Up and Down

Listening to Terry Fallis' 2012 novel "Up and Down," his third I believe.  I'm trying to listen my way through all of those available as podcast feeds.

The idea is that a PR firm is given the task of reinvigorating public support for NASA and and Canada's CSA.  The new guy (David) throws out a brainstorm for a contest so a regular citizen of each of the countries gets a "working" trip to the ISS.  (They would be doing some of the work up there, not just staring out the window.). The selection of the vetted candidates would be made by a random drawing.

It may be a 2012 thing.  But an' t'were me, I'd do more of a "America's Got Talent" thing, with perhaps periodic interviews or minidocumentaries about each of the top X contestants, and the audience voting for their favorite candidates.  A drawing is like the lottery, people are interested till they find out their number wasn't drawn, then they're off to something else.

Have them do the voting and they have some ownership of *their* candidate. And if their candidate doesn't win, they were still part of the process, and they're still invested in the success of The Whole Thing.

Then again, Terry has decades of experience in PR, so I suppose he'd know better than I.  And it's likely a moot point; closest we came to Citizen Astronaut was Teacher in Space -- which didn't turn out well, no fault of the Teacher in Space idea.  Maybe someday.

"I blame you for the moonlit sky...."

Brown Recluse

I've noticed something that's kinda troubling.  Since I've been laid off, I've essentially never left the house.

This is not a good sign.  While I'm still blogging, still podcasting, still Twittering, still doing alla the online stuff I usually do, I'm not going anywhere, outside of the occasional cigarette run.

How the heck do I get up to speed on a new job, or even find a new job, when I don't even leave the house?  Add to that, it's not particularly good for me to just sit at home all day.  Should really get out and go somewhere, anywhere, just to break the cycle.

I'm very much lacking in social skills, and if I don't exercise what little I have, I lose them.  Happened once, a few years back.  Wasn't pretty.

This reclusive behavior has really gotta stop.  The Internet is not the world.  Even if the world outside is cold, it's still the world.

(sigh)

Four Walls Around Me

Listening to an old James Taylor song (there's another kind?), "Bartender's Blues:"

I need four walls around me, to hold my life,, to keep me from going astray,

And a Honky-Tonk Angel to hold me tight, to keep me from slippin' away.

Yeah, that's about right. Right now I'm laid off from work, and I know I could well do better finding a job somewhere else. Even in good times, this is a bad place to be unemployed. And these aren't good times. But here, I have all my stuff in messy piles around me, and I have a pretty good idea where it all is. That's important to me.

The other day, I was watching "Mozart & the Whale" on my DVD player. (Got it from Netflix, and now my sister's mad I signed up for it. Oh, well, just wanted to see that one film.) At one point in the film, Isabelle cleans up Donald's (thoroughly filthy) apartment. She even replaced his (slimy) shower curtain. Donald comes home and sees all that neatness, and freaks out. "I thought you'd like it," Isabelle says, bewildered. And Donald shouts, "You stole my life!"

Aspie thing. You wouldn't understand.

Or maybe you would?