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15 December 2006
So, I don't ask for much, and I think I'm a pretty OK human being,→[More:] so could you guys pleeeeaaaase get me a ticket on a space flight?
The first thing I'd do was a twisting screaming corkscrewing kind of zero-g dash down the middle of the space ship and then probably jerk-off just in case that was somehow not covered before the human race was destroyed by nuclear fire or an angry God or a random comet. Other than that it's wide open, I'd just bug out space for a while I guess, maybe listen to Maggotbrain by Funkadelic for a while. Can I please have a ticket too?
Your desires for recreational space flight prompt the memory of R.A. Lafferty's short story, "Ride a Tin Can" in which a race of sentinient but stupid alien gnomes all vie for the honor, and pay handsomely, for the privlege of "riding a tin can" to Earth, as one-way immigrants to the fabulous, impossibly far off Earth of stories and legends, which is so far away they have to work all their lives to pay passage in the big, shiny Earth ships that come and go monthly.
**************SPOILER ALERT***********************
Which they do eventually, as, well, the boned and gutted contents of tin cans.
Aw man, sitting next to Lance will be worse than the time I had to spend a 12 hour plane flight next to a Belgian who wouldn't shut up about how much he hated his ex-wife.