Well, maybe a larger booster rocket would help. Or some tightly wound springs. Then there’s the lever option, like a catapult – give me a lever large enough and I will move the world, that sort of thing. No? Okay, never mind.
Oh, hi. Yes, we’re grappling with the same conundrums that so vexed our predecessors in flight – how to defeat that old devil gravity. It’s a little hard to imagine being able to reach planet KIC 8462852 without finding some way to break the surly bonds of Earth, whatever that means. Sure, it would be easier for Big Green to just give in and start doing terrestrial tour dates, packing ourselves into a multi-colored school bus and teetering down the road to Springfield and Lodi and East Aurora (unless we get stuck in Lodi … again …), but that would be an abandonment of all we hold dear. And in all frankness, gravity would still be vexing us! (Especially after a particularly long night.)
The other day, a big semi backed up to the front gate of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill (our adopted home) and dropped an enormous cardboard box with Mitch’s name scrawled on the side. We had Marvin (my personal robot assistant) haul the thing into the courtyard as a precautionary measure – it was ticking and smelled vaguely of sulfur, so I certainly didn’t want to touch the sucker. Well, it turns out that the box contained our ride to the Khyber Belt: the promised Plywood 9000 space rocket we rented from SpaceY, some assembly required. It’s here, it’s here!
Mitch Macaphee retreated into his lab and began tinkering with the thing, and just yesterday morning I awoke to the sight of a nosecone peaking over the courtyard wall. He managed to piece the thing together, but there were apparently a few parts missing. Engines, for one. (Or more precisely, for four, since there are supposed to be four of them.) Being a mad scientist, Mitch took this as a kind of challenge. Whereas any sane person would just phone the company and tell them to send the missing parts, he started adapting some odd pieces of technology he had lying around his workbench. There was that anti-gravity device he tinkered with a few years ago, for instance. Then there’s that big blow-dryer he invented.
So, I don’t know. Maybe a big catapult is more practical. If you have random thoughts on advanced interplanetary propulsion, please send them here.
On top of that, the “Better Way” will use reconciliation votes to repeal sections of the Affordable Care Act, including Medicaid expansion. Ryan tested his caucus’s ability to use this tactic on non-fiscal legislation this past term when he brought an ACA repeal vote via reconciliation. This will be repeated next year, but with a Republican president, their vile legislation will get a signature. Ryan will be able to move forward with converting Medicare to a voucher. You can already hear right-wing pundits floating the concept of expanded Health Savings Accounts as part of their “repeal and replace” strategy – that and the seemingly evergreen notion of allowing insurance to be sold across state lines. This should be great comfort to the hundreds of thousands thrown off of Medicaid by their so called “better way.”
Here’s the rub. The European space probe Schiaparelli appeared to have crashed during its attempt to land on Mars this past week. I think the truth is, Mitch may have taken it down. They were getting a little too close to his clandestine operation on the red planet, and he didn’t want to take the chance of being discovered. I keep telling him it’s inappropriate to break things, but the man is a child … one who plays with killer technologies, no less. He won’t ‘fess up, but this happens a bit too often to be an accident.
I could sit here an write about the obviously outrageous statements made by Trump over the 90 minute program, but you’ve probably heard enough of that. Suffice to say that the guy proves his unsuitability for the office of the presidency every time he opens his big yap. No one should need additional convincing, but alas … this is America. No, what astonishes me is some of what gets discussed (and what doesn’t get discussed) in the wake of these debates. That in itself is enough to make you want to rip your own head off. Take Syria. On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, it’s pretty much a consensus that the Syrian conflict is a failure of the Obama administration on the scale of Bush’s Iraq invasion. Scarborough himself regularly refers to the conflict with terms like “holocaust” and “genocide”, which is frankly offensive.
So whereas SpaceX has the famed “Falcon 9” rocket with the patented “Dragon” spacecraft, SpaceY offers the not-so-well-known “Plywood 9000” rocket powering its nearly designed (and no, that’s not a typo: it hasn’t been designed yet) “Malaysian Tapir 9000” spacecraft. (They seem to like the number 9000. That would explain their requested down payment.) I know what you’re thinking …. this doesn’t sound like it meets the reliability standard I set forward in the previous paragraph. My only rejoinder to that is, well … that was more than a paragraph ago. Are you going to hold me to EVERYTHING I’ve said in the past? How about gurgling noises I made as an infant – do you plan to hit me with those, too?
In any case, one of our favorite scenes was from a cheap-ass Frankenstein knock-off with a bunch of no-name actors and the clumsiest monster you ever saw. There is a climactic laboratory scene in which the monster’s arm catches on fire, and he runs around the lab, screaming, trashing the place from end to end. That’s what I think of when I look at where Trump has gone over the last week or so – a crazy-ass Frankenstein’s monster set on fire and spreading his conflagration to everything he touches. Better that he should do it during the campaign than in the oval office, am I right?
That of course puts us back into the spacecraft rental market. Never a good place to be, especially in this economy and with the election coming up. It’s just hard to get a low parsec ion-drive ship that can hold more than a couple of vertically challenged astronauts. We not only have our own asses, but an entourage and a whole load of equipment. (If the mansized tuber accompanies us, as he has threatened to do, we will need a greenhouse on board as well.) We’re considering a kickstarter campaign, frankly. Either that or hiring a grant writer. (Isn’t that just a fancy term for counterfeiting? If so, why the hell doesn’t Mitch just invent some freaking money for a change.)
I have, however, heard some more interesting points made outside of the beltway punditocracy. 
Anywho, Mitch’s overheated response to the comet collision news was tantamount to a declaration of war. He brought Trevor James Constable’s patented orgone generating device out of mothballs, tinkered with it for a few hours, then – with the help of Marvin (my personal robot assistant) – hauled the pile of junk up to the roof of the mill and pointed its multi-pronged array at the heavens. He borrowed one of our longer extension cords, fired the orgone generating machine up, and started muttering to himself. “Yes, yes …” he said maniacally. “It won’t be long now.” (I’m leaving out the twisted little cackle he interjected between phrases as I do not wish to frighten the children.)
Not-so-great debate. I was witness to the nerve-wracking exchange between former secretary Clinton and Donald Trump, and I have to say that something about seeing the two of them on the stage of a presidential general election debate was disturbing enough even before they said anything. Clinton bested Trump, but that shouldn’t be hard. The guy literally knows nothing about anything. Honestly, the Republican party seems determined to convince people that there’s nothing to the presidency, that any dunce off the street can do the job. Count me among those who do not agree. That rambling wreck Trump would be a total disaster, to borrow one of his favorite turns of phrase. If Monday’s debate proved anything, it’s that.