Random firings of neurons

I really haven’t been feeling it the last couple of days when it comes to writing. I don’t know why, perhaps it’s because … hell, if I knew I’d fix it. I started writing something yesterday and got pretty far into it, and then realized it was crap. You may see it, you may not, but that won’t happen until it’s up to snuff.

What I think happened to my muse lately is this: I started this thing almost a year ago to talk about politics and life and art and drinking and this, that and the other. But mainly politics. Anyone who knows me knows I enjoy a good debate. We were in the midst of a hotly contested presidential election with an almost, but not quite, foregone outcome.

But now, now the political debate has almost all but disappeared from the public discourse. It’s almost like it was 1994 again. Or, better, 2002. At least in ’94 we had one party in the White House and another in the Speaker’s chair.

Does everyone remember what it felt like in 2002? A widely popular wartime president called 1600 home, and a GOP almost super-majority ruled the Hill and K Street with iron fists. To criticize them and what they were doing was un-American and, when you get right down to it, damn near traitorous. Reporters stopped asking questions and digging up the facts and we the people accepted because we didn’t want to be accused of “forgetting 9-11.”

As if that could ever happen.

But guess what folks? We now have an even more wildly popular president and even bigger majorities controlling the House and Senate, it’s just this time they’re all democrats. The words have changed, but the venom behind them hasn’t.

Now, instead of being an un-American traitor when you voice a dissenting opinion, you’re a closed-minded, reactionary hillbilly Klan member.

My personal political leanings are mixed up enough I can be sure I have at least one that will piss off folks on either side of the aisle with equal vehemence. Such as:

I fear a government controlled by Democrats as much as – if not a little more than – the previous Republican leadership.

While I don’t personally agree with Miss California, she has every right to believe and say she is against gay marriage. She also has the right to not be attacked for her opinion.

I think Congress needs to turn the volume down from 11 on the whole he said-she said gotcha investigation into who knew what and when and why and how and where and who was doing the enhanced interrogations. Is it wrong to smash someone’s fingers and toes joint-by-joint with a ball peen hammer as you water board them? Perhaps. Were innocent lives saved and bad guys shot in the head because of the results? Also, perhaps.

A conversation I had last week is a good example. As I was warming up in my reply to a “violence is never the answer and true strength comes from inside” type statement, the discussion was shortstopped by the other party. I believe my comments about man being a top predator (not the top, but a top but that’s something for another day) and national power coming from the barrel of a gun were call cynical and considered not worthy of serious reflection.

Cynical? Perhaps. But true? History would seem to back me up. At least for now.

Anyway, I could go off on this tangent forever, so I’ll get back on point. And my point is we should be careful what we wish for, ‘cause we just might get it.

Also, why the hell do the new razors make it so bloody hard for me to shave right under my nose? Seriously, have they even tested these blades?

And, before I forget, thanks be to Saint Margarita on the Rocks that Ted Mosby, architect, did NOT get back together with Stella on this week’s HIMYM. He told her how he felt, comedy ensued, and he was left standing on the sidewalk with his yellow umbrella.

Up like a cannonball

A couple of things caught my eye this morn as I perused my online NYT, but I’ll get to them in just a minute.

Let me say this: “ Hey MOSTFAMOUSNAMESHOUTEDINAMOVIEEVER!!!!”

Last night on HIMYM, Ted Mosby, architect, finally got around to telling his kids the beginning of the story of how he met their mother. After a couple years wait, I might add.

I won’t go into all the funny details (in case some of you have it on your divver and haven’t watched yet) except to say Barney nails a body builder chick by accident (she calls it her cardio) and Ted Mosby, architect, meets the eyes of a woman he’s known as they wait at a crosswalk. But I say too much.

So, without giving too much away, I hope the next thing that happens is she introduces him to another woman who becomes those silent kids’ mother. Because if it’s her, I’m giving up on the show. The only thing making her his true love would do is turn Ted Mosby, architect, into Ted Mosby, total pussy push-over.

I can handle Barney having the hots for Robin, but Ted cannot fall for this woman. I’d much prefer he fall for Victoria, the baker. At least she didn’t leave him at the altar.

Ground Control to Major Tom
This article in the NYT, (Finally! He got to where he was going) about the shuttle heading to the Hubble, reminded me of my very first research paper in 7th grade about the shuttle. And by 7th grade research paper I mean copying information about the shuttle out of the library’s encyclopedia and a copy of NatGeo at home and presenting it as research.

The article got me to thinking. Do you still stop and look at the TV when a shuttle takes off? Is anyone else still amazed, and I mean deep down tingle in your stomach amazed, when you see those men and women ride a controlled bomb into, through and out of our atmosphere?

I’ll admit it, I do. If you don’t I can’t understand. Let me try something here: Imagine you’re you, and today’s still May 5, but instead of 2009, it’s 1961. Just 48 years ago. The Commie Reds have beaten the True Blue Defenders of Freedom and Right into space the month before and the defenders are now rolling the dice.

Down in Florida a young Naval Aviator, name of Alan B. Shepard Jr. is sitting high up in his 60-cubic-foot capsule (for reference, a 3x3x6-foot box is 54-cubic feet) and is waiting to blast off. To become the first American to ride a rocket toward space. The rocket in question attached to his Freedom 7 capsule is a retired Redstone missile. It's 60 feet long and about 6 feet in diameter and provides 78,000 pounds of thrust.

Pee-U-Knee. Puny by today’s standards, but it'd still kill ya.

When Atlantis launches toward Hubble next week, it will ride not only its three main engines (400,000 pounds of thrust each), but two, TWO!, solid rocket boosters. These boosters might have even scared Shepard, John Glenn, Gordo Cooper and company. (According to Mike Mullane, author of Riding Rockets, who flew the shuttle three times, they scare today’s astronauts.) Measuring in at 149 feet long and 12 feet in diameter, the SRBs together produce almost (finger to the corner of the mouth a la Dr. Evil) 6 million pounds of thrust.

Now imagine that Shepard’s back on Earth safe and sound. How do you feel? Our first steps in space were so small I’d barely dare to call them baby steps, but we’ve been there.

And we went back.

Imagine now that it’s July 20, 1969, just a little more than eight years later. We’ve gone from clawing toward the stars to walking on another planet.

July 20 is such an important day, in fact, you take your 2-month-old son from his bed and lay him in front of the black-and-white TV so that someday he can say he watched man walk on the moon for the first time.

And we’ll be back.

I don’t know about you, but if I’m near a TV next Monday, you can be sure I’ll take the eight and a half or so minutes — the time from lift-off to MECO (main-engine cut-off in orbit) — to watch man head toward the stars and inspire me one more time.