Cinemorphosis

Tag: space

  • The Biceps That Gravity Forgot

    The Biceps That Gravity Forgot

    You had been marinating in delusions of Schwarzenegger-level grandeur, dreaming of championship stages and oil-slicked pecs, when the world as you knew it collapsed inside the Canyon High Student Lounge. There you were, slouched on a vinyl couch, flipping through the San Francisco Chronicle, when existential dread blindsided you like a sucker punch to the solar plexus. The culprit? A doomsday op-ed dressed up as science journalism.

    According to futurists and a certain Princeton physics professor named Gerard K. O’Neill, Earth’s days were numbered. The human species, it seemed, was destined to ditch the planet and board lunar shuttles en route to solar-powered orbiting colonies. O’Neill’s vision of humanity’s next chapter was detailed in The High Frontier—a prophetic fever dream of “closed-ecology habitats in free orbit” powered by sun-harvesting mega-panels. To make matters worse, the article was illustrated by some artist named Don Davis, whose watercolor nightmares depicted tranquil cottages, babbling fountains, and crowds of eerily placid, malnourished utopians.

    But what truly made your blood run cold wasn’t the loss of Earth’s ozone layer or the scarcity of clean water—it was the complete and utter absence of gyms in space.

    No dumbbells. No squat racks. No gravity.

    You were staring down the barrel of the greatest crisis to ever confront the adolescent mind: the total obliteration of your bodybuilding future. What good was a solar-powered paradise if it left you looking like a string bean in a Speedo? You’d be condemned to slurp nutrient paste in zero-G while your muscle mass withered into oblivion. You pictured yourself floating aimlessly through space, a tomato with toothpicks for limbs, indistinguishable from the other protein-starved citizens of O’Neill’s nightmare.

    Meanwhile, the rest of the Student Lounge was oblivious. Kids were gossiping like caffeinated squirrels. Others were playing Paper Football with apocalyptic enthusiasm, as if the Earth weren’t on the verge of being abandoned for a weightless dystopia. You wanted to scream, “Shut up! My dreams are dying!”

    That’s when Liz Murphy strolled in, radiant and red-haired, walking straight toward you. She handed you a birthday card that screamed, If It Feels Good, Do It! Her smile was bright enough to reroute satellites. She was clearly flirting—or at least offering a hand in friendship—but you were paralyzed by cosmic dread.

    You glanced at the card, then back at her. “It’s over,” you muttered, face ashen. “No gravity. No bench press. No protein. Space is going to destroy bodybuilding.”

    Liz blinked. “What?”

    You handed her the newspaper like you were delivering the last will and testament of humanity. “They want to launch us into space. Colonies with no iron. No steaks. No deadlifts. My dream physique? Finished.”

    Liz read for a few seconds and then laughed—hard. “Are you serious right now?”

    “Deadly,” you said, your voice trembling with conviction.

    “I came here to give you a birthday card, not an existential crisis,” she said. “I’m not proposing marriage, you melodramatic meathead. Relax.”

    Her laughter was like an emotional defibrillator, jolting you back to reality. You chuckled—barely. Still, the horror lingered. The gym-less future. The protein-free vacuum of outer space. But for now, you allowed yourself to accept the birthday wishes… and the present moment. After all, if the end was coming, you might as well enjoy the applause before gravity lets go for good.

  • Astroganda

    Astroganda

    When I was five, I was the proud herald of my father’s superhuman abilities. I told the other kids at the Royal Lanai apartments playground that my dad, an IBM engineer, was basically Tony Stark with a day job. I pointed to the giant playground spaceship and swore that when he got home, he’d slap rocket launchers on it and we’d all blast off to Mars. Naturally, the kids, hungry for cosmic adventure, followed me to the carport, where my dad’s red MGB was parked like the space shuttle awaiting launch. We munched on Pillsbury Space Food Sticks—because apparently, astronaut snacks were the pinnacle of pre-launch cuisine—as we waited in breathless anticipation.

    When the MGB finally roared into the carport, we erupted like we’d just seen the second coming of the space shuttle. But my father, in his somber gray suit that made him look like a budget Bond villain, crushed our dreams faster than a meteorite. “Sorry, kids,” he declared, “but flying to Mars without FAA clearance would land me in the slammer.” Our little faces fell as we imagined Dad in prison for attempting to breach the celestial airspace. Our sense of civic duty suddenly made us feel like unsung heroes, following the rules by not flying to Mars. The thrill of not going to Mars was almost as exhilarating as the thought of actually going there.

    The real blow to my father’s godlike status wasn’t his failure to launch us into space. No, it was his red MGB. This flashy little convertible was more temperamental than a teenager with a broken phone. It had a pathological aversion to warm weather and its engine seemed to overheat if you so much as looked at it sideways. Frustrated by its chronic hot flashes, my father finally traded it for a turquoise Chrysler Newport. The MGB’s breakdowns were like a public confession that there were engineering limits even he couldn’t defy. If he couldn’t conquer a car, how could he possibly conquer the cosmos?

    Meanwhile, we ate our Space Sticks, hoping these chewy abominations might turn us into astronauts. Those days introduced me to the food industry’s sugary, astronaut-themed scam that sold space-age wonder in chewy, shrink-wrapped form. The term for this manipulation is Astroganda–The slick marketing tactic that wrapped ordinary snacks—like Pillsbury Space Food Sticks—in a shimmering cloak of interstellar cool, convincing kids that chewing one made them honorary astronauts. A hybrid of “astro” and “propaganda,” Astroganda is the strategy of linking mass-produced consumer goods with galactic ambition, NASA prestige, and the promise that you too could eat like Buzz Aldrin while sitting in your corduroy overalls.

    Space Food Sticks were less about nutrition and more about narrative—chewy cocoa logs of powdered optimism, packaged for Earth-bound dreamers with moonshot imaginations. They didn’t just taste like chocolate; they tasted like potential.

    Victims of Astroganda could often be found in carports, licking space dust off their fingers, eyes fixed on a dented MGB convertible, waiting for liftoff and quietly ignoring the radiator steam as a mere launch delay.

    It wasn’t food—it was future cosplay in a wrapper. And we bought it. Literally and figuratively.