Sauntering Vaguely Downward

...because red wine is the best drink to accompany zombie and vampire films, natch.) Pardon me, this is just me noodling about a film that came out six years ago. Most people probably saw the trailer and went either, “A zombie film; no thanks, I’ll pass” or “ZOMG cutest zombie film EVAR!”

I concur with the latter; Warm Bodies is sweet, funny, has an amazing soundtrack and is an obvious homage to Romeo and Juliet apart from the happily-ever-after ending; the names of the lead characters are “R” and Julie. R saves Julie from the other zombies, and in turn, Julie saves R from being a zombie by literally awakening his heart. His resurrection is infectious: the other zombies who haven’t been completely lost by becoming “bonies” also experience it. There’s even a charmingly awkward balcony scene. It’s a feel-good film, and being a soppy perkygoth romantic, I love watching it.

But there’s a bit of a sting in the tail, because I also can’t help overthinking it. In the beginning, the zombies are all “others” to the uninfected humans, whether they’re bonies or R-analogues. In the conclusion, the “others” are divided into two categories. The R-analogues are others who can be re-integrated by assimilation (and, er, not dining on brains any more). The bonies are irredeemable and must be shot in the head. Inevitably, I see a parallel with immigration: between acceptable immigrants, who have the resources, skills, and sufficient cultural adaptability to become part of a society, and those who don’t and therefore must be excluded.

I think this is one of the reasons the zombie concept is so appealing. It allows for a very soothing simplification of otherness, by giving human-shaped others a characteristic so repugnant, eating the living and turning them into zombies/others, that it is not difficult to justify their murder. It’s uncomplicated, comforting, and unrealistic.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m just going to finish this glass of wine and enjoy the shower/make-up scene soundtracked to M83’s “Midnight City”, because I refuse to let an excess of analysis spoil my enjoyment.

Thursday was meant to be a quiet day, since we all knew we had to be up and at Caltech by 4 AM for the thing we’d all been preparing for: the actual end of mission.

In reality, there were some impromptu science meetings at Caltech, one of which I attended in the morning. I slipped out just before noon, because I had someone to meet.

I headed down from Beckman to South Mudd to see my former JPL postdoctoral supervisor, from back in those heady days when I was still a lab scientist, for lunch. I hadn’t seen him since 2006. I eventually remembered where his Caltech office was. I could’ve found the JPL one much more easily, but it would have required me to check in and get a badge, which seemed a lot of faff for lunch. Besides, there are nicer places to eat in Pasadena. Once in the correct corridor, I spotted his technician hovering outside the door, plus another UK person from the physical chemistry community whom I’d never met but knows the bloke pretty well. There were lots of smiles and hugs, and we decided to head down to a restaurant over on Lake Street.

We had a very pleasant hour of conversation, reminiscing and catching up. I had a shock on hearing that their children, whom I remembered as children or young teenagers, were now grown up and had careers of their own. Of course I knew that would have happened in the intervening decade-plus, but it’s not until you actually speak together about these things that they’re driven home to you. They were equally shocked on learning that Humuhumu has started school - and has a younger sibling! The bloke and I had been remiss in our communication, clearly. We talked of science, of course, and of politics and its effects on research direction, and of our worries about the future due to Brexit and the current US administration.

I am still kicking myself for forgetting to take a photo. You must instead picture me with a group of men: one starting to disappear into the frailty of old age, peering out earnestly from large-framed glasses, one solid and grey-haired and mostly silent with twinkling blue eyes, and one cheeky-grinned middle-aged bear of a chap with a shock of brown hair and a beard. All sitting together in a booth of a Japanese restaurant, eagerly shoveling the contents of bento boxes into our faces, occasionally bursting into roars of laughter while cheesy ‘90s music played in the background.

We parted with promises not to let another eleven years pass before we met again. I was left with the warm glow you get from (re)connecting with friendly, kind, intelligent people. It was a lovely way to buffer against the excitement and strain of what was to come on Friday morning.


Chilling out in my JPL t-shirt before the end of mission.

I flew into Los Angeles on the Sunday before the last-while-Cassini-is-still-in-orbit-around-Saturn Project Science Group meeting began. I was feeling dodgy when I got up at 6 AM, but I napped in the taxi and took some ibuprofen, and hoped that the feeling would go away.

It did not.

I made sure my usual mobile pharmacy (ibuprofen, paracetamol, Rennie) was stocked in my rucksack before I boarded the plane, and was glad I'd done so about three hours into the flight when my fever started spiking. I alternated ibuprofen and paracetamol every two hours. The flight attendants kindly granted all of my requests for cold water/cans of ginger ale, which were frequent. It was one of the most miserable long-haul flights I've ever had.

I spent nearly all of Monday in bed apart from a brief foray out to get a hot Thai curry into my belly for lunch. This paid off on Tuesday, and I was able to spend half a day at Caltech to dial into the penultimate operations meeting. (There will be one more after the crash, but obviously we’ll no longer have an instrument status to report.) I was excited about this, because I had been saving up something for a very long time.

( In fine fettle was the other option )

to be continued