Kelly's year in space

(618 words)

I’ll always remember the day Scott Kelly returned to earth as the day I learned Neil Armstrong spelled backwards is “Gnorts, Mr. Alien!”

Kelly today is the most interesting man on the planet because it’s been nearly one year since he’s been on the planet.

He’ll today begin submitting to various tests to determine how near-zero gravity affects bone density, blood cells composition, muscular degeneration, etc. It’s already being reported he grew two inches in space, which, by the way, validates futuristic speculation in my new book that innovative NBA franchises will one day begin raising athletic children on the moon for draft purposes.

So much to learn and to compare with his earthbound-twin brother, Mark Kelly.

It would have been fun to see the look on Mark’s face if Scott returned to earth with a full head of hair.

I’m interested to learn the level of the returning Kelly’s horniness.

I have to think he’s really, really horny.

Of course, that’s a perhaps unfair assumption from me, a monogamous heterosexual.

It was not uncommon for ancient sailors on year-long voyages to turn situationally homosexual to score their primal jollies.

Maybe we’ll learn that happened with Kelly and Russian crewmate Mikhail Korniyenko. The pair shared 10,944 sunrises and sunsets and you’d have to think at least one or two of them were spectacular enough to make one put an arm around the other or maybe a hand on a nearby thigh.

Who knows where that could lead?

It’d be a great story for romantics like me.

I haven’t been paying close attention to the mission, but now am eager to learn everything I can.

I want to know if Kelly’s arms are again at his sides.

I heard him say about a month ago that the reduced gravity led his arms to float out in front of him the way ours would if we’re standing neck-deep in a pool.

I was hoping to see footage of him returning to earth with his arms out in front of him like a loose zombie out for a stroll.

How do you think you’d do after a year in space? What would you miss?

I’m pretty confident I could endure even prison if it had a decent library cart roll by my cell every few days.

What’s surprising to me is how impossible it is to disconnect from earth even in outer space.

Kelly was active on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. He knew all the headlines about Trump, Deflategate and the crowd of lilly white Oscar nominees.

Guaranteed, he heard from his old lady at least a couple of times when the faucet sprung a leak or the kids were at each others’ throats.

It used to be said in space no one can hear you scream.

No more.

If Kelly farted we virtually smelled it. It was reported he drank 190 gallons of his own urine and sweat that had been converted into coffee. His tweet: “Good to the last drop!”

“I miss the earth so much. I miss my wife. It’s lonely out in space.”

That’s Elton John’s 1972 ode to “Rocket Man” loneliness.

No more.

Kelly proved that nowadays when you go into space, you’re taking all of us with with you.

And that’s pretty cool.

So I’ll eagerly follow all the news and await the really big stories, books and broadcasts to learn the details of how space changed him.

He’s already done so much to re-ignite interest in the space program.

That means there’s only one more thing he could do cause interest to, well, lift off.

That would be confide to reporters his frame wasn’t the only thing space extended.

Gnorts, my friends!

Related  . . .

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Valentine's Day re-run: Capt. Mark Kelly the heavenly hubby

Happy Valentine’s Day — and isn’t that a wonderful redundancy? How could Valentine’s Day be anything but happy? This is from way back in ’11. 

On this Valentine’s Day, I’d like to salute Capt. Mark Kelly, husband of recovering gunshot victim, U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords.

He’s succeeding in looking like Earths’s most steadfast husband while preparing to abandon his brain-damaged wife to go on a million-mile jaunt with six of his buddies.

Yes, every happily married couple needs a little space.

The news of her recovery since the January 8 shooting that left six dead and 13 injured has been astonishing.

That anyone could be shot through the head and suffer relatively minor injuries is either a miracle or evidence that much of the average human brain is full of lots of stupid or otherwise useless grey matter.

I don’t think that’s the case with Kelly. To me, the guy’s a genius. Clearly, he’s using his full brain.

I’m not suggesting he doesn’t love his (second) wife. He and Giffords met in 2003 at a Young Leaders Conference in Beijing.

Or so I’ve read. I wasn’t invited. Even if I had been, I’d have been unable to attend  having previous obligations at the Middle-Aged Followers Conference here in Latrobe.

Truly, it is a great love story about a very appealing couple (http://tiny.cc/bowbo).

Yet I can’t help but marvel at Kelly’s deft ability to maneuver public opinion into crowning him husband of the year at the very instant he’s planning to blast off from his wife’s hospital bedside to go into outer space.

I know husbands who struggle to wrangle spousal okey-dokies for long golf weekends in Myrtle Beach.

It’s a pity. I’ve had some of my best times there with the boys. We play golf, cards, get a little drunk and spend the nights enriching one dollar bill at a time the mysterious college funds of pasty-bedecked girls whose names all seem to end in the letter “i.”

When you look at it that way, it sounds almost wholesome.

The matrimonial reluctance to spend time apart baffles me. 

I’m convinced marriage benefits from more time apart -- and don’t confuse that for cynicism. I’m a man who loves his wife and his two darling daughters, one who just happens to revel in every chance he has to get the hell away from them.

Like the sky-bound Kelly, I need a little space.

Of course, so does my wife. The kids, 10 and 4, are at an age when they are acting increasingly like war-minded Romulans.

They’re driving both of us crazy. But it’s a lot easier for me to justify up and vamoosing than it is for her.

Like Kelly, one of just 65 NASA astronauts, I can always claim my credentialed travels are business-related. (“Honey, do you think I WANT to spend four days in New York City?”)

I’m sure, rather than New York, Val wishes she could board a space shuttle for a months-long mission exploring the effects of cabernet on low-gravity, stressed-out mothers.

A really long space vacation would be her dream vacation right now. Me, too. I’d love to arrange a two-week space flight for just the two of us. Instead of things like ant farms and petri dishes, we’d freight the craft with Snuggies, pillows, books, cases of wine, and the complete DVD collection of “The Sopranos” series, which we’re getting back into.

The seclusion would be heavenly.

But we had trouble Saturday arranging a babysitter for lunch and an afternoon matinee of “The King’s Speech” (loved it!). How are we going arrange two weeks of lunar day care?

The logistics would be out of this world.

So we’ll hustle through another half-assed Valentine’s Day hoping conversely the two of us can soon enjoy both more time together and more time apart.

Me, I’ll be watching in admiration as Kelly on April 19 boards the Space Shuttle Discovery for two weeks away from his healing wife, time he can spend gazing down on earth, and basking in the knowledge he’s circling a planet where millions of wives swoon, “Now, there goes a husband who really cares.”

The only way I’ll be more impressed is if the space shuttle makes an unscheduled landing for four days in Myrtle Beach.

Our summer of aliens & Earth's future

(628 words)

I tend to judge all illegal immigrants by how their being here will improve my culinary options so I’m fine with Mexicans.

And Thai, Japanese, French, Chinese, Italian and some of the South American nations I have trouble telling apart.

Really, I’d be fine if we’d slam the door shut on the English, Swedes and Germans — all lands of my ancestors —  because they bring nothing to the table.

I enjoy fish & chips but, really, none of us is ever that far from a Long John Silver’s drive-thru and the duplication would be unnecessary.

I have a lot of Swedish blood in me, but that doesn’t mean I need any Swedish food in my belly. I’m proud of my Swedish heritage — and that can be summed up in two words: ABBA and Ikea — but the only time I’ll reach for Swedish meatballs is when they stop making them the way the Italians do.

I’ve had some fine German meals, but I often wind up inadvertently spitting all over the poor waitress when I say, “And I’ll have the Knusprige Schveinehaxen!”

This has been the summer of aliens.

It seems like they’re all over the news.

Half the news is about keeping illegal aliens from coming into America and the rest is about Americans blithely weighing our extra-terrestrial options that could lead us to become illegal aliens in a universal sense.

Stephen Hawking is proposing we spend $100 million to detect alien life. NASA is near daily announcing the discovery of new Earth-like planets.

I suspect alien life is already here. I see so many people behaving with so little civility I have to wonder if they were raised on another planet.

They talk during movies, viciously disparage opposing viewpoints on Facebook, and wear wildly inappropriate clothes to the wave pools.

No way these people could have been raised by Earthlings.

I keep having this recurring nightmare that technologically advanced aliens from outer space will land in some remote part of America and say, “Take me to your leader!” and the greeting yahoo will introduce them to Trump.

He’d be so insulting annihilation procedures would be imminent.

Imagine the repercussions for humanity. 

For Trump’s haircut.

NASA announced it has found 8.8 billion planets that could sustain life.

That’s, so far, enough for all 7 billion of us to each have planets of our very own. That’s not counting moons.

Talk about needing some space.

They say these planets have atmosphere, water, similar suns, calendar years and topography — all the comforts of home, that is if Comcast doesn’t run short on cable.

I feel like some really slick real estate agent is trying to sell me a home in New Zealand when I’m perfectly content way over here on the sensible side of the planet.

I don’t want to leave Earth to have to enjoy what I have right here on Earth.

It’s the same rationale Homer Simpson invoked when he weighed in against vacationing in Canada, a land he referred to as “America Jr.”

And I wonder if we’re hurting Earth’s feelings.

Because what it looks like is we’re fixing to leave the old girl.

If I read it right, what we’re acknowledging is that the human race are just a bunch of parasites with personalities.

So look out universe, here come the Earthlings.

I’m sure the universal word will get around pretty quick and the rap on us will sound familiar.

“They’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems with them. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

All will be well if we can just make one thing clear that will ease the alarm of any occupying ETs.

We’re also bringing pizza.

Related . . .

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A non-streaking story on the comet & the butt

(663 words)

On a day when Kim Kardashian set out to break the internet by posting a picture of her butt, scientists landed a probe on a comet that’s 2.5 miles across. For purposes of scale, it’s a useful coincidence.

The celestial body is just a smidgen larger than the celebrated butt.

The news took my breath away — and we’re talking about the comet now. I’m much more intrigued by the asteroid than the ass.

This is, to me, as monumental as landing a man on the moon. It’s an incredible achievement.

Tom Randall of Bloomberg had a deft analogy in his lead. He said: “Humans just scored an interplanetary field goal. A really long one.”

The 220-pound probe named Philae has been on a 10-year, 4-billion-mile journey to reach a comet named 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which for purposes of blog simplicity will henceforth be referred to as Burt.

So using Randall’s analogy I guess it would be like someone clearing the uprights in Pittsburgh’s Heinz Field after having kicked the ball from, oh, Manilla?

Another handy analogy: It’s like trying to land one speeding bullet on top of another.

One scientist described it as “sexiest space mission there’s ever been,” which proves how unsexy our space missions have been. Imagine the pay-per-view bonanza if they beamed a space mission that involved actual space sex.

The calculations that went into the bullseye trajectory are impossible to comprehend, especially for those of us who need a smart phone app to figure a 20-percent tip on a $10 tuna fish lunch special (for future reference, that’d be $4.)

Scientists are hoping to find in the comet’s rock and ice insights into the actual billion-year-old origins of the universe.

I think it’d be cool if they found a note with one of my tweets on it.

“News report says New Delhi discount days failing to drive sales the way experts predicted. Know what that means? Goodbye rupee Tuesday!”

That would, you’d think, lift my anemic @8days2amish followers count up above 300.

All America should be chagrined that most of the stories about Burt involve men and women named Dieter, Siegfried, Helga and other scientists who go to work in a town called Darmstadt.

Yes, this achievement is a mostly German show. NASA’s contributing, sure, but this is all being done under the auspices of the European Space Agency.

When did we take second fiddle in space achievement to Europeans?

Taking second fiddle to Germans in violin is one thing. Check out Georg Kulenkampff  (1898-1948) ’37 recording of Schumann’s “Violin Concerto in D Minor.” The dude could fiddle.

But we’re talking American space exploration. We’re talking Chuck Yeager, John Glenn, Neil Armstrong and Sally Ride.

We’re talking Buzz Lightyear!

I guess it’s symptomatic of Americans’ now knee-jerk disparagement of anything as elite as factual science.

I can’t imagine the U.S. Congress ever again appropriating funding for something as esoteric as space exploration.

“You want to spend $10 billion on a space probe to a what? A comet? Can we frack it? Can people play golf there? What’s the point?”

The point is it elevates and inspires mankind whenever mankind does anything to vanquish the ignorance of mankind.

We don’t yet know what we’ll find there. But we will learn. And another generation of children will marvel at the magnificence of accomplishing something that seemed impossible.

Who knows what they’ll achieve?

But they will cite as inspiration, I’m sure, the day when mankind finally began to grasp a sphere at which people have for so long gazed in wonder.

And that’s as good a place to stop as any because it sounds again like we’re back describing the Kardashian moon.

Related . . .

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Happy 50th Birthday to these words!

I was pleased to see recent media fuss when it was announced that “OMG” and “LOL” were born last week.

Of course, these obnoxious words have been around for it seems like years or maybe I’m just confusing the words themselves with the people who use them.

I’ve always known people who, “OMG!” were shocked by things like the daily sunrise and would “LOL!” at banal Facebook observations.

But there’s nothing I can do within the crush of laws concerning unlawful imprisonment of people who say those things so we might as well celebrate the birth of two new words, even words that connote dimwits.

And by birth, I mean recognition of the words by the Oxford English Dictionary. 

We don’t think words and phrases have birthdays, but the venerable Oxford English Dictionary does. It lists exactly when almost all of the nearly 600,000 words in the English language entered the lexicon.

Some of these singular words say as much about society and our advances as entire essays. 

For instance, both “Weight Watchers” and “all-you-can-eat” were born in 1961. So were “doomsayer,” “moonshot,” “rehab” and “advertorial.” Some words that were new then are passe already (“dial-up” and “splashdown”).

I am looking forward to my 50th birthday in 2013 and will be pleased to blow out the candles with the word “boink.” I’m tickled that the OED says both boink and I were born the very same year.

Boink is a splendid word, not to mention pastime, so it pleases me that we’re aging together hand-in-hand. 

Of course, you won’t hear me doing a lot of bragging that the OED felt the need to recognize the word “dipshit” the same year I was born.

It pains me to think that the word was in its embryonic stages for years and didn’t need barnyard liberation until the year the docs told my folks, “It’s a boy!”

Who knows? Maybe I did something to push the popularity of the word as soon as I was born. I know my late father said the word so often that I still turn around and say, “Yes?” anytime I hear it spoken in my vicinity.

But I have a busy week and am going to take the easy way out today by presenting you with a list of words that are turning 50 this year.

What interests me is that many of these words seem to stem from a Madison Avenue heyday of when rampant consumerism was really starting its American roar, and how many of the words stem from space exploration.

It must have been an exciting time to be alive and not just some little dipshit awaiting delivery.

• advertorial -- This is advertising masquerading as advertising. I’ve sneered at advertorials, but only when I’m not being paid to write them. I’ve done maybe two or three of these in what for a lack of a better word I call my “career.” Guaranteed, I’d be a lot better off if I’d done a lot less sneering and a lot more selling.

• all-you-can-eat -- I wonder what they called this before they coined this now-common phrase. Probably gluttony.

• A-OK -- The space program gave us so much. In hindsight, it seemed like such an  exciting time. I think right now things are about C-OK, which is an improvement over F-OK from just a few years ago. 

• back-talk -- How come there’s still not a goody-goody front-talk?

• bionic -- That means the word to describe him is about 25 years older than the man who came to represent it: Astronaut Steve Austin.

• dial-up -- Even the reading the seven-character name makes me tap my fingers in impatience today.

• doomsayer -- It took until 1961 to get to this word? I’d have thought doomsayers would have been around since Pontius Pilot started toweling off his dripping hands.

• fab -- The word would have faded into obscurity had it not been for John, Paul, George and Ringo.

• gillion -- Someday I’m going to get around to doing a story about the biggest number known to man. I’m pitching a piece now about the shortest time measurements. I’m going to call it: “No Time At All.” Just wait. No one will snap it up and I’ll write a half-assed version of it for the blog in a New York minute.

• incapacitate -- A word that was launched just in time for a decade when access to and consumption of mind-bending drugs made the word so necessary.

• intel -- This must have coincided with when the CIA was devoting more time to snappy acronyms and abrevs. than actual intelligence of what was going on in Southeast Asia.

• moon shot -- Baseball fans ought to relate to this. The meaning, of course, is another space program coinage adapted to mean what guys like Mickey Mantle was blasting them out of the old Yankee Stadium.

• no-win -- How did this once come about? You mean before this there were just win-wins? It feels like I’ve been no-win on every March Madness pool I’ve entered since before Mantle was blasting moon shots.

• off-air -- Imagine a simpler time when every TV set could receive just three stations and they were on the air for just about 14 hours or so a day. What did people do with the spare time? Read? Drink? Boink? Ah, the good ol’ days.

• omigod -- It took us 50 years to condense this one? All I can say is, OM--, er, amazing!

• randy -- Austin Powers rules, baby!

• rat fink -- It’s just the perfect pairing. Go ahead and try substituting any other loathsome animal and watch it fail. Things like skunk fink or roach fink just don’t cut it. Didn’t James Cagney corner the market on this one with “Dirty Rat Fink?”

• rehab -- You mean rehab predated Betty Ford?

• retro -- As mentioned, this word is still cool. I don’t watch much “Mad Men,” but I sense its retro appeal.

• skyjacker -- Oceanic pirates have been around for centuries. How did we get skyjacker instead of sky pirate? I like sky pirate better.

• wazoo -- I’d say I’d have to look more into this one, but I’m fearful of what the ol’ research would require. 

• Weight Watcher -- Fascinating. Both Weight Watcher and all-you-can-eat were born the same year. To me, it’s the chicken and the egg argument all over.

• woody -- This, I guess, refers to the old station wagons bands like the Beach Boys sang about. I like the newer meaning, but it would be fun to time travel back to 1961 and tell mom I was going to run my big old woody down to the beach to meet the bikini babes.