Five years

"I think I saw you in an ice-cream parlour,
Drinking milk shakes cold and long
Smiling and waving and looking so fine, don't think
You knew you were in my song"

I keep listening to this song over and over again. It was released in 1972 and it was the opening track on David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust album. The basic idea of the song is simple: a radio announcement breaks the news that Earth has only five years left and the following chaos is described. This video on youtube shows a great live performance with good quality sound. The only thing I slightly dislike about it is the interruption of the closing drum fade-away, which sounds like a passing train or the sound of your heartbeat that you can sometimes hear when you abruptly awake from a vivid dream.





Pushing through the market square, so many mothers sighing
News had just come over, we had five years left to cry in
News guy wept and told us, earth was really dying
Cried so much his face was wet, then I knew he was not lying
I heard telephones, opera house, favourite melodies
I saw boys, toys electric irons and T.V.'s
My brain hurt like a warehouse, it had no room to spare
I had to cram so many things to store everything in there
And all the fat-skinny people, and all the tall-short people
And all the nobody people, and all the somebody people
I never thought I'd need so many people

A girl my age went off her head, hit some tiny children
If the black hadn't pulled her off, I think she would have killed them
A soldier with a broken arm, fixed his stare to the wheels of a Cadillac
A cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest, and a queer threw up at the sight of that

I think I saw you in an ice-cream parlour, drinking milk shakes cold and long
Smiling and waving and looking so fine, don't think
you knew you were in my song
And it was cold and it rained so I felt like an actor
And I thought of Ma and I wanted to get back there
Your face, your race, the way that you talk
I kiss you, you're beautiful, I want you to walk

We've got five years, stuck on my eyes
Five years, what a surprise
We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot
Five years, that's all we've got
We've got five years, what a surprise
Five years, stuck on my eyes
We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot
Five years, that's all we've got
We've got five years, stuck on my eyes
Five years, what a surprise
We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot
Five years, that's all we've got
We've got five years, what a surprise
We've got five years, stuck on my eyes
We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot
Five years, that's all we've got
Five years
Five years
Five years
Five years

Strange and Beautiful Pictures of Mars

This might as well be taken as another picture puzzle, if you wish. Only this time the solution will be given instantly.













( picture from here )

At first glance, I thought this was a tattoo on somebody's ...well... something. Then the more I looked at it the less I knew what I was actually looking at. I was quite relieved to find out that I was actually staring at another planet. That should explain this feeling of uncertainty and bewilderment, shouldn't it?
The picture shows a Martian dune and the dark lines (which I took for the tattoo) were left by the passages of dust devils.

So, who took this picture and why? In 2005, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) was sent to Mars to study the history of water on the planet. According to NASA's overview of the MRO, the orbiter has a camera which can identify objects as big as a dinner table from the orbiting distance of 300 kilometers. Last week, a photography site called 'The Big Picture' published 35 spellbinding pictures that the HiRISE (MRO's high resolution camera) had taken of the Martian surface. Below the pictures you can see the explanations of the different formations and a direct link to Google Mars in case you feel like tagging the location for your next holiday. If you would like to see how the boundaries of art and science are washed away by these superb pictures visit their picture series here.

And now I wanted to embed the David Bowie song, 'Life on Mars?' here. However, the best version is not possible to embed. You can still listen to it and watch it following the link. What I am going to put up here instead is the (in my opinion:) best cover of that song by Seu Jorge. It is in Portuguese but writing of Mars and other strange things I thought once I can make an exception. You can find an English translation here.