Random Shots: The NASA Seniors Tour

R.F. Kampfer

MEN OF A certain age are going to hate John Glenn. With him blasting off into orbit, it’s going to be harder to argue that they’ve earned the right to slack off a bit. Now if he drops dead, that of course will be a point in their favor.

Them Good Old Days

IT IS AS hard to find a resident of Flint whose grandfather didn’t participate in the 1937 sitdown strike as it is to find a Dubliner whose ancestors didn’t fight in the (1916) Easter rising.

“Titanic” is an impressive movie, but were people singing “Come Josephine in my Flying Machine” in 1912? (By the way, you have to wonder how much impact “Titanic” will have on the cruise-ship business.)

It has been said that a distinctive teenage life style did not develop until World War II. This was the first time that both parents worked outside the home and adolescents were given the opportunity to make trouble.

Paul Simon, in a recent interview, expresses a profound distaste for his old partnership with Art Garfunkle. Maybe that’s because many of their fans back then assumed they were a gay couple.

Ten percent of self-described Christians believe that Joan of Arc was Noah’s daughter.

If It’s Sex You Want . . .

HILARY IS ABOUT to come out with a new book: It Takes a Village to Watch a Husband.

When evaluating Clinton’s evasive answers, one must take into account how humiliating it is for a macho man to admit he ever passed up a chance.

If Clinton was going to confess anything he should have done it during the Super Bowl, when few people would notice.

Is it bizarre to have talking heads debating about whether oral sex constitutes a relationship? Or is it just me?

Ruling classes have usually found religion to be a useful tool for keeping the masses in line, but it’s never restrained them from doing anything they wanted to.

Thanks to guest contributor Jack Ceder for the following philology lesson: While the good old Anglo-Saxon proletarian word cock has been overtaken by the upper-class latinized penis, many modern euphemisms have emerged: pecker, prick, dick etc. Now we have the perfect postmodern appellation: bill. Comedians will thrive on such double entendres as garbage bill, bill collector, end them a bill, etc.

Jack also reports that the religious right is preparing a plank for the Republican Convention in 2000 which would require all White House employees to wear chastity belts. A newly formed company, “Falwell’s Christian Belts,” is pressing for an extension to all federal employees.

Kampfer’s Snappy Sayings

THE FUNNIEST LINE from the new Cosby show, “Kids Say the Darndest Things,” was “Don’t try to extort money from your father.” [Wait a minute: Wasn’t that a book by Art Linkletter?—ed.]

Are “Wag the Dog” or “Canadian Bacon” cases of life imitating art, or art imitating life?

We seem to go through a lot of Kennedys, which may be why Mother Nature made them so prolific. Kampfer doesn’t have the world’s healthiest life style, but he has enough sense not to go skiing.

ATC 73, March-April 1998