Seventeen Stars

17 January 2019

670127 — Roger Chaffee, Gus Grissom, Edward White.
860128 — Francis Scobee, Michael Smith, Judith Resnick,
Ellison Onizuka, Ronald McNair, Gregory Jarvis, Christa McAuliffe.
030201 — Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson,
David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, Ilan Ramon.

Apollo. Challenger. Columbia.
Sixteen Americans and one Israeli.
Thirteen men and four women.
Pilots, engineers, soldiers, mission specialists, payload specialists, surgeons, teachers, explorers, scientists.
Heroes.
Seventeen lives lost to America’s official space program.
As we fix our gaze beyond the horizon and press the frontier we are oft admonished by a merciless fate and an indifferent nature. We can be struck down at a moment’s notice. We can scurry back to our caves and lick our wounds and pray to kinder gods or we can venture back out again. And again. And again and again and again and claim our birthright.

Exploration is a risky business, and life itself is dangerous. Those who would condemn the proponents of manned space exploration will no doubt continue to drive automobiles, fly in airplanes, and purchase electrical appliances for their homes. There is no safe technology, there is only the acceptance of calculated risks — that can prove to be killers — that have also saved and succored so many millions more.

Robots in space have their place, but only boots on the ground can answer the one vital question pertaining to the frontier:
“Can we hold this ground?”

* * * * * * * Warning * * * * * * *

It began, I am told (by parents and an older brother who were all there), with the English language. I did not speak for well past the expected period, and folks were beginning to wonder, “Is there something wrong with that boy?” As it turned out, there was. Nevertheless, one day at dinner I suddenly spewed forth both proper grammar and genteel table etiquette. (“Please pass the potatoes.”)

The painfully embarrassing cognitive debility extended to junior juniorhigh French also, constituting my single scholastic failure, as well as to Les Mysteres Cybernetique. And of course, Earth People. I’m an asshole who speaks English. If that’s going to bug you or you think you have no time for an arrogant jerk who thinks he’s better’n you ’cause he can spell, parse, and rhyme you might want to skip this section. Otherwise I hope you’ll have fun, and maybe even help me to understand better.

Another Contradiction? More Fun with English
7 January 2022

When something is said to “glow” it is usually implied that it is filled with hope or joy or happiness or excitement, or that it is pregnant, or that it is literally radiating heat and light. Yet when we glower it is common to infer that we are in a dark mood.

My Pronouns are I, I Me Mine, I Me Mine
11 March 2022

My other preferred pronouns are I and You, as in, “I speak English” and “I wish you would too.” Likewise, I am perfectly content to respect anyone’s preferred Proper Noun, as long as they aren’t too much effort to pronounce. I will, however, continue to use standard pronouns based on the context and the evidence. For example, I don’t need to know the sex of the actor who plays Ru Paul or Madea to understand that as far as the respective character is concerned, she is either every inch a lady, or she is an insufferable bitch.

IKYRA (though sometimes just metaphorically)
27 March 2022 (but still echoing July 2019)

For some, apparently, a reliable sex toy becomes less desirable post menopause. Combine that with my poor paddling skills (and they’re not as related as that sounds) and I’m gone like a bad memory and an embarrassing stain.

11 September 2022
When this song (by Paul Overstreet and Don Shlitz) was played specifically for my benefit, I believed every word of it, such as:
There’s a truth in your eyes saying you’ll never leave me.
The touch of your hand says you’ll catch me whenever I fall.
You say it best when you say nothing at all.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have.
in re “never leav[ing her]:” I wouldn’t have, had I not been sent away.
in re “catch[ing her] whenever [she] fall[s]:” Again, having been dismissed, detached, distrusted, and rescinded, I am no longer in any position to do any catching of falling bodies (through the ceiling or elsewhere.)
That last line about “say[ing] nothing at all,” however, still rings true, though perversely. Saiyng nothing was dangerous too, but it has been vastly less perilous than telling the actual truth.

Alison Krauss – When You Say Nothing At All (Official Video) – YouTube


Our Own Guy Fawkes?

6 January 2022

Approximately a year ago I asked if Ashli Babbitt (killed by Michael Byrd, a government employee with a record of mishandling firearms) was Crispus Attucks.  Since then, I have been persuaded, by circumstances and by sober discourse, that she is not.  Her death, while tragic and stupid, is nowhere near as portentous as Attucks’.  I have since concluded that, as a figure of popular opprobrium and scorn, she is more of a native Guy Fawkes.  Like Fawkes, she knew who the enemies of freedom were and where they nested, but also like Fawkes, her actions and efforts were ill-conceived, poorly received, and they remain unachieved.

Mainstream Demoblicans and the sober heads of TeeVeeLand™ drone on today about the desecration of our Temple of Democracy® being the “greatest assault on our democracy since the Civil War (sic)” and the “worst thing since Watergate” yet never explain just how the profane ever got to be sacred in the first place.

I’m MORE disgusted by today’s crocodile tears. 

The Capitol Hill Ruckus™ was stupid, silly, and foolish, and just what Ray Epps and The Deep State® wanted you to see, but it was no insurrection.  A year of show trials and “investigations” later, and while political prisoners languish in F’eral custody, not a single charge of sedition nor insurrection (please feel free to check your legal dictionaries and to set me straight) has been brought forth, though scores have been granted maximum sentences for trespass, hijinks, and felonious folderol.

later…  correspondent Ficut Joyz reminds us that Guy Fawkes was “a rabid papist and religious extremist” who preferred Catholic to Anglican tyranny, and whose efforts, however romantic or heroic, were “never actually about what we know to be freedom and [that] romanticizing the Gunpowder Plot… is ridiculous.”  Which simply bolsters my point. 
Guy Fawkes’ Day and January Sixthmas are equally silly holidays.