Astronauts and Space Cadets

February 10, 2007

Berkeley, California

Signs that the Bush administration has made this a not-so-kinder and gentler nation is evidenced by the recent arrest of NASA astronaut Navy Captain Lisa Nowak for attempted kidnap and murder. No administration has ever produced killer astronauts with the possible exception of Herbert Hoover's, but I'm not totally sure about that.

Anyway, so the story is this Capt. Nowak drove halfway across the country to Florida, wearing a diaper so she wouldn't have to stop(!), with the intention of kidnapping and possibly killing this other skinny chick who had been eyeballing this hunky astronaut fly-boy that Nowak apparently had the hots for. Talk about "Days of Our Lives!" Anyway, she wasn't successful and got arrested, charged with multiple felonies, and then released wearing some kind of GPS tracking thing. You think that's weird? What comes next makes that seem tame.

Just two days later back in Florida, famous celebrity Anna Nicole Smith, America's premier space cadet, is suddenly found dead in her hotel room. Capt. Nowak is nowhere to be seen, and the connection is simply too obvious to overlook. Speculation is that the gravity of Ms. Smith's enormous breasts possibly pulling in astronauts from the nearby space center simply made her too much of a threat in Capt. Nowak's mind, and you can figure out the rest.

What turns a decorated female astronaut into a killer? What makes a traveling killer astronaut wear diapers? What makes a diaper-wearing female killer astronaut kill other women who attract astronauts? The questions are nearly endless, but the fact remains: a space cadet is dead, the world waits for answers, and astronaut Nowak, wherever she is, isn't talking.