Just like Spacers do.

So I was thinking about how hilarious all the activities that are pretty commonplace here on Earth would be if performed in OUTER SPACE. The defining features of Outer Space are, of course, varying temperatures that will either freeze or melt your face off, romantic views, and a pervasive feeling of insignificance. Sounds a bit like Kentucky right? But the most important characteristic that really sets it apart is ZERO G, which stands for zero gravity or maybe 0*g where g is the value of the Earth's gravitational pull at a point on its surface (9.81 m/s^2). I want to note real quick that this term is sort of misleading since at any point in space (including right here!), every object in the universe is exerting gravity over you although most small and more distant objects create such low forces that their effect is impossible to detect or feel and also opposite and equal gravitational forces might cancel each other's effects but still exist; so not necessarily Zero gravity but close enough.

Anyway, drinking water in zerog is awesome. You know how drinking water on Earth can be fun sometimes like after a run or when you haven't had it in a couple days? But water on earth sucks because it hurts when it goes up your nose and too much of it kills you and its mainly just really heavy. In zerog water comes in the shape of gobstoppers that you can throw at your friend or flirtee pretty easily. Water doesn't go up your nose or kill you because you could easily push it away from you. Relatedly, water isn't heavy because weight is a measure of the effect of gravity on an object and in zerog there is no gravity and thus no weight!

This brings me to my next point: gettin' it on. Getting it on in space would be awesome. Even if you've gained a few pounds your assumed lover won't notice because of the aforementioned lack of weight. Zerog can also act as an excuse for your embarrassingly poor performance ("This is my first time...in space!" "I swear this has never happened to me before...in space!" "I love you so much...in space!" etc.). A certain amount of acrobatic skill might be helpful but if you are into S&M and the like everything should be ok. I'm not sure if anyone has done the deed in zero G yet but I imagine it will end up happening a lot because of all those romantic views I was talking about and the endless possibilities for flirting with zero g water.

Driving a car in space would not be fun because you wouldn't be able to move and you would still be polluting. Taking a bike for a 'spin' would be a blast however because you could do a bunch of tricks by changing your center of gravity. Bikes: 2 Cars: 0

Also I heard that some people who do drugs feel like they are in space. I don't know if doing drugs in space would be awesome because you might not even notice the difference.

Riding in a hot air balloon in space would be awesome just for the looks on people's faces.

Yes Pinkies

I decided to create this list because I was just folding my pinkies in to see how it'd look. I realized I'm not ready to give them up.

Things Pinkies are Good for:

• "Enter"
• "Shift"
• noses
• getting in the way when holding hands
• coming together to form "the steeple"
• playing stringed instruments
• promising
  
• Dr. Evil impersonations

The Unbearable Lightness of The Future

Everyone is wrong about the future. Man can only be certain about the present moment. But is that quite true either? Can he really know the present? Is he in a position to make any judgment about it? Certainly not. For how can a person with no knowledge of the future understand the meaning of the present? If we do not know what future the present is leading us toward, how can we say whether this present is good or bad, whether it deserves our concurrence, or our suspicion, or our hatred?
--Milan Kundera, "Ignorance"

I'm reading "Ignorance," a book about returning, by Czech/French writer Milan Kundera.

And The Moon Be Still As Bright.

In response to Carrie's previous post:
I think the best solution to this problem of being utterly forgotten in the future is to freeze yourself for a few hundred years so that when you thaw back out you can be like, "Hey, remember when I just jumped out of that time capsule? That was awesome!" Hopefully others will agree but in any case it is doubtful they would have forgotten that you did that by the time you popped that question. Unless the world as we know it had been destroyed by a sudden violent uprising of goldfish. Hmmm, I guess it isn't a foolproof plan after all.

I also want to share a short passage from The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury:

"His name was Benjamin Driscoll, and he was thirty-one years old. And the thing he wanted was Mars grown green and tall with trees and foliage, producing air, more air, growing larger with each season; trees to cool the towns in the boiling summer, trees to hold back the winter winds. There were so many things a tree could do: add color, provide shade, drop fruit, or become a children's playground, a whole sky universe to to climb and hang from; an architecture of food and pleasure, that was a tree. But most of all the trees would distill an icy air for the lungs, and a gentle rustling for the ear when you lay nights in your snowy bed and were gentled to sleep by the sound."

Sound familiar? A hippy tree-hugger who is colonizing Mars!

I'm going to take this moment to reveal something that I feel all the she-man science-fiction haters out there don't seem to understand. Science Fiction is simply a method of looking outside your self by stepping into a world where all your unrelenting prejudices, assumptions, and preconceptions are rendered completely irrelevant and thus melt away like so much of your face near the sun's corona. From this vantage of such facelessness we are able to view with eyes so blinded by impossibility ourselves but now without the things we thought we could see getting in the way of how things are. And now, since the future is really just a fiction for us so far yet our predictions of it firmly rooted in extrapolations of what we seem to have experienced logically in the past that it can be deemed science fiction by nature and thus this post is applicable to this blog. SF isn't about making it with sexy aliens or blowing up insectoid mother ships or traveling into the past, it is about the fact that we want to make it with sexy yous and blow up mothers and win the lottery. I think I got that right, right?

Also, for all those who don't like to check all the time and be disappointed that no new posts have occured there is a nifty little feature at the very bottom of this page where you can "subscribe" to this blog and therefore be notified of updates through "Google Reader". This exciting old technology is called an RSS Feed and is available for many other sites and it's pretty convenient so checks.

History

A Stone Jug

A bulldozer digging a pond
on my mother's family's land
unearths two stoneware jugs
buried four feet in the ground,
one broken and one intact.
Who put them there? When? Why?
We suppose, but can't explain.
Those who have come and gone
are gone. How lost to us
they are whose lives passed here
in the sun's beauty and sorrow!
And who in a hundred years
will know us as we are
in our present living and dying
here under the very sun, lost
to the future as to the past?

-Wendell Berry

The more I discover about The Future (that the world will end in 2012, snakes of zero thickness will continue to eat themselves, there will be no fresh water, holodecks will be the next Lynagh's (or we will go to Lynagh's via holodexing!)), the more I find myself thinking about the past.

What about time travel to the past? No way. I think the first time travelers to the past will be fun-ruiners, spying on everybody with wide eyes and writing things down and taking pictures with their futuristic image-capturers and always suggesting better ways to do things.

So I wrote a poem about the things I've been thinking about for the past few hours here in a coffee shop in Louisville.

Rumors

And who in a hundred years
will know us as we are
in our present living and dying
here under the very sun, lost
to the future as to the past?
(Wendell Berry, "A Stone Jug")

This is what the first man thought
as he pierced the skin of the first roaming animal
and watched her children scatter
as she sank to the earth.

This is what the first woman wondered
as she dropped the seeds of the first fruits
and watched the sprouts bloom
into a tree she wouldn't outlive.

They pondered the assurance of this constant renewal aloud,
quietly, in a language we no longer understand,
a simplicity we have forgotten over time,
as instantly as a twig is stamped, snapped.

This is an assurance growing steadily weaker
as we forget the future, as the land ever changes,
as it is dug and excavated,
developed and exhausted.

This is what we know:
only what has been passed down.
Stories and symbols,
artifacts and imprints.
Still, they are only rumours.

The The The ThThThThT-T-T-T...Future.

In the future we'll be able to go up to 3 seconds back in time so we can live our entire life as if it were a techno song.

In the future we'll be able to go forward 3 seconds in time so that we'll can live for 3 seconds longer.

In the future we'll increase the speed of our life spans to 3 seconds so that we can evolve more quickly into plasma computer gods.

In the future we'll be able to stop time, effectively rendering the future and this blog irrelevant and moot.

In the future we'll be able to escape from penitentiaries by absorbing and subsequently shooting lightning out of our appendages all the while making denim look hilarious (Ok I stole that one from Ernest Goes To Jail).

Survey Can't Decide

Gah! Carrie how could you make me choose between Blade Runner and Bowie! I've never actually seen The Man Who Fell From Earth but I voted for it anyway because Jareth sees all and if she ever kisses me he'll turn me into a prince...of Eternal Stench.

But the new revision of Blade Runner: The Final Cut comes out tomorrow, Friday! I've already got my advance tix. Oh, too bad you can't see it because it is only playing in NYC, albeit even only one theatre here. But its coming out on DVD as well so check it out if you've never seen it, this should be the best version ever.