Couple in the next room, bound to win a prize. They’ve been going at it all night long. No, seriously – they’re playing some kind of video game in there, and I think they may just be on the verge of winning a trophy. Believe it.
Why am I reciting 36-year-old Paul Simon lyrics? Well, that story’s seldom told. I am just a poor boy… No, no, wait. There is a reason (and not one that turns out to be yet another P.S. song). Seems the planet we have landed on (third planet in the Cancri 55 system) is home to a race that’s real big on sixties acoustic folk-rock music. Of course, they think it’s all new – smoking hot platters ripping up the airwaves, straight from planet Earth. That’s ’cause Cancri 55 is 41 light years from Earth, and… well… those transmissions are just reaching them now, having crossed the trackless void of space these last four decades. Now revolution is in the air, my friends, and so is the Lovin’ Spoonful. All these Cancrites are wearing cheap leather headbands, big buckles, and fringy boots. There’s a lava lamp in every window. It’s… well… weird and unnerving, but who am I to criticize.
So what does this have to do with Big Green? What the hell, haven’t you been kept current on our last few dispatches? Marvin (my personal robot assistant)!!! 
Did you forget to file my column? Damn your eyes! File this week’s column twice, my good man, and be quick about it. Sheesh – hard to get good robot help up here (even if you import it). Where was I? Oh, yeah. Help. We’re stranded on this odd suburban planet, obsessed with yesteryear (or is it yester-light-year?), and what the hell, we’ve just got to earn our keep. Now before you ask, we did try to send Marvin, the man-sized tuber, and both Lincolns out to find day jobs. No luck. What about sFshzenKlyrn? Well…. he’s kind of casual, relying as he does principally on an internal fusion reactor like most celestial bodies of his class. (Not particularly class-conscious as a rule, our extraterrestrial friend does enjoy certain existential advantages over us mere mammals.) So we’re left to our own devices, as it were. I mean, what would you do? Huh?
Well… I was hoping you might have a suggestion there. Anyway, we’re brushing up on our sixties numbers. Matt seems to think we can pass ourselves off as The Cowsills or Dukes of the Stratosphere. (What’s that? They weren’t really a sixties band? So convincing….) Hence my efforts at total recall, bringing back all those songs I listened to as a wan lad. Here’s how we figure it….
Learn some sixties numbers. What the hell, we’ve all had to play them at some point. Why not play them for extraterrestrials?- Tuck in a few numbers that haven’t yet arrived here from Earth. Say we’re, I don’t know, the Rolling Stones. We can start playing tunes from Exile on Main Street and they’ll think we invented sliced bread.
- Cash in and buy spacecraft parts. Frankly, this is the whole point. We need to get our asses home.
Okay… if this totally doesn’t work, it was Lincoln’s idea – agreed? Good. He got us here in the first place, if you’ll recall. Back to rehearsal. What’s next? Red Rubber Ball? Oh, Christ! This place is a freaking nightmare! You, down there on Earth! Find a really, really long extension ladder someplace and prop it up in the general vicinity of the constellation Cancer. Do us a favor.
