The Scaffolding

Out his window, he watched the daily progress of the scaffolding growing up over the building beyond. What sort of renovation was underway, he wondered, that would shroud the structure so? Refinishing the brick, perhaps, or abating asbestos?

He thought it strange that he never saw workmen, and no contractor's billboard was posted. All he saw was the growing scaffold, and the polythene wrappings flapping in the wind. The building itself became completely covered over; even the stoop and doorway were enclosed within a sheath of plastic and tube steel.

In time the outline of the building changed, and he marvelled at the extent of the renovations involved. Why did he never see cranes or hear nailguns? What architect designed the curious double-humped dome that seemed to be rising from the roof?

One morning the building was gone. The scaffolding and plastic sheeting lay in tangled shards atop the cracked masonry and broken sidewalk; water rained down upon the exposed crawlspace from the broken water feed. Of the structure itself there was no sign, although the homeless man in the alley told a wild tale of midnight cacophony and the beating of monstrous wings.

No You May Not Go

Note: I posted this originally as a comment on swingland's journal, but I wanted to save a copy, so now it's here as well.

**********************************

(Mother may I leave your home?)
No you may not go.
(There's a universe to roam.)
No you may not go.
I have birthed you, housed you, held you,
Kept you close and soothed your fears.
Who will keep me in my fading years?
No you may not go, my son.
No you may not go.

(Mother I have built a ship.)
No you may not go.
(Bless me on this farewell trip.)
No you may not go.
Did I not chastise you and advise you
Stay within my airy shroud,
Your departure's disallowed.
No you may not go, my son.
No you may not go.

(Mother we are go for Mars.)
No you may not go.
(Someday we may reach the stars.)
No you may not go.
I'll sabotage you and barrage you,
Shoot you full of cosmic rays
Before I'll let you cut the stays
No you may not go, my son.
No you may not go.

(Mother all the lights are red.)
No you may not go.
(Now our vessel's drifting dead.)
No you may not go.
I will seize you and retrieve you,
Bring you, burning, back to my womb,
Salty oceans as your tomb.

No, my son, you may not go,
Never, ever shall you go,
Jealous mother tells you so:
No you may NOT go.

Children! for Progress!

Thank you, crisper, for reminding me of this article, posted to talk.bizarre in 1999.

******************************************

It was with mixed pleasure and disgust that
my wife witnessed me proudly demonstrating
my latest achievement in Pavlovian training:
teaching our son, Eric, how to tell left
from right. Eric, for the record, is two
years and four months old. The various
child-rearing books all indicate that left-
right distinction is a skill typically
learned by much older children.


"Please stop brainwashing my child," she
politely requested. I happily informed her
that no brainwashing had been required, only
about five minutes of instruction. Two
factors assisted Eric in acquiring this
skill: 1) a reasonable intelligence for a
child his age, and 2) a pathetically canine
desire to please his father.


"But why," persisted my wife, "does a two-
year-old child *need* to know left from
right?"


"That's easy!" I replied. "I'm training him
to be an astronaut!"


I then laid out my arguments, which I
consider to be fairly sound, for why it is
that what the American space programme
desperately needs is Kids in Space. Follow
along -- if you dare!


1) Kids are considerably smaller than adults.
For example, Eric is 33 lbs. and 38" tall.
This makes him roughly 1/5 to 1/6 the weight,
and possibly up to 1/8 the volume, of an
average human male. This represents a
considerable savings in weight and space
necessary on any given mission. Sure,
Senator John Glenn is a reasonably cool
octogenarian, but is it really worth the
reaction mass to truck his FAT ASS out of
the gravity well, when instead we could be
ballisticizing an entire elite team of
astronauts? Of course, this doesn't even
begin to consider the reduced consumptions
of food, water and air by children. Let's
face it: nature designed kids to be compact,
portable, and easy to care for. We need to
take advantage of natural selection.


2) Generally speaking, astronauts are
overtrained. Many spacefarers continue to
be drawn from the pool of highly skilled
military officers. Civilian astronauts are
generally professionals at the top of their
field. Do we really need to have all that
brainpower in low earth orbit? Hell no.
Laika showed us that any old mook can be
trained to push the red button and get a
food pill. Kids are incredibly proficient
at this sort of training; nothing guarantees
repeatable performance quite like reliable
bribes of Pez. No, friends, all those
smarts are actually a liability; kids may
be dumb, in a sense, but that means they're
dumb enough to do what they're told, instead
of panicking and sinking the landing capsule
like that fucker Grissom. Ask yourself this
question: do we, the American taxpaying
public, really need to have astronauts who
can Fly a Jet Plane, or Kill the Viet Cong?
Get real. Push the button, Junior, your
Pez awaits.


3) In fact, I think most people would
agree that pushing the red button is pretty
much a waste of time anyway. We all know
that automated or teleoperated processes
are much cheaper, safer and more reliable
than manned missions. The real value to
having a person in the capsule is to create
a human connection. Who better to do PR
than cute little kids? During shuttle
missions, mommies and daddies would be
glued to the screen watching footage of
chubby little tykes bouncing around in
zero gee. Imagine the drama during takeoffs
and landings, as an entire nation gnaws its
nails over whether delightful cherubs will
be atomized over the Indian Ocean. Consider,
also, that adult astronauts are capable of
flubs, gaffes and other embarrassing
reminders that our heroes have feet of clay.
But kids! kids can get away with anything.
If a baby somehow removes his spacesuit and
smears fecal matter all over the landing
module interior, people will think it's
funny. Think Neil Armstrong could get
away with that? ha. Put one giant step in
YOUR ASS, mister....


4) Speaking of zero gee: kids are not far
removed from the womb. They're USED to
floating weightless. They LIKE it. It's
their NATURAL STATE. Kids won't freak out
about freefall. I know this because I
throw my kid in the air ALL THE TIME, and
he LOVES IT.


5) Kids have a remarkable ability to come
away from extreme bodily trauma with their
hides intact. Children can fall down stairs,
get sucked into storm drains, get run over
by UPS vans or get trapped in freezing
water, and have a remarkable chance of
surviving unharmed. This makes kids the
obvious passengers for a vehicle ride that
requires multiple-gee accelerations and
decelerations. Where fully grown humans
could come away with whiplash and organ
damage, you can give a baby a lollipop
and he'll quit his fucking whining. And
what's this crap about bone loss? Kids
don't HAVE any bones yet!


6) Normal adult men jack off. It's a fact
of life. It happens all the time. I'm
doing it now. So do we really think that
male astronauts stop their wanking when
they go up in space? C'maaaaaan. You
know that as soon as the cameras go off,
the Discovery crew is all doing what they
have to do to unlimber their coveralls and
pull pud. Does anybody think the NASA
planners have accounted for this? Is there
a special jizzroom on the shuttle, using
centrifugal motion to keep tiny pearly
gobbets from getting into the sensitive
onboard computers and gumming up the works?
Of course there isn't. In light of this,
it's no wonder the Challenger blew. Look,
all I'm saying is, with a crew of child
astronauts, this problem becomes moot.


7) Eric is not yet potty trained. In
space, this is a bonus! Adult astronauts
would never agree to the indignity of
wearing a diaper for a long mission. Kids
would find this groovy.


I can't speak for everybody, but I for one
would pay good money to see a small group
of children playing unattended in the
shadow of Olympus Mons. I might even pay
several trillion dollars for this. It's
really hard to say.


Don't just sit there! Write your local
congressman and DEMAND that legislation
be passed allowing toddlers to boldly go
where no man has gone before. Surely
certain lobbies will leap on this unique
opportunity. For instance, the same
elements of American society that oppose
abortion also oppose funding programs to
adequately school, feed and house the
unwanted children who grow up. The obvious
solution is to birth a pool of disposable
space-faring infants -- you use less fuel
if they're only going ONE WAY.


Screw chimps! I'm talking about Kids: the
Other Clever Hominid. Americans, let's all
raise our voices in unison, and work to
harness the untapped resource that is:


CHILDREN! for PROGRESS!!!


--
HWRNMNBSOL
i really actually do love my son