Even though I am a confirmed moon-hater — and seriously, FUCK YOU, MOON! I hope someone sticks a giant space spear inside you and splits you into tiny stupid moon pieces — I have to admit that these images taken by Chinese rocket Chang’E 2 are kind of cool. Not cool enough to make me HATE THE FUCKING MOON any less, but still, worth passing on. This one shows the “second luanr orbit trim maneuver, an event witnessed by an engineering camera. Before the maneuver starts, the spacecraft executes a sequence of controlled turns, causing the Moon to swing through the field of view. The firing of the engine begins just after the terminator passes out of view (from the camera’s point of view). As the spacecraft drops completely into the lunar shadow, the camera’s automatic exposure setting adjusts brighter, making part of the spacecraft visible in light emitted from the glowing thruster.” There are four others here. Grumble. Eat my ass, moon. [Via]

I mean, sure, there are jokes and analogies galore to be made, but at this point would it even make a difference?

The problem with explaining the Hate Retweet is I can’t really point you to any examples, because it 1. ruins the (kinda mean) fun and 2. it’d be rude to display an example to people who don’t get or haven’t noticed they’ve been hate-retweeted. But there is, for instance, a journalist in New York who’s become a vigilant, expert hate-retweeter. It’s pretty great, if sometimes breathtakingly cruel — it’s done completely without commentary, of course, just straight retweeting. The commentary is all in the broadcast — just the holding up of something someone said. And I imagine that most of the people retweeted by him have no idea what’s going on — that he’s really rebroadcasting such things out of spite or incredulity or just general eye-rollingness. On the other hand, it must be acknowledged that we are pretty much all, to a person, at times (or maybe at all times!) incredibly stupid or privileged or just plain embarrassing online, particularly on Twitter, which is literally designed to bring out the worst in people. So in a way this is shooting blind albino fish in the bottom of a barrel inside a cave somewhere near the center of the earth. Still, it’s an interesting undermining of a system that’s designed to be about validation and friendliness. File under “new ways to be amused and/or bad on the Internet.”

There are only 10 or so more hours until Thursday Night Football kicks off, which means I had better get to writing that letter to my cable company, thanking them for not carrying the NFL Network. It’s not much of a cable company, to be honest: I get very few channels and a few too many public access channels (but not New York One), including one that only shows 30-year-old claymation learn-to-read programming dubbed into Spanish. I also get The Pentagon Channel and this one home-shopping channel that is just Kathy Ireland selling juicers for 20 hours per day, and then sleeping on air for the other four. I would probably watch Kathy Ireland sleep before opting to watch Bears quarterback Jay Cutler petulantly attempt to throw the ball through a pair of Miami safeties, but I don’t know that for sure, which makes it a relief that I won’t even have the option of watching tonight’s game between the confoundingly 6–3 Bears and the whateverly Whatever-Whatever Dolphins. I have fond memories of Dolphins third-stringer-turned-starter Tyler Thigpen from his days running the endearingly desperate Fuck It Let’s Just Run The Spread offense with the Kansas City Chiefs a few years ago, but both the coin and I are taking the Bears over the Dolphs (-1) in this one. The full Kicked Off column is coming tomorrow.

Oh, why not? I was about to wonder how we were able to depict members of the royal family vomiting in an age before we had Taiwanese animation, but I’m sure Hogarth or Gillray probably tackled it pretty well.

“Bloomberg LP… has poured millions into a new media enterprise in Washington, a Web site called Bloomberg Government. The site is run by Kevin Sheekey, Bloomberg’s charming and youthful version of Karl Rove, who has surreptitiously crafted each Bloomberg for President boomlet. (Bloomberg once gave Sheekey, a onetime chief of staff for the late senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, business cards that read ‘Kevin Sheekey, Covert Operations.’)…. According to a senior White House official, there is a sense within the administration that they need to be mindful of the mayor and reach out to him when possible to work on issues he cares about. Other officials say they think the mayor’s political aides are more interested in a candidacy than Bloomberg himself is.”
 — The latest thinking on Mike Bloomberg as Presidential candidate: his machine wants the White House way more than he does. So after the hazy days of mayoring, why would he even need a portfolio? With money, influence and access, he can operate just fine from the office of his private plane.

And because we were listening to her biggest hit just yesterday. Congratulations to Patti Smith, who wrote the best nonfiction book of the year!

by Susie Cagle

Holidays are not a major part of my family’s routine. There are a few reasons for this. First, there are only four of us, even fewer once you reach the first and second degrees of separation in our extended family, and those are all spread far afield, scattered across fly-over states, nestled in inland trailer parks and retirement communities. Second, none of us has any special proclivities toward religion. Third, we are busy. And fourth, we are lazy.

Christmas has always been simply an excuse to give presents. (When in middle school I expressed frustration at my Jewish friends’ eight nights, eight freaking nights of presents versus our one morning, my father offered, “You want to be Jewish? We could be Jewish and do the candles thing if you want. Up to you!”) Last year there wasn’t even a tree — just gifts piled around the fireplace, which houses the television. (Yes, my parents own that DVD of a crackling fire — but usually we’re too lazy to pull it out for the occasion.) And even these presents don’t appear until the eleventh hour, often wrapped minutes before they are unwrapped. It is tradition for at least a few to be forgotten and unearthed during the course of the following week. For more than a few holidays, the family has splurged frequent flyer miles on off-season trips to Europe instead of dealing with any winter holiday traditions at all.

Despite all of this convincing evidence to the contrary, then, Thanksgiving looms large. It is areligious, well-defined in its rituals and everyone has off from work for a couple days — just long enough to feel obligated, but not long enough to escape (unless you count the “Law and Order” marathon — but isn’t that every day?). And so this is the one, and I do mean one, time of year that my family cooks and eats a meal at home.

Though they’ve lived in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley for 22 years, my parents still eat like they’re back in a studio apartment in an old mental hospital in Cobble Hill in 1979 — most meals are taken out, sometimes delivery. They complain about how most of these suburban restaurants close at 9:30, even though they eat at 6. And they have eaten like this for as long as I can remember. This actually meant that we had more quality family meal times than most of my peers (you skip out on the restaurant and the only thing to eat at home might be stale oatmeal, or salad dressing). Still, there were some problems. Sure, I had decently dressed cold-cut sandwiches in my bag lunch every day, but I hadn’t boiled water until after I’d graduated college, except in the microwave.

Traditional gender roles have always reigned supreme in this house, so my mother is saddled with much of the Thanksgiving chores. She does so dutifully, but clearly not happily. There is no flurry of activity, no crazy holiday rush. The day creeps by, one “Law and Order” episode after another, as side dishes are handily, though not quickly, not so much prepared as accomplished. It’s like watching a prisoner mete out their sentence in serving spoons. Tiny painful serving spoons.

We always plan to eat at 4, and never succeed until about 7. By that time, my mother is so beaten down that it takes all four of us just to set the table and shuttle the food the fifteen feet from the kitchen. I don’t think the meal has ever actually been served at the coffee table, TV-side, but it’s come close. Usually that’s just where we eat dessert.

For the last few years, this sentence seems to have grown even more dire, and so my mother has been looking for ways to alleviate the pressure. When my father became diabetic, certain holiday staples were less altered than attacked and cut down at the knees. The pumpkin pie lost its crust and became pumpkin filling, loose and wet in a pie tin (truly); cranberry sauce became sugar-free; biscuits or bread rounds have been cut from the line up entirely. When I went vegan a few years ago, it presented a perfect opportunity to streamline the meal even further. The stuffing lost its sausage and found its way into a baking dish with vegetable stock; green beans and sweet potatoes went unmilked, debuttered; gravy was abandoned entirely until I introduced a dairy-free version.

But there has been little, if any, complaint. We all feel obligated to contribute to and appreciate this holiday as best as we can, though it’s becoming increasingly clear that we don’t want to. My parents both work 60–80 hours a week, are passionate about so many things, talented at so many more — but none of those things is making food.

When I told my father recently about a dinner party I’d thrown, he sighed. “You’re such a rebel.”

Next: The recipe!

This is the first Thanksgiving I won’t be going home to spend with my family in Los Angeles, and so my meal can consist of multiple ingredients, and can even contain spices (I know how to use those now).

Still, this is barely a recipe at all. It is based on my mother’s technique for sweet potatoes, which has grown simpler and simpler over time:

I don’t have a microwave, so this is more complicated by default.

Garam masala is my favorite Indian spice blend — it is “aromatic” and more delicious than pumpkin pie spice blend. If you want to be even less lazy than me, you can make your own.

Complements lentil loaf, Tofurkey, or dead animals. Scales and adapts well — this version serves four to six.

Susie Cagle made the cover for our cookbook!

How unexpected, that unemployment insurance prevented the U.S. from having the highest poverty rate since the 1960s! May we point out: only barely. 2009’s poverty rate: 14.3%. (History: 2007: 12.5%. 2000: 11.3%. 1983: 15.2%. 1973: 11.1%. 1964: 19%.) And that’s still after we moved a big chunk of older people out of poverty with OUR INTERFERING BIG GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS. Now we just keep young people poor. (And food-insecure.)

by Rob Walker

Everybody said the Sarah Palin show would be boring. In fact, Sarah Palin said so. Just a few minutes into the first episode, while complaining about unwanted next-door-neighbor Joe McGinniss (who goes unnamed), she declares the author will be “bored to death” observing Palin and family going about their business. That’s a strange thing to say at the top of a multi-part television series about watching Palin and family going about their business. But that is the media genius of Sarah Palin: She wants to be perceived as dull, regular folk, someone who spends her days doing nothing more remarkable than riding in a prop-plane to a pristine fishing spot, or popping into the backyard TV studio to do a segment on Fox — just like everybody else in America.

I didn’t have a chance to watch the show until last night, via DVR, and I would like to point out that there is one element of it that is potentially not-boring: Keep your eye on Willow Palin. Overshadowed to date by her famous teen mom/danced-with “star” sister Bristol, Willow is ripe for her breakout moment. The 16-year-old is a somewhat shadowy figure in much of the premiere, sullen and sulky and plainly miserable. But the foreshadowing is obvious in a scene that begins with Palin, barefoot and in shorts, hoodie draped over a T-shirt, boning up for “some Fox News hits” on a computer in a corner of her kitchen. Evidently she’s camped out in this space to keep an eye on Willow, who, she tells us, would rather “socialize” than do housework. Just then, Willow saunters by, a teenager in cutoffs escaping chores and the spotlight, leaving the cameras to record her Daisy Dukes ascending a staircase. Her would-be partner in, uh, socializing is kid in a baseball cap named Andy. If the Palins’ life were a sitcom, Andy would be the guy brought on to play the Levi Johnston character in the pathetic final season, after the original actor left to embark on a failed career in movies. Needless to say, Andy instinctually heads for the stairs, too, but Mama Grizzly heads him off: No boys up there!

Andy’s lonely longing is palpable. He perches on the couch to assess the situation. The girl is in her room, up there. Mom is in the kitchen, down here. He hits on a plan. He’ll simply sneak upstairs. Who will be the wiser — apart from this cable network crew that is making a television show that he is in, right now? “Andy? Come here,” yelps Palin, as though disciplining a hound dog, which I suppose she is. This gambit fails, so she phones her daughter, one floor away. “What?” snaps Willow.

Palin says she will count to three, but doesn’t. Still she sort of prevails: No, Willow won’t come back, but here is Andy, skulking down the stairs and back to the couch. And there he sits, gazing like a domesticated animal at what I take to be Willow’s bedroom door. I have a hunch that Andy’s going to need to show a little more moxie if he wants to socialize with Willow; the Palin women seem to prefer more take-charge suitors. In any case, I assume the point of this segment is supposed to be that Sarah Palin balances work (Fox News hits) with masterful mommery (keeping the boys out of her daughter’s bedroom). But it comes across a little different: Willow is in heat.

Okay, okay, maybe that’s a little crass: Let’s just say she looks like a handful. That was my read, at least. And this morning, on cue, I see that Willow is in fact making “news” of her own, attacking some random badmouther of the show on Facebook as a “faggot.” Presumably this will get spun by Palin as evidence of (boring!) family-values loyalty, merely a feisty and self-possessed young woman defending her clan’s prime-time reality show — just like everybody else in America. Fine, fine, nothing unusual about that. But face it, this is more proof that the Palin media machine is flawless: There’s always just enough blatant, heat-generating titillation to suck you back into the vortex of dull propaganda. Thus I’m certain to watch one more episode, at least, waiting out the travelogue material and recitation of Palin homilies for fleeting clues about the future of that Hot Willow Mess.

Rob Walker is the author of Buying In: What We Buy and Who We Are.