Don’t tell me – let me guess. It’s big. It’s dense. And it’s very, very attractive. Ummmmm… that could be almost anything that fits those criteria. Am I getting warmer? Well, am I?
Crikey. Sometimes Marvin (my personal robot assistant) takes his programming far too seriously. I’ve asked him to help me with a little problem I’m trying to work out… namely, what inhabitable planets can we sail off to in case the titanic struggle between sFshzenKlyrn (trans-physical etheric energy being from Zenon) and Gizmandiar (lawn-obsessed, power-mad space creature now occupying the seat of our local government) renders the earth uninhabitable for a brief time (perhaps six or seven million years… which passes quickly if you are made of feldspar). Matt heard recently that the astronomical community has identified another 28 planets circling distant stars they’ve 
observed, and I’m sure at least one of them has our name written on it. If I can just get Marvin to tell me which one! Focus, damn it… focus!
We’re almost certain that Gizmandiar and his turf-hugging minions came to us from the relatively proximate planet known as Earth 2. That certainty, of course, is not based on any scientific evidence, since the science complement of our party has long since departed the vicinity of the Cheney Hammer Mill (Mitch Macaphee, never fond of the alley, has other fish to fry, while Trevor James Constable has grown tired of fighting the sewer rats for discarded breadfruit rinds. Mmmmmm…) No, sir, we’re shooting from the hip here, scientifically speaking, and that’s plenty close enough for Big Green. Fact is, the discovery of Earth 2 was announced around the same time that these too-clever-by-half space creatures showed up and started bossing us around, so we made a major inductive leap on the basis of that. (Don’t try this at home!)
Anyway, last week we put out the call for sFshzenKlyrn and he responded with the usual dispatch, faithful cohort that he is. Of course, this hyper-powerful man from Zenon is as uncontrollable in normal life as he is on stage. And if you’ve heard one of his rip-snorting guitar solos, you have a pretty good idea of how sFshzenKlyrn conducts his affairs more generally. I suspect he and this Gizmandiar have some history – maybe a little bad blood, if that term can be said to apply to gaseous beings that exist in multiple dimensions at the same time. sFshzenKlyrn set about stalking city hall in a semi-menacing fashion, 
later bombarding it with keltone rays which caused the building to shift from its moorings and… well…. kind of disintegrate. (Sorry, folks. Unintended consequences, you know.) Then there was a slightly larger boom, followed by a smoky smell and what felt like a minor earthquake.
So yeah – it was at this point that I started asking Marvin about other hospitable planetary bodies. Just a little insurance, you understand – nothing to get worked up about. So far the best he’s come up with is one of those Magnetars – a neutron star with a tremendously powerful gravitational field. Of course, unless I learn to eat gamma rays for breakfast, that’s probably not much better than a trash-strewn alley on a condemned world… Care to join me? (Thought not.)
