Job Opening? Haters say "No! Not for YOUR Type!"

As usual, I am scanning the news to see what the opportunities are for me when I decide to grow up. I still have dreams of glory and in them, I am a lottery winner, baseball player, rock and roll astronaut. You know, like Buckaroo Banzai, were he a bit more skilled and motivated. So far, I have not reached any of these particular heights, imagine them though I might. Walter Mitty is a role model.

So imagine my delight and/or surprise when I saw the following headline on a news feed that I scan through hoping that I have recently discovered the cure for something important and possibly bad.

NASA is Hiring its Next Class of Astronauts

Next class, you say? Well, certainly this then isn't their first class, and, knowing how long NASA has been around, this probably isn't second class. So it is third and beyond, and if there's one thing I have heard people say about me is that I'm third class! So I figure to fire up the ol' resume, polish it with the appropriate mix of exaggerations, misrepresentations and all-out lies, and send it over. Then I sip margaritas until the mailman (assuming those things still exist..."margaritas"...hmmm) brings me a letter asking me my helmet size, telling me where to show up and listing how much they will pay me.

Then, a rookie mistake. I read the article. I'm pretty cool with what it has to say until I get to this section:

Those interested in applying will need to be a US citizen and have an advanced degree in a STEM field, along with at least two years of related professional experience or at least 1,000 hours of pilot-in-command time in jet aircraft.

What the hey? a STEM field? Does the E stand for English? [note -- I have since looked it up, and apparently, no, it doesn't. Bastards.] To qualify to be in space one must be a science person? Didn't we beat all you science people up for a reason? So that WE could go to space. (Truth be told, English majors didn't beat the science people up. We wrote odes about how the history students beat the science people up while the math people soiled themselves.) Why the heck must one be able to do calculus to put on a space suit and eat globs of water that seem to float around space ships? I'm not trying to cite the Simpsons or anything (In Rod We Trust) but doesn't space need liberal arts majors? Someone has to sketch the rugged Mars landscape. Someone has to weave the baskets of Venus, and someone, yes, someone has to write the lines that distill the inexpressible experience of sneezing in zero-G so that the huddled masses (hey, STEM people! That's a "sonnet"...look it up. Idjits.)can share in the joy of spacely sprockets! I want to be that liberal arts guy. Who is NASA to shut me out.

What it is, is discrimination is what it is. I'm calling you out, NASA. This bigotry and hatred, this bias against those of us not mathematically inclined, plain and simple, is wrong. "Inclined plane." HA! Our society never gives some of us any chance to succeed. Check your privilege, nerd. How come you get to supercollide stuff but I'm stuck unsplitting infinitives? How many sociologists does it take to fly the space shuttle? Apparently, NONE because they don't know about Ohm physics, just home sickness.

And a thousand hours flying a jet plane? No one has that. You have to land SOMETIME.

I am not afraid of NASA. Bring it on. You have awakened a beast, though one with only one back, but that back is up! What can NASA do to me? NOT send me to the moon, Alice? How can we allow genders to bend (and no, doubt, vice versa), lives to matter/energy (since they are, ultimately, the same thing) and animals to be treated ethically (like with an organic red wine reduction) and not allow those of us who are still pretty sure that 2+2=imagery the chance to space out for real the way we always did in science class? If the movies have taught us anything, then "they should have sent a poet" should be a dire warning, not a post hoc lament, tenses be damned. Did Laika have an advanced dog-ree in something STEMy? Was Ham let fly just to prove that he remained a monkey on re-entry so nothing descended from him?

I demand the same rights as a dog and or chimp, or a variety of bees and other micro-organisms! I want to hurtle headlong into the future, meet aliums and stare God in the left ear and ask him "what's the deal with airline food?" I want the flipping ice cream!

Writing a thesis that needs a colon in its title ("Advanceed Studies in Electrical nonsense: Einstein was a good start") does not qualify one to be able to fly a space ship. I nominate me to be the first (well, most recent) liberal arts person to refuse to sit in the back of the space ship. I call space shotgun which is, in my new short story, a thing.

To thine own self be a liar

After a series of travel posts, I think it is time I get back to my core content: ridiculous musings about the world which have very little value to anyone but provide a release valve so that I don't corner my few remaining friends and tell them dumb thoughts at any given moment.

I blog to save those friendships.

ANyway, yesterday was the Superbowl, which was neither super, nor shaped like a bowl. Discuss. So I watched. By the end of the game, some team won. This often happens and I'm generally at peace with that. I subsequently saw a news article about how a particular person in the sports world tweeted his prediction for the game and predicted the final score exactly. That's awesome, right? Then, a young man's fancy turns to time travel.

"Wouldn't it be great," I thought to myself, for none else was near, "if I could watch the game, and then travel back in time to alert myself to the final score so that I could bet on it and make a bajillion dollars. Or maybe, I could just make a very public prediction, be right and gain fame and fortune through supposed psychich abilities! And the joke's on them because I'm not psychic -- I just have mastered time travel!"

Good thoughts, all, and enough to keep me from focusing on more pressing problems like driving a car, or breathing. But then I really started thinking the process all the way through. Imagine if I'm sitting in my living room, as I am wont to do, and suddenly me-from-the-future pops in and says "quick, write this down...the lottery numbers for tomorrow are _________" with the blank replaced by actual numbers as the lottery rarely announces blanks as winners. What would I do, confronteds with this new and life-changing information? Would I run out to the local lottery-store (do those things have names?) and buy me a ticket and play the aforesaid numbers?

Wait...that would be scanned.

Here's the thing: What if I'm lying. To me. Now why would I do that? Because deep down, and also in a variety of areas closer to the surface, I'm a jerk. Wouldn't it be a great practical joke to use the time travel to mess with me? And it isn't like I would be doing it just to be spiteful, because I hate to see ANYONE succeed, even me. I can make it into an object lesson about taking shortcuts and not earning things, or cheating the system. I'm not saying I WOULD do that, but I could, and be in a morally advantageous position, looking down on myself. And then, my current loser-self will continue the trend, armed with a newfound bitterness and self loathing (which can be externalized!)

The bottom line is that I know myself well enough to know not to trust myself. I might be both too nice and too evil for my own good. Or bad. I'm not sure.

So if I show up to any of you and claim to be from the future, you can feel free to admire my technical/scientific acumen, but don't trust any information I give you that you might benefit from. But you never know: I'm a mean enough person to tell you the truth when you most expect it.