Oh my hellvetica.

When will we mourn the 5,000 kids that the US embargo killed each month in Iraq? And what about the thousands of others who died because of US-led wars? Can I see frontpage of newspapers about those?

Oh, please, Alien, you just lay there and I'll call the Whaaaaambulence for you.

I remember watching this as a kid and not really getting it...

"Whaaaaambulence", Charles that's a crack up. I'm gonna have to remember that one.

Charles didn't come up with the term "Whaaaaambulence". It's from a Disney movie,that came out 6 years ago,called "The Kid",starring Bruce Willis.

Charles didn't come up with the term "Whaaaaambulence". It's from a Disney movie,that came out 6 years ago,called "The Kid",starring Bruce Willis.

Shit, I thought that whaaaaambulence was so far removed from pop culture that I could claim it.

Goddamn you Willis, and your kid-friendly movies.

I remember when I heard about the Shuttle explosion. I was in 7th grade. We were just about to change classes when the principle came in and said she had some bad news. I made a joke to my friend, "She's probably going to tell us the Space Shuttle blew up or something." I still don't know where that came from, but I had no way of knowing that's what happened.

B&W USA Today? Looks so weird. (I know it's a photocopy or fiche.)

I was 5 years old when this happened and my mom let me stay home from school to watch the launch because I wanted to be an astronaunt when I grew up. My dreams of being an astronaunt pretty much ended that day.

Oy, I was in college at the time at UCF (Univ. Central Florida). I saw this live from my backyard. Every shuttle launch, we'd watch the countdown on TV, then go out to the back to watch the streak of white smoke clear the trees (we were about 45 miles from the Cape). I remember how peculiarly cold it was that day, and how when the smoke trail reached its apex, there seemed more of an "orange" burst than usual. Minutes later, of course, we knew why.

Meantime, my dad was managing editor at The Sanford Herald (one of the rare p.m. papers), so I drove the six miles from our house to the newsroom to hang out with all the reporters and editors watching events on the tiny TV my dad kept in his office. What made that all the more strange was that as I drove to the paper, that all-too-familiar Y-shaped smoke cloud was hanging in the sky, growing in size with each passing minute.

I ended up taking my car to have a new convertible top put on that day, AND practicing with my band at a warehouse near my house. And even at 6 p.m., that cloud was STILL in the air.

Years later, I worked a few years at the now-defunct Hollywood Sun, and later good ol' Florida Today, gritting my teeth through more launches ... I've seen night launches light up the sky near 95, and I even saw one from 250 miles away, from the roof of the Sun. An amazing day for journalism. And my dad was the first on the street with it in our area : )