Lost In Space

Historically speaking when most countries enter the space race their initial payloads often include monkeys, chimps, or other kinds of animals to test the viability of aircraft or whatever it is that interests them regarding their dabbling in space flight.

Russia, which took the early lead over the world in the so-called space race, got dibs on the first animal in space as they sent up a dog, called Laika, on Sputnik 2. Once the rocket landed and the Ruskies realized that no one wanted to clean the capsule most countries veered off into using monkeys or some other kind of ape-like creature in their off planet voyage experiments.

That’s what led the US into using, at first Rhesus monkeys, which reportedly are very similar to humans and are renowned as the source of the RH factor in humans that deals with positive and negative blood types. In the early days of US Rocketry there were many accidents. Dozens of these poor Rhesus monkeys died during the experimental process. Sometimes the rocket would explode, other times the monkeys had a hard time landing them and would crash, still others suffocated due to poor ventilation.

Eventually, groups like the SPCA and early predecessors of the renowned PETA organization of today stressed NASA to such an extent that they resorted to using chimpanzees. Despite reports, Cheetah, the famous movie chimp from Tarzan movies of the 50’s was not chosen to chimp one of those early capsules. Instead, NASA employed Ham and Enos for the dangerous tasks. It’s interesting to note that in this case science resorted to two Biblical names for their chimps; obviously such a thing would not be permitted in today’s society where science and religion are kept separate for much the same reason that one keeps their matter and antimatter in separate locations.

Anyway, we, that is the US, and the Ruskies started this path of sending animals out to scout out our missions before we would think of sending a human into space. But eventually, we ran out of specimens to execute and had to resort to humans. Reportedly, there is no truth to the rumor that Bonzo and his assistant, some guy named Ron Regan, were the final US representatives in the early space probes.

Russia was first to put a man in space sending Yuri Gagarin up on Vostok 1 on April 12 1961.  Not to be outdone, the US followed quickly by sending Dr. Timothy Leary into space shortly thereafter, and to one-up the Russians Dr. Leary accomplished the feat without using a rocket. That record has yet to be broken, although many dropouts have made the attempt, especially in the late ‘60s. Wikipedia, where much of the data in this article comes from, reported that a rock and roll group was the first to record an album on the far side of the moon as early as 1973. That feat was accomplished four years after John Lennon and the rest of the mop-heads made the first lunar landing in the Sea of Tranquility on July 21, 1969. Contrary to other reports, Buzz Lightyear was the first man to land, and return, from the moon.

Other countries have since attempted to get on the lunar express, as it were. Argentina entered the race in December of 1969 in a feat they called Operacion Navidad when they used a two-stage Rigel rocket to send Juan Valdez into outer space. His space vehicle only made it 60 kilometers into the air before striking an odd looking man in a red suit riding some kind of space sled. The resulting loss of oxygen sent Valdez on his way to being a coffee bean inspector for the National Federation of Coffee Growers in Columbia, where he was killed in a crossfire between Pablo Escobar and Manuel Noriega, at least that’s how I remember it.

Also entering the space race recently were France, Spain, India, Pakistan, Ethiopia, and our neighbors to the north, Canada. It took the Canadians a long time getting there because the McKenzie brothers, long lost members of the Rhesus monkey family, flatly refused to go without a decent supply of Molson’s Ale.

As you can see, getting in on the space race is the thing to do if you are going to be seen as a credible country in this day and age. So it doesn’t come as a surprise to hear from Iran that they too have entered the race. And, as did so many of those late comers before them, they too opted to send a monkey on their first trip to the firmament. In keeping with the good political form of the United States of America let me be the first to congratulate President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and wish him a happy return.

Roast Goose: the new Scarsdale Diet

No doubt about it. Something has to be done with the proliferation of these illegal alien Canadian geese. It’s not so much their taking over the small ponds and lakes in the area as much as it is their attitude that the world, or in this case the traffic around Southpark Mall in Colonial Heights, must stop and wait for them.

They force you to stop and wait while their squadron passes in review, all grey and black with the white neck stripe, marching in lockstep. And you have to stop. If you don’t, they start attacking your car and pecking at the door panels and fender wells… err, don’t ask how I know that.

Anyway, these illegals are dining on food that would normally go to some good old American ducks, like mallards, mergansers, or cormorants. It’s appalling. They are supposed to be migratory birds, and yet they refuse to migrate. I think they are just lazy and don’t want to fly the rest of the way to Hudson Bay or some other area of the great white north. Still, you would think they ought to get some kind of green card or something in order to stay here.

So what to do about our local goose problem? Simple.

Google goose and see what happens.

Well what happens is that someone already has come up with the perfect idea. In Scarsdale, N.Y., home of the original Scarsdale Diet, they were tired of having to deal with loud, aggressive, and messy geese. So the town officials decided that sometimes the old-fashioned way of dealing with geese is the best way.

Yup that’s right, the people in Scarsdale have started a new diet fad and it revolves around geese. According to CBS News, there have been all kinds of complaints about the geese from their droppings to the fact that they have actually attacked some people. Apparently, the USDA has offered to bump off the flock and then haul the carcasses to The Food Bank for Westchester.

No question such draconian measures have riled people on both sides. A group called the Friends of Animals states that killing the geese would be both brutal and a waste of tax dollars. But some of the local inhabitants assert that knocking off the geese is the right thing to do, because they are really annoying. The story online even has a link to favorite goose recipes, so you know where the Internet comes down on this argument.

Truly, we have much the same problem right here in good old Virginia. And, it’s not just at Southpark Mall. Once while driving on Puddledock Road I was forced to stop and allow three phalanxes of the birds pass by. I am sure everyone has their own favorite place where the illegal invasion is being carried out.

For me, I kind of like the Scarsdale diet plan. In fact, with all the hungry and homeless in the Tri-Cities bolstering the local feeding programs with some nice, fresh goose meat would more than likely be welcomed by everyone.

I’m certain it wouldn’t take too much to get Colonial Heights City Council to go along with the idea. Think of how it could play out, the local bow hunters would have an opportunity to ply their trade with something other than the deer in your back yard, the local police would be able to practice shooting live targets with their handguns in and around the Wal-Mart area, and anyone else who might be interested in taking it to the Canucks would be welcome to give it a try.

In reality, it isn’t much different than the Python Round Up the state of Florida is sponsoring this month. But, in this case, we get the side benefit of feeding the hungry and the homeless.

Win-win I say. Except if you’re a goose.

But then if the geese were a bit better behaved they wouldn’t have gotten themselves into this kind of a bind. Too bad people don’t eat seagulls.

All the world's a critic...

So what’s a guy to do when his job is to be a critic? All day long, and, in all honesty, pretty much all night long, too, all I do is point out things that aren’t exactly right. It’s the downfall of being an editor (good or bad), a movie reviewer, an English professor, or anyone whose main existence revolves around pointing out deficiencies.

I have been writing for money since 1982 and over the years have developed an eye for writing that is not exactly correct. I would say that it bothers me, but it really doesn’t bother me much. In fact, all it really does is provide insight into the workings of the writer’s brain. That’s how it turns out good or bad.

I don’t really have any feelings, per se, when it comes to reviewing language and correcting an errant verb or adjective, or perhaps a comma slipping out of its appointed place. It’s just what you do. But it does make things tough at times.

When I was in college, one of my instructors told a tale about MFA student writers vs English Ph.D. candidates. The writers, who don’t like to adhere to such stilted guidelines as rules, called the Ph.D. candidates “Feds,” like Federales, or the FBI, or G men, but G men may be giving them way too much credit.

They were the writing police, the thought police, and the people who come to criticize a writer’s endeavor merely because they don’t like the construction or they spot a slipping modifier. Typically, they are accused of a lack of creativity (which is inherently true), as they lambaste someone’s creative work because a word is misspelled or due to some other unpardonable grammar sin. Such is the life of the sedentary grammatist, not grammarian.

When it comes to writing, or really any other subjective work of art, such as a painting, a play, a movie, there will always be the Siskel-and-Eberts of the world. Someone always wants to toss the first tomato or lettuce head or even just some kind of disparaging word.

The idea behind criticism is to lob your vindictive commentary not at the author, but rather at the work itself. So in essence, you can say that you are not particularly fond of the way Michelangelo created Judgment Day, the fresco that adorns the wall of the Sistine Chapel. You can say the colors are bad, or the imagery is off, or that it’s just out of balance or whatever. But can you really separate the works from the author? While we may be attempting to identify a fine line, there also may not be a line to identify.

My point is that a work of art, even at the lowest levels, is so intrinsically tied to the author that any disparagement of the work tends to land squarely on the head of the author. If the author’s vision of the world doesn’t in some way meet our vision of the world, why then we as critics don’t like it and tend to dismantle it.

It really doesn’t take much to prove that point. For instance, how much did it bother you when you were in grade school, and even to some extent college, when the teacher graded your papers with a red pen? Did you feel that the ink was in some way your own blood spilled on the paper? It’s ok, most people feel that way. It’s why, when I am forced to critique someone’s art (writing or other types of art), I veer from using red ink.

Ultimately, criticism, as applied to the world of art, is more about opinion. And opinion is about aesthetics and to some extent knowledge of the subject. In essence, it is the science of judgment and taste as it relates to that specific idiom, whether it is writing, painting, acting, film making, or any other endeavor that can be construed as art.

It really doesn’t matter what a person’s background is. Everyone develops their own sensibilities when it comes to taste, and they apply their taste to whatever they encounter in life and the result often amounts to “I like that” or “I don’t like that.” Only critics, however, take the time to try to express in words what it is they like or don’t like about a particular thing. So they go on record espousing their opinions about this or that or the other. And truly, it doesn’t make them right or wrong. An opinion cannot be nailed down like that. Opinions are personal perceptions of things in general. And for that, you can take them or leave them.

So too is criticism. It’s the opinion of someone who may or may not be an authority on a subject. You may find that the critic’s opinion is somewhat similar to your own and then you may find it is nothing like your own. Either way, you make a decision and go with that. Wait a second! If you make a decision then you yourself actually become a critic, at which point nothing we’ve been talking about really matters.

Never mind just ignore this treatise and have a nice day.