credit and Copyright: David Ellison.“

Just so you know, you can always watch the Earth live from the ISS. Its really relaxing to me (the music they play is soothing too)

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.” ― Marcus Aurelius Aurora over Kirkjufell, Iceland captured by the always awe-inspiring Sean Parker.

In 2004, I was a young comedian in New York City, and I secured an audition at one of the city’s top clubs. Their host would watch a few of us audition before the pros came on, and she’d recommend anyone she liked to become a regular at the club. I was super excited, and spent weeks crafting the set I wanted her to see.

My first joke did okay, but my second was stronger and by the end I was crushing. I finished with a big applause break, and said good night - but the host was nowhere to be found. I called out for her twice and joked that I must have done so well that they gave me more time before she finally came back up. I realized she probably wasn’t watching my set, or she’d have known when I was finished.

Her phony feedback after the show made it worse. “You started strong,” she said. “But you faded at the end.” Why couldn’t she have just told me she got distracted and offered me another audition in the future? Why couldn’t she be an adult about it? I wanted to be sure that she was lying - so despite having done no subway material, I asked her what she thought about my subway material. She told me it was generic. Not only was she lying to me - but now in her lie, I was a bad comic. I was furious - but I politely thanked her for her time, knowing that there was nothing I could do.

Thankfully, other clubs were more responsible with their new talent, and I got the regular stage time I needed to grow. A few years later, I was on the Late Late Show, and things continued to progress.

In 2012, I opened my own comedy club in New York City. During construction, a woman came in to ask if we were hiring a new talent director. I recognized her immediately - but she clearly had no recollection of every meeting me before.

I asked her for her resume, with absolutely no intention of ever reading it - like she’d metaphorically done to me 8 years earlier. And then I politely thanked her for her time, knowing that there was nothing she could do.

TLDR; When you keep your head down and do good work, the universe will get petty revenge for you.

Black Skimmer (Rynchops niger)

Lido Key Beach, FL

Artist’s impression of the exotic binary star system AR Scorpii

This artist’s impression shows the strange object AR Scorpii. In this unique double star a rapidly spinning white dwarf star (right) powers electrons up to almost the speed of light. These high energy particles release blasts of radiation that lash the companion red dwarf star (left) and cause the entire system to pulse dramatically every 1.97 minutes with radiation ranging from the ultraviolet to radio.

Credit: M. Garlick/University of Warwick, ESA/Hubble

“Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.” – Stephen Hawking

Stunning capture by Jordan McInally of @undersoulphotography

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day 2016 September 6 

The Whirlpool Galaxy and Beyond 

Follow the handle of the Big Dipper away from the dipper’s bowl, until you get to the handle’s last bright star. Then, just slide your telescope a little south and west and you might find this stunning pair of interacting galaxies, the 51st entry in Charles Messier’s famous catalog. Perhaps the original spiral nebula, the large galaxy with well defined spiral structure is also cataloged as NGC 5194. Its spiral arms and dust lanes clearly sweep in front of its companion galaxy (left), NGC 5195. The pair are about 31 million light-years distant and officially lie within the angular boundaries of the small constellation Canes Venatici. Though M51 looks faint and fuzzy to the human eye, the above long-exposure, deep-field image taken earlier this year shows much of the faint complexity that actually surrounds the smaller galaxy. Thousands of the faint dots in background of the featured image are actually galaxies far across the universe.