Hobo Soup for the Soul (aka Jump Spin Thrusts)

It has been noted that in space no one can hear you scream. I submit the same is true of submersion in a large vat of petroleum jelly.

Now, someone would have to be very drunk, or very stupid, to confuse a large vat of petroleum jelly with outer space. But Latigo Flint has been known to shoot people in the face if they call him stupid, so I've a pretty good idea which way the consensus will trend.

One of the unfortunate side effects of mistaking a vat of petroleum jelly for outer space is that you end up looking rather silly demanding Astronaut Wings from NASA with your clothes stuck to you, your hair slicked eight ways to hell, and Vaseline oozing from your ears and nose. (Not to mention you tend to get labeled a pathological masturbator.)

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There are people who like to demand that money not be spent on space exploration and settlement right now, what with so many terrestrial problems as yet unsolved.

Now, the rational might counter with the fact that Europe in the thirteen and fourteen-hundreds found itself beset by problems that make ours today seem like a wink and a tickle, and yet they still found the means to fund the voyages of discovery that resulted in the steady improvement in the quality of life for nearly every human on earth that continues unchecked to this day. (Nearly every; obviously there are going to be a few exceptions--sorry about that Mohicans.)

But not Latigo Flint. Nope, I never even mention any of that to people who claim NASA's budget would be better spent on healthcare, after-school programs for angry urchins, walls at the border, disaster response or hobo-soup. Instead, I savagely beat them with a rubber hose until in stumbling desperation, they pledge half their income to JPL on the off chance it'll enable them to put more than a world between them and me.

I'm not saying cut out hobo-soup, some of my best friends are hobos, but stay away with your foolish fiscal knife from those things that truly matter long-term. For when we run out of room and opportunity, we all end up killing each other for soup. Or worse, peaceful words on a two-thousand-year page.




(Not to mention sex in microgravity is gonna be awesome! I call dibs on the copyright for the wall-to-wall, jump-spin-and-thrust.)