Tourward.


Electrodes to power, turbines to speed. Flag the commissioner, Alfred, we're ready to roll! Hope you fixed the sticky hinge on the bat cave door. You did, didn't you.... ? DIDN'T YOU??

Wha-at? Oh, man... what an awful dream! Not that you asked me what it was about, but... I dreamt I was an MBA in the accounting department at Enron, and... Oh, no, wait. That was Thursday night's. Last night's was a bit more blood-curdling (if that can be imagined). But I won't go into that in detail. Suffice to say that it resembled something from mid-sixties television, populated by big pointless-looking computer consoles covered with flashing, multi-colored pin-sized lights. (They made whirring sounds. It was terrifying!) Lucky to get out of that particular sojourn alive. Thank uncle Jebus our tours are nothing like that. When we do interstellar travel, we tend to avoid whirring sounds.... at least, the evil, low-pitched ones. Uuuhhhllll....

Enough about me. Glad to be able to say that we've finished provisioning our interstellar tour bus. By which I mean, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has finished loading the un-spaceworthy crate we'll be taking to Jupiter and parts beyond. Now I know what you're going to say... and stop me if I'm wrong, but I think you were going to caution me on embarking on interstellar journeys in a forty-year-old rust bucket. (You weren't going to say that? Bugger.) In any case, I've asked Marvin to work with the man-sized tuber in bondo-ing up all the panels that have rusted-through on the J-2 spacecraft since our last tour. About 4 dozen spots. More than I'd imagined, actually. (We put it up on blocks all winter, too. Go figure.)

Yeah, so our ship whistles when we fly.... so what? We've got that can-do spirit that put Armstrong, Aldrin, and... uh... that other guy on the moon forty years ago. (Actually, Collins had his own one-man party in lunar orbit, as I remember. Judging from the footage, that would have been the job for me.) What the hell.... we live in an abandoned hammer mill, for chrissake. We haven't had anything beyond basic cable in, like, five years. Mitch Macaphee rides a bicycle that doesn't even have fenders on it. Seriously.... we can handle anything deep space can dish out. As long as it isn't on fire. Or radioactive. I hate radioactive stuff. (It makes my fillings glow.) Besides, Mitch (our mad science advisor) has assured us that the J-2 replica is perfectly safe to fly, so long as we stay away from that massive swarm of comets circling menacingly just outside the orbit of Pluto. We told our agent in no uncertain terms - by no means book anything within the deadly comet belt!

Ahh. Our tour itinerary has just been faxed from our good friends at Loathsome Prick records. And guess where we're going on week 3. Just.... guess....

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

R.I.P., uber rich lady atop killer empire

Image
When the queen of England died last week, I felt bad for the 96-year-old human being that she was, a lady about the age of my late mother. I take no joy in the death of anyone, even people I’m not crazy about, so all due condolences to her family who, I hear, are planning a quiet little funeral. Did I say little? I meant large … in fact, six billion pounds worth of funeral. Such is the institution of the British monarchy – still crazy after all these years. No, I’m not a fan of “The Royals”. I watched The Crown on Netflix or whatever, and it was mildly entertaining in a slightly nuanced gossipy kind of way. (They went way too easy on Thatcher and made Robert Kennedy look like a cheap wing man for his wife-beating brother the President.) But generally I avoid T.V. dramas about royalty mostly because it bores the living piss out of me. Then there’s that small matter of imperialism , but let’s try to keep our thoughts positive, eh, what? They’re changing the guard at T
Read more

Pulling the plug is never as easy as it looks

Image
I don’t know. I’m effing sick of this. Are you effing sick of this, too? You are ? Wow … okay. For how many years? Damn …. why didn’t you say so? I was just doing this to keep YOU happy! Well, you learn something new every day. Or at least every week. Except last week – I was kind of too busy to learn anything. It gets like that sometimes. Anyway, let’s just agree to say that you learn something new every little once in a while. Maybe every time Sylvie brings you some water. Like in the Leadbelly Song . But I digress. What the this is The “this” we’re kvetching about is this thing called blogging. We’ve been doing it for twenty years, and somehow – seemingly unnoticed by us – the world has kind of moved on. Now everything is social media, social media, etc. A few still blog, outside of the corporate shills, but it’s not really a thing anymore, and well … that’s a shame. Still, blogging has its place. I just don’t know whether or not its place is here, exactly.
Read more

Stop hiding your light under that bushel.

Image
Well, Trump started channeling QAnon in a big way this week at an Ohio rally. I’m assuming anyone who reads this blog knows what QAnon is. It’s basically the blood libel, updated for the modern age. Some idiot posted some random shit on 4chan (which happens basically every second) claiming that s/he is a secret intelligence operative and was spilling tea on upcoming FBI raids on Trump’s political enemies. It was supposed to happen in 48 hours and, of course, it didn’t. That failure, however, didn’t stop the true believers. These people must be total knuckleheads. Who would earnestly believe this crap? Of course, people have a tendency to believe whatever places them in a positive light. Whatever the case may be, QAnon has a lot of followers , and they are apparently laser-focused on the conspiracy theory. Trump is their greasy, corpulent pope. It makes total sense that he would pull those people close – they are the scrum who never left him. What they think they’re
Read more