The Neuronauts: or “Daredevils of the Mind!”

“My mother groaned! My father wept. Into the dangerous world I leapt". William Blake

The Neuronauts: or “Daredevils of the Mind!”

(When I typed in Neuronauts, my spell checker flagged it red, but I plunged ahead, uncorrected)!


OK, Felix Baumgartner, big deal. You jumped out of a capsule wearing a spacesuit after years of preparation and millions of dollars in financing.

[This is a link to his website, but it seems very unsecure. And just a little bit dangerous!]

https://felixbaumgartner.com/my-choices/

Ok. I have to back off a little. Must admit you were the “Millennium Bambi Winner”.

BTW. Below are the real heroes:

Project Manhigh | American Experience | PBS
Using spare parts and ingenuity, a tiny team assembled a capsule they hoped would carry a man to heights over 100,000 feet above the Earth’s surface.

Perhaps instead you could marry a teacher who uses her own money to pay for student school supplies, then have a couple kids to which you develop deep emotional attachments and may die at any moment, work a hard ass physical job that never the less allows us a-holes to drive down a road without falling into an abyss. Where’s the spacesuit for that, douchebag!


I, however, have far surpassed you, for I am a Daredevil of the Mind!

First daredevil experience:

Birth: the template for the rest? Hey Felix, have your ever read any Otto Rank, you little wuss?!

“My mother groaned! My father wept. Into the dangerous world I leapt". William Blake.

How about bursting out of the womb clad only in blood and mucus while some unknown a-hole wearing a mask spanks you in front of 5 people. Where’s the special spacesuit for that, bitch! Where’s my Red Bull energy drink and hot women?

Nitrous oxide at the dentist, on a cloud: Ok that was pretty good. Never mind.

Yet, even I must admit, every daredevil must know his limits.

Acceptable risks:

1. Paragliding

2. Heroin

3. LSD

4. Mescaline

5. Underwater deep cave spelunking (a safer alternative to sex?)

6. Budget journey to Mars via SpaceX, with Elon Musk as your driver.

7. Canceling a cable contract.

8. Combining all of the above.

Completely unacceptable risks:

1. Women

2. Babies

3. Kittens

4. Puppies

5. Poofy clouds


By the way, while I’m at it: FU guy who climbed El-Capitan without ropes! (Ok, maybe I am wrong about this. Although I’m fairly sure he had his amygdala removed before he did this, which in my opinion is cheating). Just to pump my game up, I had two more amygdalas (sorry, just realized that amygdalae is the plural noun — and it scared the fuck out of me!) implanted in my brain.

Opinion | El Capitan, My El Capitan (Published 2017)
The rock climber Alex Honnold is a peerless outdoor performance artist.
Free Solo Climber Alex Honnold Ascends Yosemite’s El Capitan Without a Rope
The climber is the first person to reach the top of Yosemite’s 3,000-foot El Capitan wall without ropes.

A compact guide to a permanent panic attack

(No xanax allowed)

  • Life seems to have arisen so naturally and inevitably on earth; but everywhere we point our telescopes towards the unimaginable vastness of space, we see nothing but a universe utterly inimical to life.
  • So, vertically, Mt. Everest is 29,029', approx 5.5 miles (5.4979167 to be exact). Pretty much the upper limit of human livability. This is my drive, horizontally, to work every morning across Lincoln NE, from east to west.
  • At some “point” in “time”, even a black hole will die.

Adventures with Viagra!

OMG! Taking this boner medicine gave me an intellectual hard-on! I love it! Direct pharmacological Freudian Sublimation in action! (Unfortunately, It did nothing for my penis).