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Authors: Celia Rivenbark

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Lost in Space

W
hile it’s awfully tempting to sneer at girl-astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper for losing a $100,000 tool kit during a space walk, I just say: You. Go. Girl.

It was brilliant really. There’s poor HSP working with a (ick!) grease gun and, while she’s cleaning up, the bag “slips” out of her grip, the tools tumble into the final frontier, and back at NASA Mission Control, they hear her mumble, “Oh, great.”

Yes, great! Great way to make sure that from now on, maybe they’ll let you stay inside the cute capsule thingy and make muffins for the rest of the crew. Crazy like a fox, you!

I’m only slightly worried that one day in the next few years, some poor kid growing up in an Oklahoma trailer park is going to get hit in the head by that thing falling from outer space.

“Son, I bet that’s the grease gun that girl astronaut lost a
few years back,” his daddy will say. “Whoa. That’s gonna leave a mark.”

I decided HSP did it on purpose to get out of work because, like I said, she wasn’t nearly as contrite as she should’ve been after losing the expensive tools used to maintain the spacecraft. Her explanation:

“Despite my little hiccup, I think we did a great job out there!”

This would appear to be a slammin’ new version of the old chestnut, “But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?” A little hiccup?

NASA, once again finding itself with powdered egg in a tube on its collective face, didn’t have the reaction I would’ve predicted.

I was expecting NASA to issue a stern rebuke of such carelessness. Perhaps even something along the lines of “Are you a freakin’ moron? It’s not like y’all can head on over to Home Depot and pick up some new tools? That bastard costs
one hundred thousand dollars!
”

But, no. NASA took a kinder, gentler approach with the loss of the taxpayer-funded tool bag, issuing a statement praising HSP and saying, “she showed real character and great discipline” by continuing on and doing a fine job for the rest of the spacewalk. Not to belabor the point, but where did they think she could’ve gone?
She’s in space
. It’s not like she can say, “Screw all of y’all, there’s a sale at Pier 1 and I am
so
outta here, asshats. Uhhhh. Which way was Earth again?”

Because NASA isn’t completely stupid and apparently never misses a BOGO on tool bags, our girl was told that she could continue her chore by sharing her fellow astronaut’s tool bag, which I’m sure pleased him no end. (“You think you can hold onto that caulking gun? It belonged to my granddaddy … .”)

NASA did say it was a trifle odd that she “lost” the tool kit because normally it’s tethered to a much larger bag. Maybe she just thought they didn’t go together. Tandem bags are just so 1998, y’all.

The spin doctors at Mission Control managed to make it seem almost laudable that there’s a bag of expensive-ass spaceship parts floating out there.

“We appreciate how hard you all are working,” they said in a peppy little post-goof message to the crew. Which makes me just wonder if NASA is, well, high.

The next goal for the space team is to build a $154 million machine that will convert urine to drinking water. Which means HSP’s muffins may taste kinda funny, at least on the first couple of tries. It’s like when you make pancakes and you always have to throw out the first two or three ’cause the griddle isn’t hot enough yet and you’ve used too much urine, er, water.

Why am I so cranky about my astro-sistah? Because she sets us all backward when she does dumb shit like that. She, of all people, should know that women still have to work twice as hard in male-dominated professions just to be taken
seriously. That’s not fair, of course, but it’s true. So when you, oopsie, lose a tool kit, it causes heartless humor writers everywhere to unveil snarky, personal attacks on all of womankind. Thank God she didn’t whine that the orange spacesuit didn’t do a thing for her complexion.

To be fair (which, incidentally, I just hate) HSP has been a good, occasionally outstanding, astronaut for more than a decade, so that does make me think the whole losing-the-tool-kit thing was planned. I mean, it did happen while she was
cleaning up
a greasy mess. Maybe she got fed up with always being the one who had to clean up the guys’ mess. Maybe she was all “Right stuff,
this
, bitches!” Or, maybe not.

In any case, it’s important to remember that anybody can make a mistake, especially when you’re the only girl living with a bunch of men whose only core belief is that bacon makes everything better. Stuck in space without so much as a
Jersey Shore
rerun, their main job was to add a couple of rooms to your “house.” Only in this case, the house is a space station, and they’re transforming it to a five-bedroom, two-bath home with a kitchen.

I imagine astrogirl may have grown a little tired of being surrounded by all that testosterone. If you’ve ever experienced a major renovation project with a member of the opposite sex, you understand that tensions can run high.

I bet they hooted her down when she wanted to talk paint chips and fabric swatches.

Yes, the more I think about it, it’s entirely likely that I’m
being way too hard on HSP. I can’t say that I could’ve survived more than a single day living with a bunch of guys, wearing that unflattering-ass color, and knowing that when they did finally get that urine-to-water gizmo hooked up and working right, they’d just nag her to try to figure out a way to turn urine into beer.

Things haven’t been easy for NASA lately. The moon program had such a bad case of been-there-done-that that its funding’s been killed. But, no matter, they’re rebounding with a plan to work with private companies to develop space taxis. In theory, this sounds pretty cool, but then you have to think how sometimes it’s hard to even get a cab across town.

The plan is for NASA to pay private space taxis to take their astronauts up to the space station for about $20 million per passenger. So I guess the astronauts will need to stand out on the curb holding up giant pillowcases with dollar signs on them to get the attention of the cabbie.

Of course, regular folks can pay for a ride, too, using these space taxis that, with any luck at all, will be operated by drivers who won’t be talking on their damn cell phones the entire time. Which wouldn’t be bad, because I love to eavesdrop, if they didn’t mumble so much that the only thing you can hear is, like, every tenth word, which sometimes sounds like “ … terrorist … explosion … jihad … meatless patties …”—all of which are equally scary in my paranoid brain.

At the end of the trip to the space station, will the space taxi driver press that little button on the right and make the fare miraculously jump by 20 percent for
no apparent reason?
Will he then explain that it’s because of some bullshit “time-of-day surcharge”? Will you then get all pissy and make him take you back to Earth so you can go to an ATM and with-draw enough cash to pay his greedy butt?

And wouldn’t it be fun if these new space taxis would occasionally have a
Cash Cab
driver? (On second thought,
Cash Cab
wouldn’t be a great fit because if you fail to answer all the questions right on the show, you’re ejected without prize money. It would be hard to pull over near what used to be Pluto and dump the riders just because they didn’t know the capital of North Dakota.)

Interestingly, one of the major backers of the new space taxi business is the founder of Amazon.

And because of this, I worry that if duh-hubby and I buy our space taxi tickets one day, he’ll go first in a separate “shipment” for no apparent reason while I may arrive, inexplicably, days to weeks later.

Another space taxi playa is the founder of a California company that has already built a rocket called Falcon and a capsule called Dragon. Which reminds me, his mommy said it was time for his lunch and not to forget to drink all his milk.

NASA says that in the future, there will be multiple spaceships carrying crews, pushing costs down and safety
up. Hmmm. Perhaps they will follow the successful route of traditional airline transportation. Only this way, instead of paying $99 for your one-way flight to Albuquerque and getting your flight canceled or delayed so you can spend more time perusing the offerings at Jamba Juice and watching the hair grow on your legs, you will be able to pay $20 million to be bumped or otherwise inconvenienced.

Once you finally board your space taxi, because it’s a taxi, I’m guessing the food offerings will be more in keeping with that kind of ambiance, say a bag of Funyuns and some formerly urine turned water.

Of course, this is many years away, partly because the technology isn’t completely in place and there are still many seed grants to divvy up between competing companies. Not only that, it’s going to take a long time to round up a sufficient number of religious icons to place on the dashboard.

Y’all know I’m right.

She Drives Me Crazy (Shaving Time Off the Commute)

M
y friend Randy is ’bout to lose his religion over his new car.

A good Southern boy, Randy was tickled with his car at first because it (a) has plenty of leg room (b) dual sunroofs and (c) isn’t a Toyota.

Randy’s car is awesome in many regards but it was the state-of-the-art navigation system that sold him.

Who that, you ask? Well, it’s a fab little device that lets you keep your eye on the road while you “talk” to your car. Randy likes to use the system to call people, hands free, or, more often, to command it to play music.

Unfortunately, his car can’t understand Randy’s melodious Southern drawl.

“I don’t know what I’m gonna do,” Randy told me. “I tell
it, as plain as I know how, to ‘Play artist Hall and Oates’ and it will come back with this hateful Yankee voice that snaps at me, ‘I didn’t understand you.’ So then I say, ‘I said Hall and Oates,
por favor
’ because I’m feeling just a little bit hateful and I might as
well
be speaking in a furrin language.

“So I say again to the machine, ‘Play
Rich Girl
.’ It’s one of my favorites. I remember the first time I heard it I was in high school and it had been out for a long time but I really liked it because I was actually dating a kinda rich girl at the time and what
was
her name? … She was really cute but a little taller than my usual girlfriends, ’cause you know I’m cursed in the height department. All the Wagram men are. My Uncle Elvin was short, but he never had any trouble with the women. He liked ’em young with old money. I’ll never forget when his mama, who was a real piece of work, got introduced to his newest woman friend and she was way different from his usual teenyboppers. She must’ve been at least forty-five which was perfect because Elvin was close to fifty. Anyway, Aunt Berle had been sipping cocktails for a couple of hours, and when he introduced his new grown-up woman friend to Berle and explained how she owned a highly successful chain of lawn furniture stores, Aunt Berle said, ‘Well how ’bout that! Usually Elvin goes for young poontang and old money, not old poontang and new money. That boy’s just full of surprises, I reckon.’ Anywho, I loved that song
Rich Girl
and had just developed a real hankerin’ to hear it and so I was talking about old times and
that Yankee bitch just cut me off!
”

Well, as a typical Southerner, Randy may go on just a bit. And it’s possible that he even forgot for a second that he was talking to a machine. You know those people that you describe as “he never met a stranger”? That’s Randy. Except sometimes I want to say a stranger what.

Randy says that his car’s navigation system’s inability to understand his Southern accent means that he arrives everywhere just a little pissed off.

“That crazy Yankee bitch inside my car hears Derek and the Dominos as Death Cab for Cutie,” he said morosely. “I haven’t been this upset since they put me on the prayer chain at church for foot fungus. You know, I just hate when everybody has to know my business. That prayer chain is something to be scared of. The Baptists print the reason for the prayers right there in the bulletin, you know, so I was embarrassed to wear sandals for a very long time.”

Oh, yes, well …

Randy says he gets so upset sometimes that he just pulls over to the shoulder of the interstate and takes a few minutes to cuss out his car.

I told Randy that I was completely sympathetic. And as a member of the pseudojournalistic profession, I plan to investigate this thoroughly and get back to him with the results of my in-depth research and extensive interviews.

Kidding! I haven’t got time for that shit. But I do get it. I told Randy that I have the same problem every time I “tawk” to a phone tree.

I don’t think I’ve ever used directory assistance without a real human having to come on the line to figure out what the hell I’m trying to say.

The computer says, “What listing?” in that clipped tone that indicates you better get it right the first time.

So I say something perfectly normal, taking care to enunciate perfectly: “Ah’d lock da numbah for Bream Baituh’s Worms and Cawfee Shop, puleeeeez,” which any moron should be able to understand, but no!

This is followed by that hateful pause and “Please hold for an operator.”

Randy will, I’m afraid, just have to get used to the fact that the rest of the country tawks funny. They can’t hep they-selves.

He shouldn’t oughta be talking on the phone while driving anyway. Even hands-free devices aren’t safe.

You know what’s even less safe than talking on the phone or even texting or reading the newspaper while driving? Shaving your cootch, that’s what.

Well. You asked.

Florida driver Megan Barnes wins the Lifetime Redneck Achievement Award for her behavior while driving along the Keys on a balmy March day.

Megan decided to multitask, as we all have at one time or another, while she was enroute to a date. But while we’ve all done dumb things like applying eye shadow or mascara at the stop light when we’re running short of time, Megan took the
whole grooming-while-driving to new heights. That’s right: She decided that she’d use the drive time to spruce up her love rug.

Unfortunately for Megan, this required more attention than she could safely give such an intimate project so, mid-shave, she slammed into the back of a pickup truck at forty-five miles per hour.

That kinda makes the time you drove with your elbows while eating a Whopper seem downright virtuous, doesn’t it?

I’m trying to remember back to my driver’s education classes, and I swear I don’t remember Mr. Kilpatrick ever coming right out and saying, “Whatever you do, young ladies, do not ever be tempted to trim your hoohah while you’re behind the wheel.” No, I would’ve definitely remembered that, and I’m certain there was no grisly video to watch that showed such behavior.

Ms. Barnes told the investigating officer that she was “on her way to a date and wanted to be ready for the visit.”

Yes, she wanted to look her best. All over. Except, well, I’ve seen Ms. Barnes’ mug shot and she has a face that would stop a clock and raise hell with small watches. I don’t want to sound cruel, but you’d have to be pretty walleyed to even make it as far as her hoohah, bless her heart.

I guess the only thing to be grateful for in this sorry scenario is that Ms. Barnes didn’t try to
wax
her bidness while driving. Imagine the horror if she’d tossed the used wax strips into the waterway as she cruised toward Key West.
Talk about saving the manatees. They might’ve thought those were the pelts of long-lost cousins.

I’ve driven this particular stretch of highway a few times in my life and it’s one of the prettiest drives imaginable: crystal waters, cloudless skies, gorgeous mangroves. Call me crazy but I’ve never been so bored that I decided to drag a sharp blade over my naughties just to have something to do.

In all fairness, Ms. Barnes was smart enough to realize that she couldn’t shave and steer simultaneously so she asked the passenger in the front seat, who happened to be her
ex husband
, to take the wheel while she got busy. What a guy! How many men do you know who would help their ex get ready for a big date in quite this manner?

And how did that conversation go, you reckon?

“Here, hon, hold the wheel for a few minutes. I’m gonna hook up with Ray-Ray when we hit Long Key and I wanna try to make it look like a
lightning bolt
!”

Precious Lord.

Not only did Ms. Barnes’ ex agree to take the wheel, but after the wreck, he switched places and tried to take the blame, too.

Unfortunately, his bare chest sold him out. The airbag only deployed on the passenger side and our white knight (OK, actually more of a pawn) had the bruises to prove it.

To nobody’s real surprise, the Florida Highway Patrol quickly discovered that Ms. Barnes didn’t have a valid driver’s license. Oh, and the day before, she’d been convicted of
DUI. (Everybody say, “Noooooooo!!!!!”) Oh, and her car had been seized and had no insurance or registration. (It was a Thunderbird, if you were wondering. Yes, she was having fun, fun, fun’ til the po-lice took her T-bird awaaaaayyy.) Oh, and she was a probationer. Albeit an impeccably groomed one.

I imagine that Megan Barnes’ tale will be legendary in the Keys and beyond for many years to come. And, thanks to her foolishness, there will doubtless be a new warning label on your razors and shaving products. Because every time a dumb ass does something like this, the companies involved feel the need to explain the dangers to prevent possible lawsuits.

Something along the lines of “Warning! Do not attempt to use this razor in the vicinity of your cooter while driving. Failure to use this product in the safety and sanctity of your bathroom will result in unremitting grossness and possible harm to yourself and others.”

Because these warnings must be accompanied by simple drawings that transcend language barriers, it should be one hell of a picture, am I right?

I told this story to Randy to get his mind off his own language problems, but it didn’t help all that much. He’s decided to accept his Aunt Berle’s wisdom on such matters.

“She always says that which does not kill us only makes us meaner.”

She’s a feisty one, that Berle.

BOOK: You Don't Sweat Much for a Fat Girl

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