That's No Moon...
I never really got it: what's so fucking special about astronauts?

Foreigners call them whatever they want to: cosmonauts, taikonauts, whatever. They all do the same thing. But honestly, I can't figure out what the big deal is supposed to be.

Is it dangerous to ride up into space on top of tons of a lit liquid- or solid-fuel-filled phallic-shaped bomb with a controlled explosion happening out the back of it? Probably.

But hero worship? Schools named after them? Backs of special-occasion currency? Movies made about them? I just don't see it.

If it's all the danger supposedly associated with cruising around in space, surrounded by an environment hostile to human life with only the thin skin of a life-supporting capsule between them and certain death, well... you don't see us propping up submariners as some kind of goddamn national treasure. And they do all that confined in a small space with a working nuclear reactor.

Although I will admit, submariners do have some pretty cool movies made about them.

Similar risks are taken by anyone who flies in an airplane ever. How is that less risky than space-flight? Can I breathe at 37,000 feet? Would I survive a cabin breach? Doubt it. And still, no school named after me. And I bet I've been up in airplanes way more than any astronaut has been in space. Not only that, but I had to pay for it.

More people risk their lives in underground mining than in space-flight. But we only hear about them after the canary dies and a couple dozen of them quickly follow. It's wrong.

But then coal miners aren't a bunch of pretty boys/girls with too much education and the alphabet soup of degree abbreviations after their names. Nobody gives Cletus and Jethro from Mingo County the airbrushed Madison Avenue treatment before they go to work every single day. Sure, guys with an odd number of fingers and a general sparseness in the toothal region might not be all that photogenic and the eleven years (combined) of schoolin' might not make for the most riveting of interviews, but they'd be just as dead as an astronaut if someone on their job lights a match at the wrong time.

Hell, I live in an area with the worst air-quality in the country. We're even competitive on an international level, pollution-wise (we're coming for you, Mexico City!). Inside a barely-protective vessel surrounded by an environment hostile to human life? Welcome to my Wednesday, people. Diminished lung capacity, alarming rates of emphysema and lung cancer among non-smokers... I fucking WISH I had a pressurized all-oxygen environment to lounge around in. I should be so lucky.

What's worse is that the astronauts who get all the attention are the ones who happen to be on-site when some crazy expensive shit breaks. Challenger, Columbia, Apollo 1, Apollo 13... Apollo 13. Those guys didn't even die and they get a movie starring Tom Hanks. It's Tom Hanks! The Man With One Red Shoe himself!

Other astronaut movies, they all look like fucking Dennis Quaid. Here I am risking my ass every day just by breathing, and who would play me if the Powers That Be deigned to condescend to stoop so low as to make a movie of my life? I'd be lucky--lucky--if I got Paul Giamatti.

Dennis Quaid. Please. He played Gordon Cooper in The Right Stuff. What a joke. Do you have any idea what the real Gordon Cooper looks like? Here, let me shatter your astronaut-philiac myths right now. Here's a picture of Gordon Cooper:

Ugh. Jesus. See, they took a disgusting specimen of human physical grotesquery like Mr. Cooper there to your left and prettied up his story by putting hunky Dennis Quaid in his place.

I can barely stand to look at this picture on my own blog. Honestly, the extremity of Mr. Cooper's unattractiveness inspires wave after wave of intestine-crimping nausea.

It angers me to no end that they would start with a latter day Elephant Man like this and replace him with a Hollywood looker like Dennis Quaid. It's all part of the astronaut propaganda the government has been feeding you people for almost 50 years now. "Oh, they're so smart." "Oh, they're so brave." "Oh, they're all so goddamned attractive."

Well, I call bullshit. You know what astronauts are? A means to an end, people. A means to an end. Do you think they need to spend all this time and money to train someone to float around in zero-g? Who were the first living creatures in space? Anyone remember? Monkeys and dogs, people. Monkeys and dogs. What does that tell you about the skill level involved.

But no, the NASA people, they have houses that need in-ground pools installed and the universities, they need recruiting tools for made-up disciplines like "aeronautics" and "physics" and SpaceCamps need commercials and the military needs [CENSORED BY AUTHORITY OF THE NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY... HAVE A NICE DAY].

It's all so obvious when you lay it all out like that. Faces sell.

Don't fall for it, people. An astronaut is just a pilot that doesn't fly anything.

And don't get me started on the International Space Station. We could be here all day.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 3.8


Pops


ADDENDUM: I just saw this: Report: Britney Spears is pregnant again. I used to come out and say Kevin Federline was a no-talent white trash gold-digging piece of shit. I take it back. He does have ONE talent. Dude can fucking procreate. He needs his props there. The rest of it stands. Sorry, couldn't go unremarked-upon.
- posted by Pops @ 10:46 AM