This is it, I am an adult now. I am a man, but yet hardly the magnitude of the man I imagined. I'm not a great war hero, a genius, a great lover, bar-fighter, or racecar driver. I will never go to space. I don’t men to be pessimistic, but the chances are that I will never make it to space. As children, this all seemed so possible. Space travel seemed like our god given right . We imagined ourselves with in space stations floating packets of Tang back and forth to each other while one of us, the tosser smiles and gives a thumbs up signal to the imaginary cameraman, who then, upon catching the packet returns the thumbs up. Yes we were told this, or meant to believe that we would see earth from space. We would see the earth “with out boundaries” and we would feel at one with neighbors, at one with the Evil Soviet Union who’s Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM) were cocked and ready to land on or heads They were to strike Major Cities, like New York and Los Angeles, and strategic ones like Hanford, three mile island, all of north and south Dakota, and most likely my home city of Seattle in an effort to vanquish Boeing aircraft manufactures. But here, up here in the San Juan Islands, we would be too far north. Maybe it would have something to do with the wind patterns, and the mountains. And because we were so far west, and the wind would be moving from the west, in the case of a nuclear war, the ocean itself would some how filter the air. We would be amongst the survivors. I spent hours as a child imagining this scenario in my head, and in my minds picture movie I myself was somewhat a cross between Patrick Swayze in the movie Red Dawn, yet on the comic side, just want get laid, sort of way I picture myself to be the tall, gangly mop topped, kid from the movie Last Star Fighter…In both scenarios it was up to me (or in Patrick Swayze’s case, “the wolverines”) alone to save humanity as we knew it… it seems absurd to me now, as an adult, 30 years old, that a group of high school teenagers, jumped in the back of a rednecks pick up truck (after watching Russians paratroop from the sky then gun down fellow classmates) and that they/we [I will now imagine it was me and my friends that were doing this.] could drive our asses to mom and pops hardware store and load up on camping gear, knifes and a few rifles. And it was up to us, and only us to save American from some evil Cuban cigar smoking “Cuban” dictator who managed to have all of the western United States on communist lock down. How did these/us teenagers instantly know what to do? Because they/we were told what to do, we were made to believe in World War Three. We were sold on space flight and how to react to it. We spent many hours mentally preparing for these events to eventually take place. Even after watching The Last Star Fighter, I couldn’t help but to begin dropping my quarters into various arcade games in hopes that an alien was secretly watching my video game skills increase. As if god and his (or her) all seeing power was replaced by a handful of funny aliens who liked to joke around, yet in times of earth annihilation would be more than happy to step it up, get serious and squeeze out an alien tear that would slither itself down the scaly reptilian skin as a sign of understanding and love between intergalactic humanoids and why was there always someone out there, alien or Russian that wanted to annihilate the earth, especially the American side of the earth? Why is it that in movies like “Armageddon, Independence Day, the Core, or Godzilla,” that natural disasters, earthquakes, electrical storms, radioactive sun spots, Herculean space ships with white house destroying laser beams, or even tidal waves, all seemed to hone in on key American cities like San Francisco and the Golden Gate bridge, but especially every landmark located with in the boundaries of New York city? But I am not in space. I am not protecting America from “commie bastards” or running from evil aliens who want to attack American monuments, or teaming up with good aliens to fight the evil aliens. I am not Mathew Broderick, because if I was Matthew Broderick, these things would be happening to me, instead I am 30-year-old male. I an adult idiot and yes, now that I am thinking of Matthew Broderick I cant help but think of the computer Joshua, from the movie War Games. I have spent many longs hours in bed looking up at the ceiling of what ever home I was living in thinking of a sort of computer battle that would take place between the child like, innocence of Joshua, and HAL from 2001 Space Odyssey while HAL was a little demented, a computer who was suppose to be perfect, yet some how wasn’t, maybe a form of computer manic depression, or split personality, I mean, if HAL was a human, he wouldn’t be blamed for reacting the way he did. But it was about survival, and when it came down to it, the paranoid, yet intelligent HAL had the ability to get down right deceptive and evil. But Joshua on the other hand, Joshua was an innocent, maybe that was why he was named after the professor’s child, who was, if I remember correctly was killed in a car accident. Joshua, who wasn’t deceptive, but rather naive, had the awesome power to summon all of the nuclear missiles and launch them at Russia, who in return, in panic would launch them back at us, and by us I mean the United states. There fore we needed to prepare, we needed to store cans of Campbell soup in make shift bomb shelters, we needed to line our beaches with land mines and Rommel sticks. We needed cultivate the soil of Mars, or at least learn to fly a space shuttle. We needed to get strong, because there was someone else getting stronger somewhere else. Yet we needed to save the planet, to help Bono with his Live Aid, or to help Sir Paul McCarty save the rain forest. We needed to understand that the icecaps were melting, and that the salinity of the water would lessen, and that in return would kill the plankton, which would kill the krill, which would kill the whales which would kill the Japanese. We needed to watch out for meteors that were lining up to obliterate the planet earth, we needed escape plans and escape planes. We needed to brush our teeth. Wear seat belts. We needed to use plastic products, no wait we needed to use paper plates, to conserve the water that was rapidly being drunk by the population explosion; but if we were eating from paper plates we were killing the rain forest, and if were eating from plastic we were helping the Oil industry to boom, who in return was helping rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer. We need bigger safer cars, yet smaller environment friendly cars. We need clean water without lead. We need protective lenses and protective lotion, and protection for our cocks before we stick them inside of hot alien pussies because we don’t want a population explosion and we don’t want an alien population explosion, because then they might attack our monuments. We have needed, and we need. We are needy. We need because we are in fear.
I am a man, but yet hardly the magnitude of the man I imagined. My mother had sex without protection, because she was crazy like that. And from my fathers urethra I shot, and it’s so hard and difficult for me to believe, but out of all those millions and millions of sperm, I was the best
[FOOTNOTES]
1. Earlier at this time, around the late 80’s NASA, along with various scientists like Carl Sagen, and some TV shows and magazine articles started entertaining the idea of space travel, utilizing space stations as way points, or docking stations rather than research labs shuttles would become more like airlines, and space stations would become airports, for what? Interplanetary exploration and eventually future homes. There were new theories being constantly entertained. The Big Bang, and Earth killers and the Extinction of the Dinosaurs… was string theory a theory yet? Who knows? But I remember distinctly watching a television program about the colonization of Mars, a sort of Total Recall kind of thing. The idea behind it was that eventually our Earth would be stuck by a meteor, comet or asteroid that would kill all life on planet earth. Thus we needed some sort of escape plan. This was probably one of the most absurd things I have ever heard, but yet as a kid, I believed it to be possible. I imagined hundreds of shuttles taking off and landing, with its precious cargo of humanity to its new home, the program never went into the logistics of this gargantuan effort. Immediately following the Mars show, was a documentary on the Human Population explosion, they spoke of Mathalis, the “j-curve effect” about exponential numbers, basically we as humans, from the time of Jesus and on, have been doubling as a species. (When I graduated high school we were quickly approaching, the 5-billion mark, now ten years later, it looks like 7-billion is just around the corner) there was great fear stuck up at this time in regards to our future, will there be enough water and what about food? The rain forests were (and are) getting destroyed; PCPs were escaping dented refrigerators and aerosol cans that were left rotting in landfills next to nuclear plants. The message was simple, we humans were killing the earth, especially Americans, and some Japanese who were killings whales illegally. And these humans, the ones responsible for this mess, were doubling in numbers. There was no hope for earth or for us. We were all going to die. I was in total fear. But there was always Mars, and we needed to get our space travel shit together. It was like leaving mess behind, then waiting for a meteor to clean it all up… but then right before the show was finished, the bushy eyed old man stood in front of the camera and delivered his finally blow of fear. He said that everyday, there were 60,000 more human begins busy being born than human beings that were dying. 60,000! Population wise, in total, that means that every year there is city the size of New York being born. How was NASA going to transport 60,000 people a day to the Red Planet, and just how long does it take to get to Mars? We were doomed, and it was more than evident to us when the Space Shuttle Challenger took off into the sky above Cape Canaveral, and turned it self in to the an explosion of the letter “y” [read a footnote to this footnote in the appendix] If we weren’t going to blow ourselves up with nuclear weapons, some thing else would. And this was something the Fear.
2.Probably one of the only positive things I remember from this time. There was a small, but weak counter movement to what our presidency was doing at this time. We believed we were all doomed, that we were condemned to earth, a place of soil erosion, forest raping, land mining, land filling, weapons, destruction, and weapons of mass destruction, war and famine. But out of nowhere sprung little golden flowers upon the dunghills of crap we were being fed on a daily basis. Starting with the late 70’s the current carried itself underground, only welling up on order to fight the evils of our time, (government and big business) There was a coke-a-cola commercial, “I would like to buy the world a coke...” there was John Lennon, “imagine all the people…” then there was Band Aid and Live Aid… “we are the world, we are the children, we are the ones who make a brighter day so lets start giving…” and all these artist, shoulder to shoulder, swaying, singing songs to benefit starving Africans. Most of these Africans happen to live in Ethiopia, and this in return spawned a million and one Ethiopian jokes. [Read a footnote to this footnote in the appendix]
3. At this time, the government, particularly the president Reagan and his republican followers, were in an arms race. They new at the time of the Soviet Union had no were near as much money as the United States, and that eventually their economy was going to collapse. It was not really an arms race, but a spending race, who could outspend the other, who could afford to throw away money on something that means the annihilation of life on earth. But the people needed to buy it, and fear was the major tactic in which the Reagan and his staff implemented to get us to go along with the ridicules agenda. Every body made out, the arms dealers were making money, the president was making money, (this is funny idea to think about, why else would a million/billion air take a $200,000 dollar job? Simple, because they were making money for big business. Presidents are really nothing more than proxy CEO’s) and eventually, Hollywood, upon seeing the fear that was gripping America, began to make movies like “The Hunt for Red October, Red Dawn, War Games, and began to capitalize. It was the best of times and the worst of times. Big business were getting rich, the rest of America was crippled with fear. This has happened through out history. Egyptian, Aztecs, Conquistadors, every major religion has used fear to convert it’s followers towards a way of thinking, and in return, they controlled them. It is happening right now with George W. Bush, and terrorism, and “weapons of Mass Destruction” it a proven formula
4 I say humanoids, only because all aliens especially on Star Trek seem to have this wild and crazy like way of looking like humans, with arms and hands and legs and feet, even ears and noses that remarkably resemble our own. And in most cases spoke perfect English, to include American Slang. The worst offender of this false alien look alike was most defiantly Star Trek whom’s aliens barley had a prosthetic like appendix glued to the tips of their noses, eyebrows, or the tips of their ears. Another thing about the Star Trek aliens was that undoubted every female had great ass and lots of cleavage. Could we breed together, does alien pussy put out? Or was this perhaps one of the greatest motifs of all time. Men only want women for sex, but will never understand them because they are alien to us, they are from a different planet, they are from Mars, or perhaps Venus?
5 Probably the other most likely to be attacked monuments and buildings are those of Washington DC, particularly the white house, and the Lincoln memorial. I know one thing, if an asteroid, or a tidal wave or aliens were hurling themselves towards American civilization, I would stay the fuck out of those cities.
6 Different homes: yes, I lived in a lot of different places and a lot of different homes, up into the age of ten, everything seemed pretty steady, then in a wild move that changed our lives for the better, my father and mother decided to move out to San Juan Islands, Washington. It was here I saw my first bald eagle, killer whale, deer, and rabbit. Our first home, (now a multi million dollar piece of real estate) was located on the west side of the island over looking the ocean with a view of beautirufl Victoria, and the snow capped Olympic mountains. It was over whelming to come from New York, to this. We stayed there for only a year, I remember a few distinct things, 1. carboard that I ordered from Sears that was specially designed for break dancing. 2. my pellet gun, and the hours I spend shooting birds and rabbits, and actually killing a sparrow from about 40 yards away, as it was fluttering through the air, pulled right out of the sky. Not really understanding what to do with this trophy, and wanting to keep it, I decided to freeze this little bird in my moms freezer… a week later she found it. 3. stabbing my self in the femoral artery with a filleting knife that my father recently purchased. I was trying flip it through the air, blind folded like the American Ninja. 4. my mother flipping her van. 5. a piano that was never played. 6. a basketball hoop I recived for Christmas. 7. my father’s ship blowing up. 8. our dog Cleo scratching up the door horribly and loosing the damage deposit. The Spillane family then decided to move onto the boat, yes a boat, my father saw it coming from a mile away, and purchased a boat for a relativly cheap price, fixed it up and we moved on and into the poorest state I have ever witnessed. After living on the boat for three years, we moved into two places. my father bought a house close to beach, my mother moved out and got her own department. It was a divorce. Shortley afterwards, my mother moved into the “Ghetto” if there ever was a ghetto here in Friday Harbor, this is it. It was owned by my best friend Wesley’s parents. After the Ghetto, my mother remarried and moved into a lovely home on Harborview. As I am here, back on the idland, I like to drive past all of these places drinking the nostalgia that spills from within.
[APPENDIX]
This was one of the wildest events to ever take place in American history. We all saw this event happen live on television, or at least all the American children and their teachers. You see for the first time ever a Teacher was being shot into space. If common folk such as Christa McAuliffe could become astronauts, than I could become an astronaut. The message was to inspire everyone that space travel was possible and effortless, even for someone as ordinary as a teacher. Millions of kids across America were to have Televisions wheeled into their classrooms where they were to watch this event unfold. It was to be all inspiring, but what happened on live TV, was coincidently one of the most horrific mind blowing events of our generation. People would for ever remember what they were doing that day, who class they were in, what grade they were in, this was our “where were you when John F Kennedy was shot?”
[Ethiopian jokes]
1.what does and ethiopian to with a bag of rice? Open and resturant.
2.what do you call an ethiopian with a dog? A vegetarian
3.how many Ethiopians can fit into a phone booth? All of them
4.how many fit into a shower? None of them, they all go down the drain
5.what do you call and ethiopian with a penny on his head? A nail
6.what do ethiopians do at night? starve
7.what do ethiopians do at night? They make TV commercials
8.what is the best thing about getting a blow job from an ethiopian? You know they will swallow
[Shuttle jokes]
1.Did you know that Christa McAuliffe was blue eyed? One blew left and one blew right.
2.What were Christa McAuliffe's last words? "What's this button do?"
3.What were Christa McAuliffe's last words to her husband?"You feed the kids - I'll feed the fish."
4.What was the Shuttle's last transmission? "I said BUD LITE!"
5.Did you know that NASA has a new space drink?
6.Ocean Spray - It was their second choice because they couldn't
get 7-UP.
7.When the next shuttle launches into space, what will the senior
controller say? "72, 73, 74 BOOM! - Just kidding guys!"
8.What do Playtex tampon users and Christa McAuliffe have in common?They both should have stayed on the pad.
9.What does a sea lion, the space shuttle and Tylenol have in common? They're all looking for a tight seal.
[God forgive me]
Band aid
when thinking bout, live aid, or band aid, or what ever that was called, (it is funny for some reason despite it’s success, it was a one shot deal) I cant help but remember being bombared with images of Micheal Jackson, Bono, George Michael, Ellton John, Sting, Quincy Jones and the many others, all sitting in this fairly large recording studio, armed with head phone and microphones, with protective halos of what looks to be stocking material, swinging and swaying back and forth. Their smiles are over bright, their swaying movements over exaggerated. The whole event just seems surreal and contrived, almost offensive to what was really going on in Africa at the time.
[Bono’s African Aid, story]
When Bono arrived in Africa, he quickly realized that he had forgotten his favorite fedora. Almost imediattly he ordered a special cab to his London home? To retreaive the head gear, drive it back to the airport, where he pre purchased a first class ticket for his most priced possession. Bono’s hat flew first class from England to Africa.
ICBM, IBM, HAL
When thinking of the word ICBM, I can’t help but think of the IBM, which some what makes sense, not only because ICBM and IBM have three simmilar letters, but also because it is an IBM super computer that controls all the launching sequences of the ICBM’s but what is even more staggering, is that if you take the letters from the super computer, HAL, and shift them one letter over, you get the IBM.
Single named retards:
I have always hated the fact that certain celiberties dilbertly changed their names to single words in an effort to become more iconic. Here are some of those assholes. (There are hundreds of these assholes, but I tried to stick to pop music culture)
1. Sting
2. Cher
3. Madonna
4. Seal
5. Bono
6. Prince
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