Nuke the Moon

Well, NASA's finally cracked up.

Tomorrow morning, at 7:30am EST, they're going to fire a rocket straight at the fucking moon.

Ah, boys and their insatiable need for destruction.

They are going to blow up a portion of the moon in search of water. They are hopeful that there will be water there, ostensibly to sustain longer manned missions on the moon-- but I think they want us to live there after we've turned Earth into the solar system's largest septic tank.

I've long lived in thin-lipped, school-marmish disapproval of NASA and their risky, poorly-executed endeavors that have cost the lives of some of this country's greatest folks. I probably rail against NASA in part because I don't understand the larger point behind some of their missions, something I freely admit, and yet, when they build space crafts with faulty heat shields and capsules that disintegrate and burn up in the atmosphere, well, you've kind of got to wonder-- are they cramming a bunch of bold-minded geniuses into the equivalent of a 1990s Kia and blasting that motherfucker up there while the folks at mission control sit with assholes puckered and jaws clenched, crossing all their fingers and toes and elbows?

Probably.

But now, instead of risking the lives of real humans on a spaceship that might crash, they're using remote-controlled rockets that will definitely crash, because that's what rockets do. The rocket will be followed by a satellite that will communicate images and data back to Earth before it too crashes into the crater created by the rocket.

Can't you just hear the comb-overed geeks at Cape Canaveral?

"Fuckin' awesome, man!"

Yeah. You need to get laid.

When I heard this morning that scientists were going to slam a rocket into the moon, I couldn't help thinking about 12th grade Astronomy, and my old schoolmate, Ted. Ted and I both took Astronomy because we were too severely retarded to handle high school Physics, even at the non-honors level. Turns out, it was the best decision I made in high school, besides opting out of 12th grade math and parting my hair. Ted and I raised such hell in Astronomy that we essentially had ownership over the class, and the teacher, who was so amused by our off-color and off-the-wall antics, never seemed to mind. When the teacher came in with delivery room photographs of his new daughter, I inquired if any of them were "R-rated." Ted took a keen interest in the baby's nutrition and asked if our teacher was breastfeeding. Our poor, harrassed teacher's face turned red and, through his smile he said, "Boys, can we have a little couth, please?"

That was his favorite, rhetorical request for us. "Boys, can we have a little couth, please?"

Regrettably, there was no couth to be had. We openly sexually harrassed the only attractive female student in the class, Kathryn.

"Can I sit next to Kathryn during the exam, please?" I asked while tests were being handed out.

"Why?" our teacher asked, "So you can cheat?"

"Who said anything about cheating. I just like the way she smells."

The only reason I passed the course was because I scored 60 extra credit points on the final by standing up in front of the class and singing , from memory, the entire "Galaxy Song" from Monty Python's 1983 film, "The Meaning of Life," which contains lyrics like,

"Just remember that you're standing,
On a plant that's evolving,
Revolving at 900 miles an hour.
It's orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power."

It was a dare, by the teacher.

Ted, however, provided most of the amusement in the class, and he emboldened me to go further and further with my own antics. He bicycled to school, routinely showing up in the dead of winter wearing cargo shorts, Timberlands, and an EMS fleece vest with no shirt on underneath. He drank 20 ounces of coffee in the morning and did drugs through the afternoon. His bizarre black hair stood one-and-a-half feet tall. He laughed like a wild animal having sex in fast-forward, and I knew that classroom was the only possible location in the universe that he and I could be a team.

I'll never forget one day the teacher stood at the front of the room and he asked what we thought would the most worthwile scientific endeavor relating to the study of astronomy. Ted's hand shot up straight as a yardstick. Because it was fun, the teacher called on him. Ted shouted lustily,

"NUKE THE MOON!"

That became his rallying cry. Sometimes he would shout it out in the middle of tests, or in the hallway in between classes. He probably yelled "Nuke the moon!" at his wedding, if there has been such an event. I don't know where Ted is today, I suppose I could stalk him on Facebook, but, when I heard on the news this morning that NASA was going to send a rocket crashing into the lunar surface, I had this funny feeling that somehow my old classmate Ted was working for the government.

And that they finally heard him.