Congrats Sergei Krikalev
By now the person who spent the most of his life in space. 748 days and still counting. I wish it was me. But ofcourses, such wishes are stupid. I just finished reading Stupid White Men by Michael Moore, and I wouldn´t want to look stupid, or white, or looka-like-a-man(MAD TV anyone?).
More than two whole years in orbit, in weightlessness, in a clinical environment with humming fans and shit 24/7, with the best view anywhere in known habitable universe. And all you gotta do is work all the time(how many hours off, mr. Krikalev?), put your butt on the line all the time, not be antisocial to that one other guy or gal you´re gonna be spending the next 6 months with. Not feel alone when you´re stranded on a leaking MIR station while the nation that put you up there(the Soviet Union) dissolves below you. To not be afraid. To excel in school, in engineering and maths, to fly a plane as well as anyone ever have. To be the discoverer of a variety of unknown diseases(by contracting them), be humanitys number guinea pig, and not least, to want it.
Somehow, I don´t think that you think that you´re sacrificing anything, apart from rock-clubs and vodka. Maybe you don´t like rock. Or vodka. But if you didn´t, what are you doing circling our globe instead if living on it? Isn´t that what I do, in rock-clubs, with vodka? What challenge made you want to do it?
Prove the nay-sayers wrong?
Boredom?
To simply not be, on the ground at least, in the Soviet empire?
To push the frontier of man?(my favourite, you know, to boldly go where no man has bla-bla-bla...)
The science?
The engineering?
Certainly not the flying?
That the earth look prettier from above?
I know nothing of your motives, maybe you got a web-page somewhere where you state them. Or write that your favourite dish is... ...
Haven´t looked for it.
But someday at lot of us earthlings will follow, we will leave the well behind. Bring rock bands and vodka this time. Make a whorehouse out the moon. Unless our gloriuos path towards progress suddenly stops, no next-gen shuttle, no next gen anything. Will you, perhaps, be watching?
It´s 40 degrees celsius and I´m really sweating, no air-condition, no constant hum, but I´m writing in a games arcade and the noise level is really high. Somebody just made the next level on one of the games and it´s playing a tune I haven´t heard before. And I´ve spent alot of time here. It´s two of them in a co-opt, blasting on the screen with the plastic light-sensitive guns like there was no tomorrow. For their in.game characters, there ofcourse isn´t.
Sometimes I will look dreamily at the stars, imagine myself, an old-man, leaving the SOL system, never to return. Head for the nearest star and turn right.
Today started out nice, no clouds, deep blue skies. But now there´s some kind of haze, not really clouds, deep grey skies. It makes me think of pollution, about the arsenic in the water mr. Moore writes about, about Half Life 2(everybody I showed it to in Jersey city said "that looks really like jersey city"). The romantic in me likes to think that it´s the sands of Sahara, born by some unseen wind to the sea, maybe another shore on another continent. The sands of Sahara really does blow here, to this island in the sun, after awhile; you see this thin layer on everything you haven´t cleaned. I suppose you would know mr. Krikalev, from your vantage point up high you can actually see what it is. Pollution. I light another cigarette, I´ll live to be 80 years or more, probably stretching into the 90s. I´ll live past 2012 and 2050 alike. Where will we be? In 2050? Ask me when we´re there.
It has nothing to do with cigarettes, they blame cigarettes for the cancer epidemic, so we won´t go around thinking that it is society itself that causes cancer. I keep my distance, I circle in orbit around society but not the earth itself. In a psychedelic vision i saw humanities progress throughout the universe. Six billion little golden dots moving at massive speed. I saw this from outside, not far outside, I was circling it. Kept there by gravity, and I was not alone, several millions of other people were circling too. I saw the structure of society; it looked like a large blue submarine, then a long thin tube, and a smaller blue submarine, this one puzzles me still. I am used to thinking of society as a pyramid, of the 1% on top, but none of this was present. The top submarine was atleast a third of the mass as the bottom one, maybe it makes no sense. maybe there is no sense to be made.
Would you know? From the top of the world in a $50 billion investment.
Yeah, that´s envy talking. I´m suffering from the seven deadly sins as much as the next man, maybe I´ll get seven deadly diseases.
There has been several cancer deaths in my family. I have not dared go near. I would break down and become hysterical, I have spared them(and me(egoist) of the embarrasment, so I rationalize away my unwillingness to look death in the eye.
When will I face up to reality?
Will I live in dreams forever?
Never growing up, never becoming a responsible citizen?
I´m building another cave, the last one I can afford, here I will spend half a year mulling over scripts and editing material. This time, since I´m away, I´m not doing it myself -my envoy does the work for me(that was irony).
I will either break out of this cave in triumph or in glorious loss(meaning I´ll have to get a job).
I have no real marketable job skills.
I can operate a computer but so can everybody.
I am relatively informed about society but nobody needs that.
I can shoot, direct, edit, splice and dice soundtracks like few others;
but the other few number in their thousands and I´m on the wrong end of the earth.
Nobody is hiring in the entertainment industries, they´re laying off, outsourcing the whole show to cheaper countries. Forget about it. Get a real job.
Ofocurse I could make a jack move, go to Portugal or Ukraine, start my own god damned industry. maybe i should.
Fuck that, light another cigarette, feel the calm. No worries so long as there´s atleast half a pack left, a few beers and a bottle of cheap red wine. Everything a grown man needs. Oh, a woman. I almost forgot.
Forget alot, don´t I? The professor.
b
More than two whole years in orbit, in weightlessness, in a clinical environment with humming fans and shit 24/7, with the best view anywhere in known habitable universe. And all you gotta do is work all the time(how many hours off, mr. Krikalev?), put your butt on the line all the time, not be antisocial to that one other guy or gal you´re gonna be spending the next 6 months with. Not feel alone when you´re stranded on a leaking MIR station while the nation that put you up there(the Soviet Union) dissolves below you. To not be afraid. To excel in school, in engineering and maths, to fly a plane as well as anyone ever have. To be the discoverer of a variety of unknown diseases(by contracting them), be humanitys number guinea pig, and not least, to want it.
Somehow, I don´t think that you think that you´re sacrificing anything, apart from rock-clubs and vodka. Maybe you don´t like rock. Or vodka. But if you didn´t, what are you doing circling our globe instead if living on it? Isn´t that what I do, in rock-clubs, with vodka? What challenge made you want to do it?
Prove the nay-sayers wrong?
Boredom?
To simply not be, on the ground at least, in the Soviet empire?
To push the frontier of man?(my favourite, you know, to boldly go where no man has bla-bla-bla...)
The science?
The engineering?
Certainly not the flying?
That the earth look prettier from above?
I know nothing of your motives, maybe you got a web-page somewhere where you state them. Or write that your favourite dish is... ...
Haven´t looked for it.
But someday at lot of us earthlings will follow, we will leave the well behind. Bring rock bands and vodka this time. Make a whorehouse out the moon. Unless our gloriuos path towards progress suddenly stops, no next-gen shuttle, no next gen anything. Will you, perhaps, be watching?
It´s 40 degrees celsius and I´m really sweating, no air-condition, no constant hum, but I´m writing in a games arcade and the noise level is really high. Somebody just made the next level on one of the games and it´s playing a tune I haven´t heard before. And I´ve spent alot of time here. It´s two of them in a co-opt, blasting on the screen with the plastic light-sensitive guns like there was no tomorrow. For their in.game characters, there ofcourse isn´t.
Sometimes I will look dreamily at the stars, imagine myself, an old-man, leaving the SOL system, never to return. Head for the nearest star and turn right.
Today started out nice, no clouds, deep blue skies. But now there´s some kind of haze, not really clouds, deep grey skies. It makes me think of pollution, about the arsenic in the water mr. Moore writes about, about Half Life 2(everybody I showed it to in Jersey city said "that looks really like jersey city"). The romantic in me likes to think that it´s the sands of Sahara, born by some unseen wind to the sea, maybe another shore on another continent. The sands of Sahara really does blow here, to this island in the sun, after awhile; you see this thin layer on everything you haven´t cleaned. I suppose you would know mr. Krikalev, from your vantage point up high you can actually see what it is. Pollution. I light another cigarette, I´ll live to be 80 years or more, probably stretching into the 90s. I´ll live past 2012 and 2050 alike. Where will we be? In 2050? Ask me when we´re there.
It has nothing to do with cigarettes, they blame cigarettes for the cancer epidemic, so we won´t go around thinking that it is society itself that causes cancer. I keep my distance, I circle in orbit around society but not the earth itself. In a psychedelic vision i saw humanities progress throughout the universe. Six billion little golden dots moving at massive speed. I saw this from outside, not far outside, I was circling it. Kept there by gravity, and I was not alone, several millions of other people were circling too. I saw the structure of society; it looked like a large blue submarine, then a long thin tube, and a smaller blue submarine, this one puzzles me still. I am used to thinking of society as a pyramid, of the 1% on top, but none of this was present. The top submarine was atleast a third of the mass as the bottom one, maybe it makes no sense. maybe there is no sense to be made.
Would you know? From the top of the world in a $50 billion investment.
Yeah, that´s envy talking. I´m suffering from the seven deadly sins as much as the next man, maybe I´ll get seven deadly diseases.
There has been several cancer deaths in my family. I have not dared go near. I would break down and become hysterical, I have spared them(and me(egoist) of the embarrasment, so I rationalize away my unwillingness to look death in the eye.
When will I face up to reality?
Will I live in dreams forever?
Never growing up, never becoming a responsible citizen?
I´m building another cave, the last one I can afford, here I will spend half a year mulling over scripts and editing material. This time, since I´m away, I´m not doing it myself -my envoy does the work for me(that was irony).
I will either break out of this cave in triumph or in glorious loss(meaning I´ll have to get a job).
I have no real marketable job skills.
I can operate a computer but so can everybody.
I am relatively informed about society but nobody needs that.
I can shoot, direct, edit, splice and dice soundtracks like few others;
but the other few number in their thousands and I´m on the wrong end of the earth.
Nobody is hiring in the entertainment industries, they´re laying off, outsourcing the whole show to cheaper countries. Forget about it. Get a real job.
Ofocurse I could make a jack move, go to Portugal or Ukraine, start my own god damned industry. maybe i should.
Fuck that, light another cigarette, feel the calm. No worries so long as there´s atleast half a pack left, a few beers and a bottle of cheap red wine. Everything a grown man needs. Oh, a woman. I almost forgot.
Forget alot, don´t I? The professor.
b
posted by bangskij at 17:34
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