The Review

Issue date: 2/13/07 Section: Mosaic

Media Credit: Domenic DiBerardinis [Click to enlarge]

Valentine's Day. It's a time for chocolates, roses, champagne and more than a few single ladies to voice their hatred of the Hallmark holiday. However, with the recent news that astronaut Lisa Marie Nowak is facing attempted murder charges for allegedly trying to kidnap and kill off the other woman in love with her crush, it's also a time for lunar love triangles to go horribly awry.

Crushes often seem innocent enough - I was in love with several student teachers back in elementary school, and frequently found myself fighting for the attention of my male superior alongside innumerable pre-pubescent co-ed colleagues. Those with the most obnoxiously-sized chest for their age always clawed their way to the top of the look-at-me ladder. Big boobs won. Always. I lost. Always.

So think about that time in your life when you really liked someone, but someone else really liked them, too. Think about how you had a voodoo doll of your rival and stuck it with pins on a nightly basis. Think about how desperately you wanted that person to be struck down with a bad case of the bird flu. Or constipation. Then think about actually driving 900 miles to meet their flight and attempting to kidnap and kill them. Totally bogus, right? Not for Nowak the space cadet, who did just that.

Nowak is a 43-year-old married mother of three. She's also a Navy commander and highly accomplished member of NASA, an organization that in no way condones its astronauts to be certifiably insane. Apparently Nowak was involved in a love triangle between fellow astronaut Colleen Shipman and Navy Commander William Oefelein. She became so obsessed with having her Hubble-hunk all to herself that she drove 900 miles to an airport in Orlando, stopping only for gas, to meet the plane of the woman who was inching in on her man. One would think to remind Nowak that she's not in grade school anymore, but judging by the fact that she wore a diaper on her jaunt so piss stops were eliminated, I don't quite think the "you're a big girl now" argument would be effective.

After Nowak arrives at the Orlando airport, dressed to the nine's with a trench coat, wig, BB gun and adult diaper, she follows Shipman to her car and bangs on the window. When Shipman - and quite obviously, I may add - refuses to open the car door, Nowak pulls a fake crying act. Perhaps she needed to be changed? Well, Shipman naively shows some sympathy and cracks the window. Nowak immediately nails the woman with pepper spray. Oh, snap! Do I smell a celestial smackdown?

Continued...

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