Why??!!

....are we still going to the moon?  Fifty-four years after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first landed there and danced the hornpipe in the barren dust, we're still going there.  

I don't get it?!  I was on a plane flying from Ottawa to Toronto that day in 1969 when the captain came on and announced they had landed.  Wow, we all cheered and clapped!  I actually thought that was the beginning of something.  But it wasn't.  We just keep going and going and nothing happens?!

Except a lot of people get rich building spacecrafts and related paraphenalia over 54 years so man can fly around space and send satelites up hither and yon, but to what end?  I'm still waiting and wondering!

The latest gang to float away is on Artemis II and includes one measly Canadian, Jeremy Hansen.  The media coverage today about this guy suggests it's a HUGE deal, but when asked what the mission was, this is what he said:

Whaaaat!!??!  They have no clue why they're going or what they're going to do when they get there.  Oh wait, they're not actually going to land on the moon, they're just going to orbit it a couple of times and fly back.  Gawd!!  What's this boondoggle costing?  I can't even bear to google it.  Someone interviewed another ex-Canadian astronaut, Roberta Bondar, and she actually said, "Well, they're going to try to stay alive for starters."  That's what she actually said!!  Apart from that objective, nothing.

Reminds me of the relatively new sport of "Cheer" -- something I hadn't really heard of in Canada.  Used to be that cheerleaders cheered something, you know, like a team.  I was captain of my high  school squad back in the day and apart from fleeting, localized glory, it was no biggie.  Now, however, Cheer is an entity on its own competing all across North America, no team affiliation required and no actual teams to cheer on.

Cheer has certainly has morphed from what my little Lisgar crew of six brought to the gridiron.  The Dallas Cowgirls have nothing on the skill and athleticism of these girls:

But back to Jeremy.  Naturally, Canadian journalists are all agog about the thrill of little old Jeremy being part of the crew.  A Canadian, they all gushed!  Wow, we're so proud!  Again I ask, why did not one of them question the reason for these multi-billion dollar boondoggles into the void?  Pretty shoddy work, in my view.  

Here's our Jeremy, left, and his buddy fist-pumping their mystery mission:

There's enough stuff messed up on this planet -- the one we're in the process of destroying.  Is the plan to zoom up and wreck the moon too?

Naturally, the crew consists of the usual, prescribed ethnic and gender posse:

It's all so senseless, unless, of course, you are Dick Cheney making fistfuls building the hardware at Haliburton for the jaunt.

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Just a word about grammar, sorry, but I have to.  Why do people say, "If I would've......I would've....."  No, it's, "If I had......I would have......"  Drives me nuts!  Here's a perfect example from a report on the deplorable conditions at 24 Sussex -- "would have occurred" -- arrrrrgh!

Also drives me mad when people forget there are three parts to every verb, as in "Ride, rode, ridden", or "Strive, strove, striven."  When I hear people say, "I had rode, or "I had strived...." I get crazy.  These mistakes are ubiquitous and I don't like them.  The above is a perfect example from a report on horror that is 24 Sussex.  Sigh...........