Did you guys hear that sound last night? Maybe about 3 a.m., I don’t know. It was raining like hell, I think – pounding on the windows like a freaking hammer. At least I think that’s what it was. Either that or a … a … rocket lifting off …
Well, that last paragraph is a depiction of what I sounded like when it first dawned on me that our leased Plywood 9000 rocket was hijacked in the middle of the night. As some of you recall, just before Thanksgiving we were preparing for a brief tour of some lesser known planets that don’t get a lot of respect, like KIC 8462852. That appears to have been, well, scuttled. And while the Plywood 9000 is not what you might call luxury transportation, it apparently was functional enough to be stolen.
Who is the thief? Can’t be 100% sure, but the fact that Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, has disappeared probably isn’t a coincidence. I think he was getting a little tired of our antics, or lack of same – it’s been weeks since we first discussed this tour and still no action. The man just hates waiting around, particularly when there are discoveries to be made. Who can blame him? No one likes waiting, least of all a mad scientist. And when it became obvious that the Trump administration was not going to tap him to be Chief Scientist at NASA, he did seem to be weighing his options.
That means we have a mad scientist on the lamb. Or on the rent-a-rocket, to put a finer point on it. I think his ultimate destination will be the newly discovered planet KIC 8462852 (and no, I don’t mean it was discovered by Anthony Newly), but there are a lot of potential stops between here and there. So I’m just putting this out there: if you astronomers, amateur or professional, notice any unusual activity on the outer planets, particularly Jupiter (about which Mitch has harbored a strange fascination for many years), notify us immediately. Use the comment form on this blog post, or send us a note by snail mail to … well, just write “Big Green, Cheney Hammer Mill” on the envelope – we’ll get it.
Fuck all. Then there’s the lease payment for the Plywood 9000 rocket. DAMN YOU, MITCH!
