Hungry Space

I'm one of those people that have zero interest in being an astronaut in real life.

And I'll tell you why that is.

Its because of the food.

Its because there's no good pizza and pancake places out there in space.

There aren't even any McDonalds out there we can stop at!

There's nothing!

And we all know the food on spaceships is gonna be freakin' terrible, because it evolved from the lifeless culinary pond of airplane food and Taco Bell.

But without doubt, all science fiction tells us, we'll all be eating gray protein goop and washing the human equivalent of gerbil pellets down with a cup of Its Almost Coffee Substitute.

And that just seems like a goddamn dark future to me.

Prolly drives the Italians crazy, too.

So, on the flipside, let's think about a future where the discovery of good food and fun ways to eat it was the Prime Directive of the human species, and the only reason we went into deep space was to find tons of delightful little aliens to eat and establish interesting places to eat them, like restaurants on the event horizons of black holes and stuff, y'know, all romantic and stuff.

"Sir, the dominant species on the planet is a Six Legged Whatzitnuts."

"Hmm, anything to report on how they'll taste?"

"Long range sensors are saying chicken, sir."

"Ugh, not again."

Oh sure, mebbe you laugh now, but mull it over for a sec, its pretty realistic, when you consider stuff like the spice trade and how it related to colonial expansion in certain places.

Yah, its actually a little scary, and thats prolly why we don't like to think about it, 'cause we don't want hungry aliens from somewhere else coming here, staring down at the earth with tentacles full of silverware and smacking wet slobbery lips.

Yah, we'd rather pretend space exploration was all about I dunno what, something etheral and high faluting, I guess, but you'll never get the common man and woman behind it with that kinda zonked-out neurotic crap, that's like telling me we could get richer by selling telescopes insteada porn or something heh.

And anyways, cooking is an art, y'know.

Yah Jeeves, just like pictures naked chicks is art *cough*

But seriously, now, I mean, why even bother to make a Cold Fusion Atomic Motor and struggle with all that fancy-pants theoretical physics shit, if the goal is to just chew a miserable handful of gray gerbil pellets every day and suck some boogery goop through a straw?

Shouldn't you be able to use that thing to put more bubbles in the champagne or something?

I'd take some bionic tastebuds over any of that other shit, man.

Yah, see, I think this is why Ex-bouncer's favorite thing about Star Trek is the Food Replicator.

And Lost in Space had the mom from Lassie, cooking up something at least as good as peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and Kool-Aid for every meal.

And Lister is the Assistant Chicken Soup Machine Repair Guy (let's not even get into the Vindaloo).

Heck man, on a somewhat related note, if you took all the eating scenes out of the Sopranos, the show would be like ten minutes long.

Well, its just something to think about, I guess.

Yah, there's probably even some aliens we can roll up and use for an after dinner smoke, too heh.

Hey, its almost guaranteed that one of us will try.

"Can you smoke it? Yah yah yah yah!"

Good grief we're freaky creatures, but I'm cool with that.