Eclectic.

I saw this on Facebook and had to look it up. It really happened, albeit the details are different. From Homesteading Space: The Skylab Story:

"On the evening of MD-46, I finally played the trick that had been in work for over two month," said Garriott. "It even had the flight controllers puzzled for twenty-five years! My objective was to pretend that my wife, Helen, had come up to Skylab to bring us a hot meal, even though this was an obvious impossibility. Here is how the scheme worked. I recorded her voice on my small hand-held tape recorder before flight, pretending to have a brief conversation with a Capcom, with time gaps for his replies. The Capcom would be my only accomplice, but his role would be carefully disguised.

It was also necessary to have some recent event mentioned to validate the currency of the dialogue, so it would seem it could not have been recorded before fight. The short dialogue is printed below in its entirety. I knew that both Bob Crippen and Karl Henize were going to be Capcoms for Skylab, so they were brought into the planning, given the script and rehearsed on their timing. They kept the short script on a piece of paper in their billfolds, awaiting the right moment.

"For our flight in August-September, there would be many occasions of natural disasters involving forest fires or hurricanes, which would be widely known throughout the United States. So a few comments about one or the other were made on the tape. This led to four different scripts being recorded, one for each of the two Capcoms and one each for the two natural events. I would play the tape on the normal air-to-ground voice link with my wife's recorded voice and the Capcom would respond as if totally surprised by the female interloper."

Near the end of one period of voice contact Garriott said to the ground, "I'll have something for you on the next pass, Bob." Crippen replied, "Roger that, Owen." Then quietly and surreptitiously, he reviewed the brief script that had been in his pocket for all these weeks. Soon after coming into voice range, the ground heard this voice on the standard air-to-ground link:

Skylab (a female voice): "Gad, I don't see how the boys manage to get rid of the feedback berween these speakers.... Hello Houston, how are you reading me down there? (s sec. pause) Hello Houston, are you reading Skylab?"

Capcom: "Skylab, this is Houston. We heard you alright, but had difficulty recognizing your voice. Who do we have on the line up there?"

Skylab: "Hello Houston. Roger. Well I haven't talked with you for a while. Isn't that you down there, Bob? This is Helen, here in Skylab. The boys hadn't had a good home cooked meal in so long, I thought I'd bring one up. Over"

Capcom: "Roger, Skylab. Someone's gotta be pulling my leg, Helen. Where are you?"

Skylab: "Right here in Skylab, Bob. Just a few orbits ago we were looking down on those forest fires in California. The smoke sure covers a lot of territory, and, oh boy, the sunrises are just beautiful! Oh oh..... See you later, Bob. I hear the boys coming up here and I'm not supposed to be on the radio."

"Then quiet returned to the voice link, but we were told later, Bob Crippen had lots of questions coming his way in the Control Center," Garriott said. "What was going on? Where was this voice coming from? Bob must have been a very good actor, because he claimed complete ignorance and innocence of how it happened. Everyone heard it coming down on the air-to-ground loop. The whole two-way conversation sounded like a perfectly normal dialogue. No breaks or gaps, and they all heard Bob respond in real time. Could I have recorded Helen's voice on a 'family conversation' from our home? Yes, but there was no recent one. How would she have known about the fires, or who was to be on Capcom duty and how could she respond to Bob's comments in real time, as everyone could hear?

"No one ever worked out how this was accomplished. Finally, at our twenty-fifth reunion celebration in Houston in 1998, and with many of the flight directors and controllers present and still with no clue as to how it was done, I described it all as above. My prejudiced opinion is that this was the best 'gotcha' ever perpetrated on our friendly flight controllers!"

Crippen recalled: "That was kind of a fun trick. There was head rubbing.

material component: yarn

wand: single hooked wand or double pointed wands, depending on caster's preference

mechanical component: specific motions repeated in a particular pattern

time component: a while

Not only am I optimistic, I am fired up and excited as hell. I haven't felt the joy, the enthusiasm, or the optimism like this since 2008.

I almost -- almost, not quite because we're all still recovering from the Trump traumas -- want to believe that this feeling, shared by so many other people, represents a fever breaking in America, a rejection and repudiation of the people who did their best to lead us into a dystopian, fascist, nightmare.

We have a huge fight ahead of us. They aren't running a campaign as much as they are preparing for another coup, and we will have to turn out an incredible number of voters to account for all the places they have people in place to deny and contest when he loses.

Before the debate, I was concerned. After the debate, I was despondent.

But now, I am fired up and excited as hell. Kamala Harris is going to be an incredible president, and there's a good chance she pulls the House and Senate with her. If that happens, we get SCOTUS reform, Trump faces the music for his crimes without interference, (and maybe some of his co-conspirators go with him, Mark Meadows), and we push the demons Trump unleashed back into the darkness where they belong.

But it only happens when ALL OF US turn out to vote. It only happens when we get all of our friends and family to vote. It only happens when we volunteer, stay involved, and SHOW UP.

We can do this.

We have to do this.

The Fascists know that America hates Project 2025. They know that Project 2025 is antithetical to everything America has represented for at least a century. It was just a matter of time before they attempted to rebrand it or deny it entirely.

It's a real thing. It is their plan. They are attempting to run away from it because they know how voters are repulsed by it. It's going to be interesting to see how quickly the big papers and cable outlets who absolutely know better buy into the new framing.

The facial expression she makes every time she takes a sip.