An amusing thing has been pointed out to me by my substantially better half about John F Kennedy’s ‘let’s all go to the moon’ speech. It’s in the bit which is always wheeled out for the clip shows. It goes like this.
“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things.”
What was that again, John? ‘And do the other things’? And what ‘other things’ might they be? They’re clearly on your ‘to do’ list with ‘go to the moon’ but you’re being rather unspecific, if not downright cagey, as to what they might be.
The speech continues. Often it’s presented on television in an edited form; here is the speech in full, with original Presidential vagueness intact.
“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things. Not because they are easy, but because they are hard... and stuff,
Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, and some more things like that,
Because that challenge is on that we are willing to accept, and whatever,
One we are unwilling to postpone, etcetera,
And one which we intend to win, and the others, you know that other shit I was talking about earlier, we intend to nail those ones as well, too.”
But what exactly were those other things? Well, here, revealed in full, is John F Kennedy’s ‘to do’ list.
1) Go to moon.
2) Shag Monroe.
3) Tickets for Sinatra.
4) Order in some more delicious ‘Berliners’.
5) Sort out Cuba (and do the other things)
6) Civil rights and stuff.
7) Take more drugs.
8) Have fitting for bullet-proof vest (and get a bullet-proof canopy for the limo too).
