Space

Yikes, sorry about that previous post.  I had a moment of weakness.  Well, though my bowels doth protest, I will persevere.  This weekend, I ended up going to a sailing club ground school.  I've lived in Madison for four years now (!) and have yet to shout "Prepare to be boarded!" and really mean it.  I want my timbers shivered, damnit.  I'm having a hard time figuring out when my first class will be, two days in a row has proven to be difficult.  I think it will be the long course this weekend. 

     Anyway, the reason I'm writing about it is that I met these two brothers Cullen and Cyrus.  The were very nice, outgoing, and were two brothers moving to Madison this Summer.  They were having trouble signing some forms due to a waxy coating....and I brandished my trusty Fisher Space Pen.  It made short work of the wax.  However, Cyrus retorted that the Fisher space pen is an example of American penchant for Waste; to wit, it cost 1 million dollars to create it, while the Russians simply used pencils!  Oh smug Cyrus, why could you not be like your older, wiser, less contrarian brother, Cullen?

     Yes, it did cost one million dollars to create, but it's ingenious, beautiful technology.  It was part of the writing utensil cold war; another "arms race", so to speak.  We could not be left behind.  I mean, the Russian Cossack used sabres to kill Bolsheviks, while Americans used expensive but efficient bolt action rifles to slaughter our "foes" (like Native Americans).  [umm.  yeah. let's forget that part of history]  However, what were we going to do, let the Russians win this pen race?  When it's 120 degrees Celsius below zero, will Ivan's pencil be able to write "Da svidaniya"?  Well, okay....yeah it will, but will (s)he be as stylish?  And what if that cold piece of paper has grease on it....y'know, frozen space grease?  Yeah, that's right, our guys will be writing "God Bless America"....until they freeze to death....in that greasy, cold abyss.

     Or just maybe that's all a myth, and they just didn't want errant broken lead whizzing around the shuttle.  Whatever, either way, you can just shut up, Cyrus.