Friday 6 May 2011

Infinity And Beyond!

This is a re-post of a blog that I posted on my myspace blog some time ago. I'm posting here because I refer to it in a blog that I'm going to re-post on the Tingle In The Netherlands blog:

I'm going to put a link to this blog in that blog so anyone reading this can just get sucked into the blogosphere until someone finds their skeleton slumped over a keyboard after they have clicked their last and croaked. Confused? Try living in my head. Aaaannnyway, here's the blog. 

Infinity And Beyond!

I've been wondering whether I've left it too late to become an astronaut. They're quite rock and roll aren't they astronauts? Well, to be precise, they rock, they roll and they float about in zero gravity whilst listening to all kinds of music; they're hard drinking, risk takers and probably quite mad.

Why, it was only the other day that NASA decided to implement a rule banning in-flight drunkenness and more recently cocaine was discovered in the space shuttle's hangar, allegedly .

But back to drunkeness...Apparently, it was quite common for the astronauts to over do the Dutch courage to such an extent that they'd be blasted before blast off, and no one thought anything strange about this.

Then there was that woman astronaut who drove halfway across the USA, whilst wearing a nappy, in order to shoot her lover's girlfriend. 
Basically, the woman was a 'bunny boiler' (though she probably wouldn't know how to boil a bunny as they only eat freeze-dried strawberries and ice-cream in space). The media was mostly preoccupied with the fact that she chose to wear a nappy in order to save on journey time.

I think she'd become institutionalised by NASA and simply assumed that all long journeys require major sanitary padding. I don't know why she went to such trouble; I usually pop in a Tenalady and dose myself up on Imodium whenever I'm en route to shoot up a love rival, mind you, National Express coaches do make regular stops for toilet breaks, so there's not usually the need.

So, there you are then: I think that being an astronaut would be quite exciting and I haven't even mentioned the glory of the universe, the beauty of the stars, the miracle of space travel and of course Buzz Aldrin's face lift. Face: the final frontier. Yes, Buzz Aldrin's had a face-lift.
Well, I suppose he's a celebrity and of course there's the self esteem issues that resulted from his not being the first man to set foot on the moon.

But, have I left it too late to realise my own dreams of space travel? I'm a bit old and fat, BUT one thing in my favour is the fact that I'm a woman. Ages ago I read an article in the Sunday papers* (so it must be true) that revealed the startling fact that when the first batch of potential astronauts was being trained, the women came out top in all the tests and were deemed to be most suitable for space travel.

Their first advantage was the fact that on average, they were smaller than the men, but they fared better on all the other tests for stamina and whatever else you need to be a good astronaut. This gave NASA a dilemma. The whole space race was all about machismo, especially given that the Russians were trying to get there first. From a PR point of view, sending a crew of women up on the first space voyages looked wrong. Also, there was the risk of public outcry had everything gone wrong. If the women had failed to return, their suitability would have been called into question and also NASA would have looked bad for putting a load of weak and feeble women in harm's way. So, it was decided to send the blokes because they looked the part. Epic voyages of discovery are always made by blokes aren't they?
 
It's obvious that women make better astronauts though isn't it? Everything floats about in space so you constantly have to tidy up. Also, I skim-read half of another article in one of the Sunday papers* and it revealed that the dust in space is intelligent. (Further evidence that dust is intelligent comes from the writing of the words 'clean me' that can always be seen in the dust on the back of white vans). Well, what the article actually said was that scientists have shown that dust 'comes to life' in space and forms some kind of helix structure similar to DNA. It was speculated that this showed how life originated out of the dust in space. So, as we all know, men can't even see dust, so what use will they be in space that could be full of dust that has the potential to evolve into new (potentially deadly!) life. Send the women up there with a can of Pledge and some dusters, that's what I say. Funnily enough, I was thinking about this as I was having a cleaning frenzy the other day, and guess what? My dust contains glitter.

Finally, as evidence of my suitability for space travel, I'd like to add the following poem, which should prove that I would be quite handy if any of the heat resistant tiles fall off the space shuttle whilst I'm at the space station.

Grouting

There is no doubting
The quality of that there grouting
Without it the tiles would not be flouting
The law of gravity
(which is more than can be said for the glue that they use on the space shuttle)

*There's no bibliography, but if you click on the highlighted text you should find a host of badly researched articles and blogs that support my wild and outrageous claims. Hope this helps! HTxx

2 comments:

  1. I think you should be let loose on Space - it needs some sorting out, card indexing and such. But more important, it needs some lovely songs. Neil Armstrong never sang stuff like "Prostitute's Handbag". Jx

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  2. I think you have a point there Jon. I quite like the idea of card indexing the universe though it might take some time...I should probably stick to the songs, after all I did lose my heart to a starship cleaner! HTxx

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