Heavy week.


You can't lift that? Are you sure? Try again. Put your back into it. Some robot assistant you turned out to be! Can't even lift a freaking bottlecap.

Okay, well, here we are on a virtually invisible "supermass" planet orbiting the red giant Antares. Hate to tell you what the fine is for littering on this rock. Something to do with being staked out while drunken cops take pot shots at you with flame throwers. (I think I've got that right.) Thing is, the gravity here is outrageous. I admit we've all put on a few (and when I say "all" I mean "me") since our salad days back in the '80s, but on Antares 3 we're all heavyweights. In fact, I weigh about seventeen tons here. (I'm talking metric tons, besides.) And when you drop something, it's like the sucker is welded to the ground. (Of course, in places, the ground is molten, so it might just BE welded to the ground.)

I shouldn't blame Marvin (my personal robot assistant) for not being able to lift the bottle cap I just dropped. It's just all the pressure, man, the pressure. About seven tons per square inch - that kind of pressure. Fortunately our endlessly innovative mad scientist Mitch Macaphee cobbled together some protective blisters for us so that we won't be crushed to a pulp. Good thing too - there's an ordinance here against hiring pulp, even if it's musician pulp. Strict in these parts. Sticklers for the law. Hard as rock, these Antareans. In fact.... they're made of rock. (And they say we rock.)

Why do we go to such places to perform? Well, I've told you, certainly - we crave danger. Did I say "danger"? I meant to say money. It's really just the cash. Harder than hell to find it on Earth, especially with the quirky songbook we carry about with us. At least out here we sound appropriate. Sure, there are downsides. But isn't life mostly about turning downsides up? (And upsides down?) And so long as we have the incoherence not to notice how bizarre this all is, we'll be just fine, thank you, just fine.

Well, I've wandered a bit. And on this planet, that's very taxing. Hardly wait for the next leg - someplace called Kaztrofarius 137b. We're supposed to catch a shuttle there and leave our lousy ship in long-term parking. Sounds simple enough.

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