Buck Rogers Flies Coach
Three and one-half inches of powdery snow fell here in Washington yesterday, and I used that as an excuse to hang out at home with Cerise and Twinkle. Veronica decided not to venture forth either, which, being a Californian, is what I would expect from her - as a matter of fact, she’s been obsessing about the rain in Los Angeles for days, bemoaning how rough it must be on all her friends out there, having to brave actual, significant precipitation for more than a few hours at a time.
The four of us have been snowed in, as it were, since the stuff started to fall around ten o’clock in the morning on Saturday. No signs of cabin fever, though - and Twinkle just loves having three humans around the house to pet her, or so she told me. I had all the ingredients for several nice meals, too, including some truly bodacious blueberry-hazelnut pancakes I made for breakfast today with fainting goat buttermilk, free-range mallard duck eggs, stone-ground semolina flour, Evian water, dolomitic limestone baking soda, cracked artisanal Italian white truffle-tree hazelnuts and extra-large organic blueberries, all topped off with grass-fed Jersey cow butter and triple-A Vermont maple syrup; accompanied, of course, with a nice breakfast coffee - in this case, some excellent peaberry Kona. I was halfway through my second cup when the telephone rang. Caller ID informed me it was Lofgren, an astronaut psychology expert at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center over in Greenbelt, Maryland, and an occasional client.
Tom: Lofgren! It’s certainly a surprise to hear from you at home on a weekend! They have you working Sundays now?
Lofgren: No, Tom, not really. I… I’m calling from home, too. This… this isn’t exactly official NASA business, you see.
Tom: What sort of business is it, then?
Lofgren: Personal, actually.
Tom: Personal?
Lofgren: Yeah; still NASA-centric, still career-oriented, but… personal.
Tom: Sure, go ahead.
Lofgren: Okay, but before we start, you need to know that I can’t really afford…
Tom: Think nothing of it, please. By all means, continue - this consultation is now officially free of charge.
Lofgren: Oh, thank you!
Tom: You’re welcome; no problem. What’s up?
Lofgren: Well, Tom, tomorrow the Obama Administration says it will announce a “new vision” for America’s space program.
Tom: So I’ve heard. Does this new vision bother you somehow?
Lofgren: It bothers me about a dozen different ways, but primarily, it bothers me because the scuttlebutt is, Obama’s going to get NASA out of the manned space flight business!
Tom: Seems to me I’ve heard about that, yeah. No mission to Mars, no return to the moon, space shuttle flights to end this year…
Lofgren: Next year, actually.
Tom: Something like that. But hey, isn’t NASA supposed to get a six billion dollar funding increase over the next five years?
Lofgren: Yes, it is, but not for in-house manned space flight! Tom, the White House and NASA Headquarters are talking about letting private industry take over!
Tom: So? You’re a Republican, aren’t you?
Lofgren: I always have been. What of it?
Tom: Just that you Republicans are always complaining whenever government does things, aren’t you? Don’t you Republicans always say that private industry should be in charge of things like, say… health care for instance?
Lofgren: Yeah, we do, but this is space exploration we’re talking about here, for Christ’s sake!
Tom: Okay, so, for the first few decades, maybe it makes sense for the government to perform the functions to achieve human space flight and navigation. Certainly, during the Cold War, there were plenty of good, comprehensible, terrestrial reasons for Uncle Sam to be shooting astronauts into orbit - nothing less than the struggle for the hearts and minds of the world was at stake. You could make a very sound argument for beating the Soviet Union to the moon; if we didn’t, they would have had a huge propaganda advantage over the United States. But we won the Space Race, didn’t we? And there’s no more Soviet Union to compete with is there? So why not let private industry ferry US astronauts to and from the International Space Station instead of having NASA do it?
Lofgren: But what about my job? What about my job as Chief, Astronaut Psychological Readiness Branch, Astronaut Fitness Division, Office of Astronaut Management at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center? What about that? I’ve got seven years before I qualify for retirement, you know! If NASA cancels the Ares booster program, and the moon return program, and the…
Tom: But NASA’s still going to have astronauts, isn’t it? They’ll still be executing NASA missions on the Space Station, won’t they?
Lofgren: Don’t you see, Tom? It’s the thin end of the wedge! Once NASA has out-sourced astronaut transportation to private industry, it will only be a matter of time before they start cutting back on support staff like me!
Tom: Gee, I thought yours was the only astronaut psychological fitness branch the NASA Office of Astronaut Management had.
Lofgren: No such luck, Tom. There’s another one at the NASA Kennedy Space Flight Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida; and they have seniority.
Tom: So you figure that, to save money in tough times, NASA will RIF you guys at Goddard?
Lofgren: Like I said, Tom, it’s only a matter of time.
Tom: Well, after a distinguished career with NASA, I’m sure you’ll have no difficulty finding another suitable position congruent with your background and experience.
Lofgren: Hello? I’m an expert in the psychology of [expletive] astronauts, Tom! How the [expletive] hell am I going to market that?
Tom: Airlines, maybe? Pilot fitness?
Lofgren: We’re in the middle of the worst recession since the Marx Brothers made Monkey Business! The airlines are all going [expletive] broke! The last thing on their minds is hiring people like me to make sure their pilots are psychologically fit to fly! Take my word for it, Tom, pilot sanity is way, way down their list of priorities right now.
Tom: Ah, gee whiz, uh… I’m sure there are plenty of advertising agencies that need experienced…
Lofgren: Oh yeah, great - I know what astronauts want to buy! You know what astronauts want to buy? I’ll tell you what astronauts want to buy, they want to buy athletic equipment designed to train for zero gravity, that’s what they want to buy! And plenty of other totally weird, completely off-the-wall [expletive] absolutely nobody else needs, wants or gives a flying [expletive] about, that’s what [expletive] astronauts want to [expletive] buy, all right?
Tom: Understood. Now, if anybody ever asks me what astronauts want to buy, I will refer to your expert opinion.
Lofgren: Sorry… I’m sorry, Tom. I know you’re trying to help me and all… it’s just that I’m a [expletive] nervous wreck at the moment.
Tom: No need to apologize. Many of my clients come to me in a highly agitated emotional state, so don’t worry about it, I’ve seen it before; I empathize, I feel your pain, I…
Lofgren: Will… you… please… shut… the… [expletive]… up? You sound like me, talking to a distraught astronaut who’s having nightmares about dying… up there… somehow or another… uh… you know… unpleasantly.
Tom: Okay, I’ll take that remark as a compliment and move on. Surely, a solid background in the United States Civil Service…
Lofgren: Now, Tom… now, you are definitely [expletive] me off! You and I both know that the immediate reaction of any private-sector hiring manager to the resume of anyone who has worked under the federal GS, GM, SES, EX or AD pay plans is to throw the [expletive] thing right in the [expletive] trash!
Tom: Yeah, okay, sure… in general, it is.
Lofgren: Damn straight!
Tom: And I can’t say I blame them…
Lofgren: What!
Tom:… but there are important exceptions.
Lofgren: Important? Exceptions?
Tom: Absolutely. And the one you should explore is this - key personnel on the response to an RFP.
Lofgren: Holy Mother Mary’s [expletive] menses, Tom! Are you suggesting that I obtain employment as a federal government contractor?
Tom: Why, yes, indeed, that is exactly what I’m suggesting. After all, what is NASA going to do when it downsizes its astronaut psychological evaluation and qualification capabilities? Issue a solicitation for exactly those services at www.fedbizopps.gov that’s what! And any Beltway Bandit whose proposal includes you as a key personnel citation will have a huge advantage in the competitive procurement process.
Lofgren: But you don’t understand, Tom. For decades, as a typical member of the United States Civil Service, I’ve spit on federal contractors. I’ve denigrated them; made disparaging comments about them at every opportunity, treated them like [expletive] and blamed them for my agency’s incompetence, failures and squander of the taxpayer’s money. I’ve demanded the ridiculous, the unattainable, the absurd, hell, the [expletive] impossible of them - just because I could - and then complained like a spoiled child when I didn’t get what I said I wanted! Now, you’re suggesting that I get a job putting up with a bunch of [expletive] holes like me?
Tom: I am.
Lofgren: I don’t know, Tom, if I could… take that… from a psychological standpoint.
Tom: Well, I’m sure you would know much more about that than I.
Lofgren: Huh. Get a job as a federal contractor, eh? I guess I’m going to have to think about that for a while.
Tom: Ah, yeah, sleep on it, or whatever.
Lofgren: Sure. Well, thanks for the free advice. It’s been worth every penny.
Tom: Free advice is usually worth the price.
Lofgren: Okay, yeah, thanks, then. Goodbye.
Tom: ‘Bye.
One thing I’ll say for the Saturday snow storm - it provided me with some time to finally write up the old Quarterly Mailbag. Sorry I’m about three weeks late on that this time, but, as they say, better late than never:
While quite a few e-mails arrived from Chicagoans accusing me of being a Brazilian sympathizer for the October 3, 2009 post relating my conversation with Mayor Daley about Chicago losing the 2016 Olympics to Rio de Janeiro, I expected that. What surprised me was the huge number of complaints I got concerning the mayor’s comment that people who attend the Olympics to watch the gymnastics, table tennis, wrestling, water polo, volleyball, fencing, archery, cycling and badminton competitions would probably enjoy having DHS agents search their nether regions with latex-gloved hands at O’Hare airport. My Inbox was crammed with messages from fans of those sports who made it very clear that they would, under no circumstances, find any pleasure in that. But to be fair, there were about ten e-mails from fellows who, while admitting they are not particularly interested in sports and couldn’t care less about where the 2016 Summer Olympics will be held, have, in fact, been strip-searched by DHS at O’Hare. Seven of them, as might be expected, are still outraged; the other three, however, did enjoy it and one of them opined that the experience was considerably better than a similar one he had had at Dulles airport. All of them, by the way, were Jewish guys who just happened to look like Arab terrorists.
The story of my consultation with Dihugami Dadamizo, Special International Policy Emissary of His Excellency President Hamid Karzai for the Embassy of Afghanistan to the United States of America, drew many concurring anecdotes from people who have had to deal with Afghani diplomats lately. Several pointed out that Karzai’s brother Wali Karzai is the biggest heroin kingpin in Afghanistan. To which I say, “Golly, Mrs. Cleaver, I don’t think Wali’d ever do a thing like that.”
In reaction to my October 15 post about Danger, T-Mobile, the Sidekick and the cloud computing debacle, I got astroturfed with hundreds of e-mails deriding me for posting material contrary to the Microsoft party line, all of which, of course, I ignored and promptly deleted. A number of folks also wrote in with their own horror stories about Great Danes. But two women sent me e-mails about what a marvelous breed the Great Dane is, especially if you’re a woman who’s simply had it with men.
I received a considerable reaction to my post about Stewart David Nozette, entirely from people who wished to defend his having spied - or at least, attempted to spy - for Israel. Nearly all of them expressed astonishment that Israel should have to spy on the United States in the first place. “Why can’t Israel just ask nicely,” one correspondent demanded of me, “and find out what they need to know? What’s the matter, aren’t they doing the United States a big enough favor already, exterminating all those Palestinians?” Well, I must confess, there are a couple of questions even I can’t answer.
My post on October 20, where I told of my encounter with Dick Cheney, during which we discussed what course he might pursue in the future, now that he’s no longer Vice President, drew a virtual avalanche of messages, and there was no lack of suggestions as to what Mr. Cheney might do, either. Not one of them is fit to print, however, consisting, as they did, of assorted rude proposals involving various absurd costumes, ridiculous lubricants, impossible physical juxtapositions and an unlikely array of animals, inanimate objects, freaks of nature, conservative Christian clerics, and, as might be expected, other Republicans.
Hillary Clinton fans held my feet to the fire about my Halloween post, where Ghaddahchot Gandu, Special Attaché for International Relations at the Embassy of Pakistan, vented his spleen to me concerning what passes, for lack of a better term, as Secretary Clinton’s version of diplomacy. My response to them is that, at this point, frankly, as long as she doesn’t get us into another war, she can brass off every third-rate pigsty country in the world, for all that I care. The comment I made to Mr. Gandu that Secretary Clinton is “not terribly rude - just sort of rude, like a bull dyke sandhog with a couple of boilermakers in her, not rude like a Puerto Rican New York taxi driver or anything,” also drew a lot of mail from bull dykes and Puerto Rican taxi drivers. All I can say is, if you’re writing to complain about somebody calling you rude, that’s hardly the time to demonstrate how inventive your insults can be.
My account of a conversation with Congressman Thaddeus McCotter, wherein we discussed the HAPPY Act, a bill he has introduced to allow people to claim their pets as income tax deductions, elicited a mountain of responses from animal lovers, all of whom insisted that Congressman McCotter is some kind of political genius. At last, they proclaimed, something good coming out of Washington! Why, they implored, hadn’t somebody thought of this brilliant idea before? Probably, I bet, because nobody elected to high office in Washington has possessed the proper combination of insanity and stupidity required - until now, that is.
The November 12 post, where I relate my conversation with an aide to RNC Chairman Michael Steele, during which we analyzed Mr. Steele’s remark that white Republicans are, not to put too fine a point on it, pants-wetting, underwear-soiling scared of black folks, drew the expected torrent of protests from white Republicans, all declaring that simply isn’t true. Again and again, I was regaled with heartwarming tale after tale, and inspiring anecdote upon anecdote, about the boundless respect, love and affection that white Republicans have for Negroes (as white Republicans call them). White Republicans, it seems, count among their very best friends the janitors who clean their offices, the rest room attendants who shine their shoes, the trash men who pick up the garbage set out so neatly each week on the primly manicured lawns of their tidy suburban homes, the nannies who change their children’s dirty diapers and the maids who clean those tidy suburban homes, too. Not only that, many of them informed me, but did you know how many white Republicans just laugh and laugh until tears run down their cheeks while watching their DVD collections of the Amos-n-Andy Show? Well, according to my e-mails, they all do.
My dear sister Rose garnered a considerable amount of sympathy concerning the investigation her employer, the Fairfax, Virginia, school system, is conducting with respect to Rose selling her lesson plans on the Internet. Absolutely nobody who wrote in thinks the school system has any right to a cut of the money. And my sincere thanks to most of the people, anyway, who suggested innovative ideas for Rose’s latest project, the Global Overpopulation Lesson Plan. I’ve forwarded your e-mails to her. The remaining eleven e-mails, which were apparently written by extremely warped individuals who shouldn’t be allowed within a thousand feet of an elementary school, were forwarded to the FBI.
As I have mentioned here many times in the past, I believe that the earth’s atmosphere is getting warmer, that the warming is caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide gas, and that human activity, particularly burning of fossil fuels, is responsible for it. None of that means I don’t enjoy a good conspiracy theory rant to the contrary, and boy howdy, did I get plenty of those in response to my November 23 post, wherein I recount a telephone call from a sophomore environmental science student at Brown who was considering switching to another major because of that flap about the e-mails stolen from the University of East Anglia. According to the fair, balanced and unbiased thinkers who wrote me - well, flamed me, actually - I, along with millions, nay, billions of others, am the hapless, ignorant and moronic victim of the biggest hoax since Windows Vista. All those eggheads who espouse global warming just dreamed it up to get research grant money from bleeding-heart liberal, socialist-run enterprises like the National Science Foundation, you see. Furthermore, depending on whose e-mails I read, the Masons, the Illuminati, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Council on Foreign Relations, the United Nations, the Roman Catholic Church, the United States Federal Reserve System, aliens from outer space and/or the Jews are behind it. Oddly enough, though, nobody seemed to think the Mormons are involved. Maybe they’re not considered smart enough to pull something like that off.
The post where I shared a drink at the Round Robin Bar with the Secret Service agent who let the Salahis crash the Indian government reception at the White House drew plenty of accounts concerning other similar egregious lapses by federal agents of various stripes. Well, you could write a book about those - and a very, very long book it would be, indeed. Several federal employees wrote in also, every one of them hopping mad and anxious to protest my characterization of Secret Service agents as “jocks from poor inner-city neighborhoods or farm boys with mud between their toes who aren’t capable of anything better than taking a bullet for the President.” Secret Service agents, I was told in no uncertain terms, also chase counterfeiters. Very well - so noted.
Regular readers of this Web log know what I think of golf, and hardly a week goes by that I don’t receive a thorough scolding from somebody who disagrees, considering it a noble sport of some kind or another. But my account of Tiger Woods’ call for advice brought down the house, to be sure. At the time, back in early December, he spilled the beans about there being more than three paramours, but his mention of “numbers four through seven” has since proved to be, at best, a case of either faulty recollection or wishful thinking - if not outright prevarication. As it turned out, every new addition to the list brought another surge of e-mails, notifying me that I’d better update that post. No dice, fans - I refuse to deal in revisionism. But for the record, as of today, anyway, I will give him this - Tiger’s a true golfer through and through. After all, it sure looks like he couldn’t stop until he had played eighteen holes.
Astute observers of global politics will, no doubt, have noted that Lumumba Di-Aping more or less self-destructed at the Copenhagen Conference in December, successfully pulling the Group of 77 down with him. Which demonstrates conclusively, I believe, that my advice to Dr. Heissmann, dutifully recorded in the post for the tenth of that month, was taken seriously and executed as I suggested. Not that I’ve heard back from my client since then, but I do understand he’s still working at the Global Concern Institute in his capacity as their program manager for global warming projects. As for the mail, it was déjà vu all over again with a resounding chorus of conspiracy theorists on the right, as might have been expected, but now also accompanied by a throbbing counterpoint of antiphonal dissonance from the left, as irate, raggedy-butt commies of all stripes hailing from every continent and across the seven seas vituperatively excoriated Yours Truly for being such an obvious tool of capitalist, imperialist and patriarchally dominated multinational corporate evil. With so much flak from both extremes, I guess I must be doing something right.
And speaking of excoriating capitalist, imperialist tools, my next post, which told the tale of a luncheon meeting with the forlorn GS-12 from the National Archives who will spend the rest of his career cataloging Bush White House e-mails, there was no shortage of folks straining at the bit to read me the Riot Act concerning Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Ari Fleischer, Richard Armitage, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and, of course, Dubya himself. You know, it’s often heard from those folks, and others like them, that they don’t care a rat’s posterior if millions of people hate their guts with a purple passion, but for some reason, I just don’t believe it. I bet they do care, really, and that all the hatred really bothers them, too, because, unlike, say Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi, they know they actually deserve it, and it’s probably eating away at their hearts (except Cheney, who doesn’t have one) and their brains (except George W. Bush, who doesn’t have one) right now, like a ravenous worm. Just a thought.
The Winter Solstice saw my post about the Big Twitter Outage and the supposed role played by the sinister forces governing Iran; an explanation, it will be recalled, that I did not buy, much to the vociferous consternation of Ada Babbage, a Very Important Person at Twitter, with whom I had the extended conversation documented therein. My readers, on the other hand, were about evenly split between those who could not comprehend how I could be so obtuse and those who agreed with me that Twitter probably staged the whole thing to keep up public interest while it looks for somebody to buy it for a couple billion dollars. Such cynicism, my detractors carped, how could I possibly think the cool dudes and dudettes of Twitter would do such a thing? To which I say, if you want a bunch of rich suckers to give you billions of dollars for a dumb idea, you better make damn sure they think your dumb idea is very, very popular - seriously, if you don’t believe me, ask AOL.
The schadenfreude was flying thick and fast in response to my post the day after Christmas, in which I described how my brother-in-law Hank had to hire a wino to play Santa Claus for his children on Christmas Eve. Okay, it’s not like I was expecting a former merchandising executive to get any sympathy, especially one who dealt, as Hank did, in outrageously overpriced infant and toddler gear for the children of people with too much money for their own good. To tell the truth, I don’t feel all that much sympathy for Hank myself (what’s more, I’ve always felt Rose could have done better), and had a lot of fun reading what people had to say about him. Thanks also to the folks who wrote in with their own personal stories of playing Santa, just like I had to the next day, in order to straighten out some other guy’s Santa screw-up. The remainder of the post, however, which addressed the growing problem of Internet addiction in the third world, drew huge volleys of angry fire from the Indian subcontinent, where irate readers lambasted me for being such an obvious tool of capitalist, imperialist and patriarchally dominated multinational corporate evil. Which is kind of strange, because I don’t think any of them actually were, in fact, raggedy-butt commies.
January 31st, 2010