Scotty Beam Me Up

Dennis Tito put up $20 million in 2001 to get to the International Space Station. Now Virgin Atlantic is planning for commercial space flights for about $200,000 per person only six years later. At that incredible rate of shrinkage, the cost of getting into space could be down to $2,000 by 2113. However, even if it takes a lot longer to get close to that level of affordability, I'm excited.

Since I was a really young, I've always harbored dreams of getting into space. Of course I was a Trekkie almost from birth. And the Empire Strikes Back was the first film I ever saw in a movie theater. But the thing that really did it for me was probably The Right Stuff. For those not in the know, that's the excellent but really long movie about the original Mercury program astronauts.

During my entire lifetime the United States has only flown one manned space vehicle, at enormous expense and with significant lost of life. And we've spent over 15 years planning and constructing a space station which, even today, is far from completion according to its original plan. So with all this stagnation juxtaposed against the history of rapid succession from Mercury to Gemini to Apollo to Skylab in the 1960s and early 1970s, my space dreams faded and became buried under the approach of adulthood and "real life." But I never really lost the desire completely.

Today, thanks in large part to the X Prize competition which will likely be completed soon, I've suddenly found myself again thinking about getting up there. Perhaps in a few decades, Mary and I will be ready to blast off. I just hope our experience then won't be as nauseating as the one we had on the new Space Shuttle simulator at Epcot Center last winter.

Dumb and Dumber at the Workplace

1:00pm

Male colleague ate one too many bean burritos for lunch.

3:45pm:

Vanessa and I stand outside of our supervisor’s office discussing important matters. Male colleague races by, briefly acknowledges our presence, “Hi, how are you,” then proceeds inside the men’s bathroom with a stack of papers under his arm. What male colleague is really thinking, “No time for chit chat, there’s some serious damage to be done…I hope they did not see the stack of papers under my arm.”

Note: Men’s bathroom is directly across from my supervisor’s office.

3:45:05pm

The stack of papers under his arm cannot be a good sign.

3:46pm.

Deafening noise erupts from men’s bathroom. The walls start to shake.

3:46:05pm

Hold in your laughter, Mary. You’re talking to a supervisor. Do not look at Vanessa. DO NOT LOOK AT VANESSA.

3:46:07pm

I look at Vanessa. She looks at me. We laugh uncontrollably. Supervisor is oblivious to bathroom noises. Supervisor has a confused look on her face. We try to not laugh too loud, as our male colleague can hear us through the paper-thin walls.

3:46:45pm

All is quiet on the home front. Vanessa and I dry our tears and continue discussion with supervisor.

3:47pm

Another eruption from the men’s bathroom…only this was ten times louder and longer than the first eruption.

3:47:01pm

Vanessa and I end meeting with supervisor. Our laughter cannot be silenced and we proceed back to our office. We mimic Jeff Daniels in Dumb and Dumber. The bathroom scene after he drank the 24oz bottle of laxatives does not come close to doing this event justice. We sit down and kick our legs up in the air, making obnoxious fart noises. I’m surprised my colleague did not race by us holding his cheeks closed with his hands.

4:15pm

Man leaves the bathroom. I hope he washed his hands.

Brief Steelers/Dolphins Post-Game Thoughts

I'll take a win on the road in any shape or form, but what a joke that game was. The Miami "offense" was about as pathetic as a professional outfit can possibly look. They literally don't have a quarterback or running back and their offensive line and wide receiver corps could be described as sub-par at best. As a Steelers fan, I'm almost embarrassed that we let them score even three points in that game.

Also, no Steelers game would be complete without the obligatory Bill Cowher clock management fuck-up. This time, it was at the end of the second quarter when they let 15 to 20 seconds run off the clock for no reason before calling a timeout. Instead of getting another couple cracks at the endzone, they had to settle for a long field goal attempt which they missed. You'd think he might learn after 13 years as head coach.

At least the offense held onto the ball and put some points on the board despite the monsoon conditions. And at least Hines Ward kicks ass beyond belief in any conditions.

Nice Job Pennsylvania

www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/politics/9734038.htm

So how do cops pull over someone like this???

Two hundred and five miles per hour. Or to convert and sound even crazier, that's five and a half kilometers per MINUTE. This guy was ready to go all Back to the Future style on us even without a flux capacitor.

I don't think I could get my hunk o' junk up to 205 even if I swiped a solid rocket booster from NASA and tied it to my roof. Okay, I guess my roof might not be quite strong enough... but you know what I mean.

I didn't pay attention to what state the guy broke two hundred in, but I think we all know it could not have been Pennsylvania. In our state, 205 translates to roughly 750 pot holes per hour. No vehicle could handle that kind of beating.

Tough Ride

I got on the bus at 7:30 this morning still needing to finish some reading for my 8 o'clock Business Organizations class. As it turned out, reading was not in the cards for me on this bus ride.

There was only one seat left when I got on, so I had to grab it because there is no way to safely read from a giant law casebook while standing on a moving vehicle. Unfortunately, the girl next to me was listening to Brittney Spears' "One More Time" on her discman with the volume all the way up. And she was [badly] singing portions out loud. And wildly bobbing her head. And then replaying the song from the beginning every time it ended.

The worst part of this was that it was obvious that the girl had a significant mental disability. So this meant that I was unable to be pissed off or to laugh at her - even if just in my mind - as I normally would. This also made me feel too uncomfortable to ask her to tone it down as I might have done otherwise. Needless to say, I managed to read exactly zero pages during those 15 minutes.

The question here is how should someone handle this situation. On the one hand, you just want to let the girl rock out. But on the other hand, you could both attempt to alleviate your own horrible ear pain and perhaps help the girl by letting her know when something is blatantly outside of society's norms. Or maybe its just best to carry your own headphones and music with you on public transportation to tune out everyone else??

realizing you're an outsider

In the last couple days, despite all the media hoopla about our country being so evenly divided between the parties, I formulated a disturbing idea that I cannot shake: this is not my country.

For the past month or two, I had been force-feeding myself the notion that the Kerry campaign was simply bungling this campaign. I needed an explanation for his inability to break through despite 18 months of continuous bad news from Iraq, no sign of Osama bin Laden or Mullah Omar, a couple years of iffy economic news, and a blatantly unflinching and uncompromising hard-core conservative agenda from an administration which failed to garner any real mandate in the 2000 popular vote.

Now that I reflect more on these election cycles, though, I think the cold, hard reality is that the nation really did shift dramatically to the right over the past 25 years. Bill Clinton was an aberration. Let's face it. The guy A) was a southerner, B) certainly was not a liberal in the mold of LBJ, JFK, or FDR (or John Kerry), C) was a force to be reckoned with on the campaign trail, and D) had big-time help from Ross Perot in 1992 and from the general lameness of the Dole '96 ticket. In 2000, despite basking in the reflected glory of a golden age in American history, an enormous advantage in national experience, great intelligence, and no personal blemishes, Al Gore still lost to a guy who with almost no experience in government or in the use of the English language. And now, despite all the insanity of 2002 through 2004, John Kerry is still in real danger of losing to the same guy in November.

The media can talk all it wants about an evenly divided nation, but I'm not buying it. I think the reality is that if the economy had not been awesome in 2000, Bush could have defeated Gore in runaway fashion. And if this administration had only prosecuted the simpler, justified war in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001 rather than also shooting itself in the foot with the Iraq debacle of 2003-2004, this coming election could have been a near-landslide victory for Bush.

Bottom line: Bush can tout himself as a compassionate conservative with some success. Yet the Kerry campaign must avoid the term liberal as if it was a synonym for Communist. That state of affairs says a lot. Can you imagine John Kerry trying to label himself as the mirror image of a compassionate conservative? At this point, saying something like "I'm a hard-nosed liberal" would be tantamount to political suicide (a la Walter Mondale's famous 1984 "I will raise taxes" speech).

When the Bush campaign spouts its line about John Kerry being out of the mainstream, it hurts because unlike the Swift Boat crap, there is some real truth to it. I guess I am still hopeful for this specific election because the Republicans are stuck with a ticket and a track record that, deep down, even they must know is pretty effing horrible. But the bare fact that this election is close has left me in despair about a future where the GOP will be putting up good candidates. Or at least candidates who are not George W. Bush.

Damn. Being a liberal-bordering-on-socialist sucks right now. Maybe I should just give up. Its no fun being left out in the cold. Where do I sign up to be a NASCAR dad? Are there classes I could take??


In other depressing news, in his Senate campaign against uber-incumbent Arlen Specter, Democrat Joe Hoeffel has resorted to television commercials in which there is an embarrassingly obvious acknowledgement of the fact that Pennsylvania still has no clue who Joe Hoeffel is with only six weeks to go until election day. The TV spots essentially just repeat the name "Joe Hoeffel" a dozen times over 30 seconds with spiffy graphics constantly lighting up the word "Hoeffel" each time the narrator says the name.

If I were a gambling man, I think I'd be ready to wager my first born child on Specter in this one, even with the potential battleground state turnout for Kerry.

"Hockey?" What's that? Some sport or something???

Just to follow up on my post from yesterday. During tonight's six o'clock news, I watched the sports report and the top story was about the Steelers' BACKUP quarterback being listed as questionable on the injury report for Sunday's game. There was not even a mention of today being day one of the NHL lockout. Admittedly, this was on the local channel that's always been weak on hockey coverage, but I was surprised nevertheless.

I still love you hockey... but damn... you are so dead.

FAREWELL HOCKEY

Canada defeated Finland last night in the World Cup final. Then tonight at midnight the current bargaining agreement between NHL players and management expires with no chance of things working out. So who knows when another meaningful hockey game will be played in North America.

I just hope the NHL owners grow some balls and don't cave in. The NHL players are living in a fantasy world. They think they exist in the same place in American sports alongside players from baseball, football, and basketball - and should be paid accordingly. In reality, hockey lags far behind those three in terms of interest and ratings. And also tennis, NASCAR, golf, poker, children's poker, competitive pigeon-feeding, and pretty much any sport out there other than ultimate frisbee. The vast majority of NHL teams are losing money. So eff you NHL players association! Wake up and smell the stench of your own greed.

Yes, it is sad for Pittsburgh. Between their new hotshot draft pick, the return of Mario, the Mark Recchi signing, the hope that Fleury would emerge as a big-time goalie, and how well they played in the final month of last season, I was actually pretty excited for the Pens' 2004-05 season. But I'll be perfectly happy with a nice long lockout if it finally gets the message through to the players. We've got football through January and college basketball through the end of March. Nobody's going to shed a tear over the absence of a hockey league whose product has been in decline since the mid 90s.

Q-RAY, BABY!

Just back last night from Tune-Up. Run did okay, but not good. I personally had a tough weekend playing through a bad cold. Didn't do anything horrible on the field, but everything was just a bit off for me on both offense and defense.

We started 1-2 against real competition which dropped us into a lesser pool. So we had to blow out a few bad teams on Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning just to get into the chumpionship bracket. We then picked up a decent win over a good second tier Houston team and finished with a well played 13-11 loss to Dallas in the chumpionship final leaving us at 5-3 for the weekend - though only 2-3 in real games.

Saw Farrell Sullivan and Joe Gara with Medicine Men. And I saw J Grove in the parking lot for like 90 seconds, but when you're playing eight games of ultimate, you never have enough time to really catch up with folks. I did manage to hang out with Brian Cooke (old school Delaware) for a while during finals. He's still a good guy and a good ultimate player. He's playing co-ed on that strong "Annapolis" team with Dave Lott.

And I saw one hyper awesome play on Saturday:

Some guy chases down a deep pass, but the throw has too much on it and the disc starts heading out of the back of the endzone. The offensive cutter sails out of the back of the endzone, grabs the disc, sends it back towards a nearby teammate for a legit Greatest attempt, and then... the defensive player still trailing the cutter by a few yards leaps up and blocks the attempt dead-on with his CROTCH for a Greatest Cock Block. I'm not sure how fast the disc was moving, but if it hurt, the defensive player did a good job of faking like it didn't. SWEET.

Also, while perusing the "Sky Mall" magazine on the plane ride home in search of a new dumbest item available, I found this.

This sucks! [cough cough]

So we're going to Chicago for the big tournament tonight/this weekend and I just happened to get nice and sick over the past couple days. First time in at least a year. And I have to get on a plane tonight. I hate flying when I'm sick.

Oh well. Hopefully I won't contaminate my whole team this evening.

I think these have been some of my favorite headlines all year... purely because I'm still a Trekkie:

"NASA seeks to recover Genesis capsule"

"Genesis Capsule Slams into Utah Desert"

"NASA recovers Genesis"

Shit, now that NASA's got their hands on Genesis, the upcoming fall election seems like no big deal. We've got to worry about those blood thirsty, power hungry maniacs at NASA holding the world hostage with their terraforming doomsday device!

Morons

Surprise surprise. The Bush administration isn't so compassionate. I guess you Log Cabin Republicans aren't feeling too good about those 10,000+ votes you delivered to "W" down in Florida four years ago, are you?

Suckers.

So now you've decided not to endorse the ticket after being the only gay folks in America to be surprised when Bush unleashed his proposed Federal Marriage Amendment. To get a bit silly, I'd say this sounds comparable to a Jewish Hitler-supporter jumping off the bandwagon around 1938, only after learning of the new "Kill the Jews, EVEN QUICKER" platform.

The Login Cabin Republicans voting for fiscal conservatives? Understandable. Voting for moderate Republicans? Fine, whatever. But a gay group helping put an obvious and unmistakably socially conservative candidate in office four years ago? Now that's some unforgivable stupidity.

EWWWWWW!

So last night towards the end of Run practice, I lay out into a pile of shit. I didn't even realize what happened at first which only made matters worse. After running around and constantly smelling shit everywhere I ran during the next couple minutes, I finally figured out what happened. Unfortunately, by this point, I couldn't even determine which smears on my shirt were mud and which were not.

At the end of practice, I roll around in some wet grass to try to mitigate the damage. I have a major issue now. I've got to get into my car and drive home WITH the shirt. The shit-stained shirt happens to be one that I'm kind of attached to... an old t-shirt Mary gave me a long time ago.

Man, I hate bringing shit home from practice.

Growing up with the slags

[this was something I wrote a year ago which I just discovered on my hard drive]

A place that most of Pittsburgh pretended did not exist... can you think of a better place for children to discover?

Here we were in the middle of one of Pittsburgh's nicer neighborhoods, yet after passing through a few houses' yards and a final line of trees, we find an enormous hidden wasteland. The Nine Mile Run slag dumps. A huge completely empty landscape on the Squirrel Hill side of the Nine Mile Run ravine between Commercial Road and Browns Hill Road where millions of cubic meters of slag were piled up as high as 150 feet during the middle half of the 20th century. Most probably saw only ugliness and a sour reminder of a failing industry. But neither was apparent to us kids.


The slag hills towering over Nine Mile Run

We were not taken there by adults. Nobody told us to go there. Nobody even told us about the place until we asked later. As far as we knew, we were the first human beings to set foot (and bicycle) there in years, or even decades. Nothing tops that in the world of kids. We owned the place - though there was nothing around to own.

This was the mid 1980s. The old Homestead steel mills, though mostly dormant, still stood on the other side of the Mon river. Common childhood knowledge in Pittsburgh still included the raw essentials of steel making. Lots of iron and coal go in. Steel comes out. Slag gets dumped somewhere. Preferably nearby.

Apparently, us few local adventurous kids were not the only ones that still visited the slag dumps after the steel industry dried up. Vandals and car thieves had obviously seen this as the place to deposit the remains of their thefts. There were always a few unclaimed, mostly destroyed, and rusted-out auto bodies scattered at the bottom of the hills.

To adults, this surely elicited "what about the property value? I hope people forget the slag dump still exists" type conversations, but for the kids, it only added to the allure. The image of someone sending a junked car over the edge of the slag hills with a brick on the gas peddle sounded more like a movie than a crime to us youngsters. A highlight activity for us was standing on the edge of the big hills and tossing rocks at the metal frames below. On one very special occasion, one of our rocks actually found its way through a still-intact window below. The winning shot. The sound of intentionally broken glass combined with the lack of any adults within a mile is quite a potent mix for children.

The adventure was not limited to the plateau along the top of the slags, however. When biking along the bottom of Frick park from Regent Square, the marked trail ends at Commercial Road. We knew better, though, and would continue across the road, around the gate, and then under the I-376 bridge to follow horribly polluted Nine Mile Run into the bottom of the slags and on to the river. We'd pass more junked cars littering the route along the creek before reaching The Test. The Test meant navigating an outrageously unsafe and heavily damaged wooden bridge over the creek. Shifting left and right as one crossed the bridge in order to stay on the one or two solid planks was not the kind of fun you could find on a playground.

TODAY
Now, there's "Sommerset at Frick Park." Basically, it looks like the city stuck [insert your own vision of suburbia, such as Gaithersburg, MD] on top of the slag plateau. It really is unbelievable to someone who remembers what the area looked like in the 1980s and has not been around for a while. On a recent visit to the new development, I noticed a couple rusted shells of cars still present in the distance on the other side of the valley which was what stirred my memory. Surely these last reminders of a different era will be hauled away soon.

So I bid a fond farewell to the slag hills for the miniscule minority of Pittsburghers who have nothing but fond memories of them. Though I guess the slag hills really are not going anywhere. They just aren't the rear end of Squirrel Hill anymore. They've been greened over and folks actually live on them now!

Night two of pure joy at MSG

A scattershot file of some thoughts I remember having tonight...

- The Arnold speech: I had to tune out much of it to stop myself from having a seizure. And the end was definitely the worst (when he finished by leading the convention in a "four more years" chant, by repeatedly yelling into the microphone).

- The Bush girls: So who the hell are the RNC's comedy writers? Bob Saget? Their routine was just plain painful to watch. And what on God's green Earth was up with the random three minute Grandma Barbara roast segment?

I also thought it was pretty funny when the girls said something like "we just finished college and didn't have jobs, so we came home." They of course were talking about coming home to campaign for dad, but given the state of the economy over the past couple years and the hundreds of thousands of recent graduates who have had real trouble finding work, you'd think they might have come up with a better way to put it.

- 'W' via satellite from some little league game: What a phony look-I'm-just-a-good-ol'-boy setup! He came on to introduce Laura live from the campaign trail. Not too far away in the background, some folks were playing baseball... as if that just happened to be where the President was standing by random chance at the moment he was supposed to speak to America. I'm actually thinking the whole thing was blue screened. He seemed to be close enough to the game that a foul ball could literally have nailed him in the back of the head. And I'm assuming his handlers wouldn't risk that on live TV!

- The First Lady: Early on, she said something like "I'm sure you would expect me to have a lot to say about why my husband should be re-elected." To this, I would respond, "ummm... no, actually, until tonight I wasn't even sure if you knew how to speak."

In the end, she actually did a pretty solid job for the most part, but two things did nearly cause me to shit myself. First, she actually touted Bush's record on funding stem cell research... even though his policy on limiting research to already-collected stem cell lines has been roundly lambasted by the scientific community as a severe hindrance. Basically, he abdicated any responsibility for doing significant research in this area to other countries.

And then my favorite moment of the night... Laura went on to tout minority ownership of homes in America over the last four years. The camera (the CBS camera anyway) panned over to a black man and black woman who actually looked kind of pissed off and seemed to be the only people at MSG not cheering at that moment.