Clown v Astronaut

As with Part 4, today’s central question–what’s worse, being a clown or being an astronaut–is broken up into a series of smaller questions, all of which turn on the matter of deadly or deadliest. The answers are personal, relative to your own likes and (especially) fears; nonetheless, visuals have been provided to guide you in making this important choice.

1. Of the two jobs, which one’s diet is deadliest to your gastrointestinal happiness?

Let’s say you’re having an attractive someone over for dinner. A) What’s in your cupboards, B) Are you even able to imagine an attractive meal anymore, and, if you can, C) do you have a tongue with more than about 4 taste buds that haven’t killed off by freeze-dried food, or burnt food, or cold mushy food, or loneliness.

Probably, clowns eat okay, because the circus often means that meat is being grilled somewhere nearby. But to my mind, c’mon, they’re clowns—and clowns are nobody’s priority after the tent is empty; they must go for days eating nothing but hot dogs.

2. Which of the two jobs is deadliest to your chances of being considered an actor who takes the tough roles?

This one should be so easy: clowns, as a rule, do not have high-profile dramas made about them with any consistency; and meanwhile, successful directors lo-ooove making fancy-looking astronaut movies. At the end of the day, most of them kind of suck; but the premise—it’s like they’re fighting the same fights as down here, but now it’s happening IN SPACE—is so easily recycled that these movies will keep getting made forever. Even James Bond was powerless to prevent his own journey to the beyond. James Bond, for Pete’s sake.

3. Which of the two jobs is deadliest to your chances of being loved by children?

Hm. Clowns and astronauts—children frolic and laugh at the first, and they want to grow up to be the second. A lot of love, on both fronts. But caution beckons, once again, from Hollywood: Movie astronauts, while superficial and boring, tend to be respectable-type people, even if they are misunderstood.

This cannot be said for clowns in movies. The number of guys you see onscreen in clown makeup who aren’t very sad or ironic or powerfully creepy is a very small number. For our visual reference, let’s go with the latest example—Heath Ledger as Joker in the upcoming Batman movie, The Dark Knight.

4. In the end, which of the two jobs is deadliest to your opinion of yourself?

In spite of the various pit- and pratfalls laid out in the previous questions, the choice here may seem obvious. And maybe so. A parting consideration: when you at last get up into space—you’re floating around in the suit and everything—imagine how badly you want to take a picture of yourself, just to remember the moment. Too bad.

Clown or Astronaut? What’s worse.