messiestobjects

The Space Coast Is The Most

I just got back from Orlando and I think I have to eat some crow and say that it's not so bad a place as I may have thought after my first trip there. Actually, on this trip I had a really great time and the reason is because on this job, I had a lot more free time. On regular jobs, such as my aforementioned first trip to Orlando, you have to pretty much stay near the hotel where the students are staying because on top of being their computer test proctor, you're also their concierge during their week of intense computer training. But this last job was an Onsite, which means that a company has paid us to train their own employees at their own facilities, so all I have to do is show up on testing days, which gave me 3 full free days to find something fun to do. I really like the onsite jobs. My trip to Wyoming was an onsite.

Anyway, I hit the Kennedy Space Center, which was the awesomest place ever. I'd actually been there once before; when I was packing oranges at Vero Beach one year right after my first summer in Alaska, a couple of the guys I was working with and I took a ride up there. That was around 11 years ago though and my memories of it are fuzzy. Anyway I didn't have a camera then and this time I could afford to take the big tour, which is kind of expensive. I got to see the rockets from the Mercury and Gemini missions,

walk around one of the space shuttle launch pads up close,

and see a Saturn V rocket from the Apollo missions.

Awesome. The other really cool thing they had was a Shuttle launch simulator. It was basically a tube with seats that goes from horizontal to a vertical sitting position and shakes around a lot while making really loud noises while an astronaut yammers at you from the video screen in front of footage of the view from a real shuttle taking off into space, but if you suspend your disbelief sufficiently it's easy enough to imagine that you're on your way up there. It even does a passable job of simulating zero gravity when you're "in space" by tipping you on a forward angle so that you're slightly out of your seat and only being held in by your shoulder straps. The Zero-gravity I experienced on my flight in a Mig-25 to the edge of space was a bit better, though.

See? Even the pigeons want to go.

Anyway, I believe that the 60s NASA missions comprised one of the most exciting times in human history, and I really loved getting a sense of what it must have felt like to be a part of that. When I got home yesterday I immediately popped in that movie The Right Stuff. It's really fantastic. I can't believe there's no big movie about the first moonwalk; If you want to see something about the Apollo missions, you're pretty much stuck with Apollo 13, which is great, but it's no moonwalk. There are documentaries I suppose, of which I have several, but they don't really capture the excitement quite the same way a good NASA drama does. The Dish comes closest to that for the Neil Armstrong walk, but it's not actually about the mission itself.

Well I do carry on so. But Space is the Place, man.

On my second free day, I hit Cocoa Beach. It's kind of a famous beach because that's where a lot of the crowds would gather back in the day to watch the Rockets lift off, and I think that's where the astronaut bars were, but I'm not sure. Anyway, I didn't see any of that, but it's a fairly nice beach anyway. Good waves. The next day I had to work in the morning, but in the afternoon I went for an airboat ride on St. John's river and saw loads of alligators and birds and crazy cypress trees with Spanish moss. It was pretty damn cool. Those airboats are pretty zippy.

On that last photo you can see the head and back of an alligator kind of just peeking up from the water by the base of that tree.

On my third free day... well, I did it. I went to the Magic Kingdom. I'd never been there before... I always wanted to go as a child, of course, but when I got older I got cynical and realized how evil Disney is and sort of decided I didn't really want to go as all things Disney tend to be shallow and banal, and they destroy the stories they tell. BUT, I did have this extra day with nothing to do and I couldn't figure anything else out, and also my brother and sister were taken there by my family when they were kids and I never was, so, I figured it was something I had an opportunity to get out of my system. Believe me, that whole morning I was filled with a bizarre emotion consisting of dread, bittersweet, shamefaced excitement. The approach to that saccharine hell-hole did nothing to alleviate it, and neither did almost anything I did there.

The coolest part was Space Mountain. I'd been dying to do that ride all my childhood, when friends would come back from there and tell me about it. And you know what? It's still fairly cool. A roller coaster ride in the dark, only feebly lit up by stars, planets, and galaxies? Punctuated by terrified screams coming from all directions, some of them possibly but not definitely from my own mouth? What's not to like? The Haunted Mansion was also pretty wild, although not scary at all. But the special effects were sweet.

But the rest of it? Everything I ever hated and feared about that place. Every time I saw a parade of some Disney freaks grinning and dancing about, I wanted to smack them and ask them what the hell they thought they were doing, prancing about like happy little idiots. There was one ride that, while being horrendous, was nonetheless quite interesting. The so-named "Silly Jungle Cruise." It's a boat ride through a mock jungle river, filled with plastic animals. It's not a kiddie ride, either. It was all adults on my boat. It looks like, once upon a time, maybe back in the 50s or 60s, it was possibly a high class Disney ride. But I think that fake plastic jungle cruises likely don't have much staying power in this day and age, so what they've done is to turn it into a joke. The boat guide makes fun of everything you see for ten full minutes. A large orange fiber glass snake hangs from a tree, and pretending to be frightened, the tour guide asks what is large, orange, begins with a 'P' and can kill you? "Python!" shouts out one of the, um, adult, cruisers. "That's right," says the guide, "Plastic."

Oh, he had a ton of 'em. But what's interesting to me is that that ride is probably the most honest Disney has ever been with it's customers. A fake plastic safari is set up to give a cheap thrill, which is kind of Disney's over-all philosophy actually, and instead of trying to get you to go along with it, in this case they are forced to cop to how phony and silly it is, because it's really a horrendous ride and there's no hiding it as they do with everything else. Quite illuminating. It's like when Big Tobacco was finally forced to admit that smoking is unhealthy.

I even had a personal moment of clarity on that ride. As we were passing all the plastic, immobile animals, I was thinking to myself how I'd seen these kinds of animals for real in the semi-wild at South Africa Kruger national game park. And then: we came to a plastic temple and the guide announced that we were now passing a Cambodian jungle temple. My mind kind of froze because I've actually been to Angkor Wat and explored tens of actual Cambodian jungle temples, and here I was at Disney, the phoniest place on Earth, passing by a phony temple.

I love this:

Virtual Magic Kingdom? What, that's in case your mind is so jelly that you can't walk down the street here to the actual Magic Kingdom?

Well anyway.

The Kennedy Space Center. Wicked cool.

Great Authors Dying Really Sucks. I Was Just Getting Used To Vonnegut Being Dead.

Today is a very sad day... one of my favorite authors died last night of a rare blood disease which he's been fighting for the past year or two. Robert Jordan (His real name is James Oliver Rigney Jr.) is the author of The Wheel of Time series, a 12 novel fantasy series which I began reading when the first book came out in 1990. I can't say he's as king as J.R.R. Tolkien, but he's got the number 2 spot as far as millions of fantasy readers are concerned. I'd have to agree... he created a unique and richly detailed world and I admit I've been fairly obsessed with it ever since I first discovered it, salivating like a dog in a science lab whenever word of the next book in the series was going to be released.

The second worse thing after him dying is that he was currently working on the 12th and final book in the series, which was to contain many answers and a climatic battle for which fans have been waiting patiently nearly 20 years. Last week before he died I know that he sat his family down and told them how the story was to end, and turned over a bunch of notes he'd been keeping for years, and the news I've heard is that someone will indeed still complete the final book, which is really nice and at least we'll know how it all turns out, but still.

I was really hoping that he would turn out to be one of those guys that lived just long enough to complete his work because you know, it's nice when that happens.

Ironic Irony And Other Twisty Paths Of Fate

Just in case anyone was thinking that irony was not a living, breathing concept which must be dealt with in the real world from time to time, rather than an internet lifestyle, I want to disabuse you of that notion. I was bitch slapped by irony yesterday.

I passed my motorcycle exam! Yesterday was the 4th class of my PA Basic Motorcycle Safety course, and after about 6 hours of classroom time and 10 hours of practical riding time, they give you a fairly difficult practical examination. I can say without shame that I did extremely well. I did a figure 8 in a tiny painted box without touching the lines. I did 90 degree turns very smoothly and most importantly, I did the emergency stops with a fine degree of expertise. The emergency stops are, you know, stopping really fast in case an obstacle on the road jumps out in front of you like a car or say, a deer. I killed at those. I've always been a good break screecher.

And then on the way home from passing the exam with flying colors, a deer jumped out in front of me and I rammed it at 15 miles per hour. I must say that I'd been going much faster, and I saw it coming out of the woods and hit the breaks, but I wasn't fast enough. I don't think I hurt the deer much, he kind of shook himself, got up and took off. Damn bambi.

And I'm ok... mostly. I think it only bent the handlebar a bit on my bike when I fell; I didn't see any other scratches and all of the hoses and lines and whatnot seemed intact, so I continued to drive it home. I have screwed up my ankle a bit, though, but I'm sure it's just a bruise... I can still limp about just fine and it's only slightly painful.

So my point about irony is... deer are a menace! Kill them all!

The Shock Doctrine by Alfonso Cuarón and Naomi Klein

Found this over on 3 Quarks Daily... Very thought provoking.

Alfonso Cuarón, by the by, is the director of Y tu mamá también, the third Harry Potter movie, and Children of Men. He's relatively mainstream, is what I'm saying.

How A Perfectly Exemplar Slacker And Spacemen 3 Fan Is Turned Into A Health Nut

I'm falling apart! Gahhh! See, I made the mistake of going to the doctor. Scott says that if you don't want to have a disease or something else wrong with you, don't go to the doctor. Damn it, I should have listened. Well, My insurance coverage through work kicked in recently and also I had some mad symptoms so, timing dictated that I sort of had to.

So I have pre-Carpal Tunnel syndrome, high Cholesterol, and I'm waiting to hear the results of a CAT scan on a small bump behind my ear. FAN-tastic. I don't know if there's actually such a thing as pre-Carpal Tunnel syndrome, but apparently I caught on to it soon enough that it's reversible, by wearing these lovely wrist braces which you see pictured above for about three months. I only have to wear them while sleeping and while working at the computer, so I guess it could be worse. Also, Lipitor. For the Cholesterol kaffuffle. 34 isn't really that old, is it? Shouldn't I still be reasonably healthy? Well, maybe it's karma. I am a bad person, after all. Either that, or I've been cursed by somebody. Hmm, let me see... who wants me to suffer...

Well, it could just be that I have led a fairly sedentary lifestyle for the last couple of years, active traveling notwithstanding. So, I've joined a gym. It was really funny too, because I walked in with the intention of signing up for a year, and by the look on the sales people's faces, that's never happened to them before. I think that they're more used to having to cajole fat people into doing that, and then never seeing them again. I figure that if I'm paying for it, I'll be more likely to go... it helps that it gives me an excuse to go for a ride on my bike, also. Anyway, my personal trainer told me that I need to go 5 days per week for a 1/2 hour of Cardio and some reps on the girl weight machines. Ugh. I hate exercise. But, my Pop-Pop had a lot of Heart problems and left us far too early, so I've got some hereditary worries there and I guess that will motivate me more than anything else.

Otherwise it's been slow. I haven't worked in about two weeks, and I don't have another job for about 2 more weeks. I love my job! I'll be going to Orlando again, but this time it'll be an Onsite, which means, in computer training administration terms, more fun. I'll be proctoring exams for the employees of a company which has contracts to build things for NASA! I'll be about 15 minutes away from Cape Canaveral. If I'm a really really super lucky boy, there will be a launch while I'm there, which would kick so much butt that that amount of butt can't even be calculated.

In the meantime, I've pretty much just been finding out how not healthy I am and going to the Gym, and being a mean motorcycle mama. Papa! I mean Papa! My odometer now has around 880 miles on it.

I've also been contemplating my contrary nature this week. Not to get too narcissistic again or anything. But I have this internal problem which the Universal Truth No. 1 poster up there on the right is meant to state. All the good stuff is always not where you are. When I was in Baghdad, I had occasional daydreams about how nice it would be when I finally left and was able to move about the world again. I also thought a lot about what it would be like to have my own apartment finally where I could go grocery shopping and have chai tea or gourmet coffee beans in my cupboard. And Autumn. I was soooo looking forward to having seasons that didn't involve 130 degree desert heat again. (Actually, I'm still really looking forward to Autumn. It'll be my first one in years. I got pumpkin spice scented candles today at CVS while picking up my prescriptions so I could hurry up that good Fall feeling.)

But you know, having a place and lots of stuff and a job (even a cool one that lets me travel in the US) sort of ties you down to that spot, and I've been feeling a certain amount of international envy lately. Living in Iraq had a certain sense of immediacy that the Gap can't really replace, as lovely as it is here with my chocolate hazelnut coffee beans safely waiting in the kitchen for my morning caffeine ritual. Ah well. I'm not unhappy here; I just think that no matter what I do or don't do for the rest of my life, I'm always going to wish I was somewhere else. I kind of always have been that way. Do they make a pill for that?