Sputnik

There aren't too many cartoons I care for anymore - the little kid in me feels pretty much gone - but yesterday I watched The Iron Giant with my child.

As today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the first Sputnik satellite sent into orbit, I thought it was a nice touch to find the movie in rotation at HBO.

Anyway, The Iron Giant comes to earth under mysterious circumstances that seem to directly coincide with the Sputnik launch & through the course of the film, the giant is revealed to be a super powered weapon far exceeding the most destructive military forces our Pentagon could even dream of for assembly line mass production. In the end though, all of these weapons are really just reduced to mere tools & it becomes the intentions behind their use demonstrated as the real threat - a threat perilously approaching and clearly mirroring the absolutely suicidal nature of the Mutually Assured Destruction abyss the world teetered on during the Cold War.

It's been interesting to read this week of how America reacted to Sputnik in 1957. Besides the obvious implications of all the bombs the Soviet Union could potentially hurl over our heads, there must have been the exhilaration of realizing the world had just changed before every ones' eyes - and not necessarily for the worst.

I feel like I've seen the world change exactly twice; When Germany became Germany again as the Soviet Union crumbled which I'm sure was a delight to France and Belgium and Jewish people and...; & 9-11 which seemed to change the world I guess but not at all for the better. So who really wants to give a crap about celebrating either occasion?

While it's impossible to avoid reconciling the darker military implications of racing to ultimately put humans on the moon, it had to be an exciting time.
It's weird though to know that I have lived for thirty-six of these fifty years and to feel that it all climaxed before I was even born. I don't remember moon landings.

As I celebrate other peoples' memories tonight, I have to look at my cell phone, my 300 channels of shit on the TV to choose from and this lap top offering this deeply life-enriching blog & just say wow.
I think Megadeth summed it up brilliantly just by titling an album, So Far So Good So What?