Mars One, a company based in the Netherlands, has set up a very specific plans for humanities first Colony on our big red neighbour. They want 4 volunteers to engage in an arduous decade long training exercise/reality television show to prepare them for the settling of a land named after the Roman God of War in September of 2022. Before The Situation, Kanye West, Hilary Clinton and Neil Degrasse Tyson call dibs on this opportunity to help shape human history I want to throw my name into the ring for formal consideration. I think that my family heritage, impeccable personal qualifications and general sunny demeanour would make me an exceptional candidate to help take the next giant leap for mankind.
A very little known fact about me is that my lucky number is actually September, 2022. When you're looking to put together a one way suicide mission to colonize a barren, nearly oxygenless, wasteland has to count for something.
But there is more to consider in my application than a simple numerological miracle. As a Canadian I come from a nation with a unique combination of frontier ruggedness and a lack of American "revolt against the motherland" history. Europeans have been softened by a millennia of living in real cities. Americans might have a colonial history but carry with them a certain innate proclivity for revolt. Both bring traits that could jeopardize the mission. Canadians are a unique mixture of frontier adaptability and resilience combined with a political herd mentality and almost puppy like obedience to confusing and often arbitrary governmental authority.
It might be reasonable to point out that I lack formal training in the sciences of medicine, engineering, aviation, geology, chemistry, physics, transfiguration or horticulture. I might point out that I also lack the liver damage that traditionally comes with an engineering degree, I'm not as boring as a geology or physics major, transfiguration is probably not even a real thing and doctors are overrated on a suicide mission. When we're all clearly going to die from an explosion, or all of our oxygen being sucked out of our space age hobbit holes, what use is someone trained in preventing infection or mending broken bones? For this mission we need people with a single minded passion for personal glory and nothing to lose, it's the kind of job that the Politics major was made for.
Much in the spirit of the above point, popular culture has taught us many invaluable lessons about the value of having a plucky, wildly under-qualified underdog play an important role in what would appear to be an impossible mission. When NASA sent Homer Simpson to space it was initially an ill considered publicity grab designed to secure enough funding to maintain a space program capable of making genuine advances in the eternal pursuit of knowledge. In the end, it was this wildly irresponsible, poorly trained moron that saved the mission from inevitable failure. What caused the problem he was forced to fix? We may never know, but if NASA had failed to send along the hero we never expected, but so sorely needed, who knows what kind of catastrophe could have befallen the crew? In short, I will take humanity to Mars, though I do not know the way.Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I don't really have anything else on the go. Community, Happy Endings, and New Girl don't look like they're going to make it, Louie isn't on TV for the foreseeable future. Baby Boomers are currently squatting on all the good jobs, and I'm not handsome or gregarious enough to have any legitimate dating prospects in the near future. On the plus side, I'm just entertaining enough to make Mars One some spare cash by starring in their bizzaro "Survivor: Mars" reality show and I'm crazy enough to put my life in the hands of people who are willing to base their mission to launch humanity into the next stage of civilization by ripping off the plot of a Simpsons episode.
Also, if you let me go on this mission I will recreate this scene... IN SPACE:
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