You Never Think You're Going to Be the Type of Space Captain to Throw Someone Out the Airlock

(Image: Battlestar Galactica/Sci-Fi Channel)

At McSweeney's, Captain Ariel Karlin writes of her great dilemma. We all grow up with images of space captains sending their enemies out airlocks in quick but bloody deaths. But we never expect to end up doing exactly what they did:

Listen, I know how this looks. I always said I wasn’t going to be “that guy.” Just because I have an airlock doesn’t mean I have to throw anyone out the airlock. And yes, at this point, it’s pretty overdone. But seriously, please step through the first airtight door.

It probably seems like every jackass with a spaceship is constantly throwing someone or other into space. And I don’t necessarily think of myself as the type of person who does things just because I have a certain role and I’ve seen representations of other people in that role behave a certain way. I hope you don’t think I’m that type of person either. Now take five steps forward so you’re in the center of the pressure vessel passageway.

Don’t look at me like that. This is hard for me, too! It’s a kick in the gut when you realize that the person you are as an adult doesn’t match up with who you thought you’d grow up to be. I thought a lot of things about my life would be different. I thought I’d be married by now. I thought I’d still be on Earth. I thought we were many years away from perfecting humanoid cybernetic organisms who could successfully challenge the authority of humankind. And I just never really saw myself as the type of guy who’d let anyone be ripped out of his spaceship into the vast unknown darkness.

It's okay, Captain. You're doing the right thing. The rest of us are completely loyal and will back you up.

-via Ace of Spades HQ


Comments (0)

This is so odd that you post this because I just came across an albino squirrel myself in my neighborhood when I was out for a run. It surprised the heck out of me.
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Predators and prey? Even if the acorns and nuts see the squirrel, they don't have the means to get away from them in time.

Predators, yes. Prey, not so much.
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Yeah, the "prey" comment got my attention too. I have a photo somewhere in my slide collection of an albino squirrel in a Salt Lake City park. Maybe urban albino squirrels don't have to worry so much about predators - any more than white cats and small dogs.
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In Brevard, NC, there's a yearly white squirrel festival, and you can see the little buggers everywhere. Doesn't seem like their visibility is hurting them any...
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Olney, Illinois is "home of the white squirrel" and the white squirrels are actually protected to increase their numbers and cause the recessive trait to be displayed in the majority of the squirrel population.
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An argument as old as time........

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/set/squirrels.html

"Olney has overhyped themselves, according to a Marionville, Missouri, spokesperson, also publicized as Home of the White Squirrels. "They've got our backs up," Marionville told us, an opinion they've held ever since Olney appeared making preemptive superiority claims on the Today Show in 1965. Marionville believes the squirrels arrived in town "just after the Civil War" and that they escaped from a traveling circus. "The squirrels in Olney were kidnapped from Marionville," they explain."

"Marionville claims to possess the largest, oldest colony of white squirrels in the world, around 300 to 600 here since at least 1854. The local Lions Club actively encourages the squirrels, building little wooden dwellings and planting nut-bearing trees. Marionville even contains a White Squirrel Bed and Breakfast, where visiting humans can stay."
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My friend in Ashford, Connecticut has had a white squirrel living in her yard for two years now. She thinks it is the same one. How long do they live and what can you do to protect it.
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