Tag Archives: Jupiter

Usual Rubbish

Hot spot.

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What the hell kind of itinerary is this? I have never seen a more incompetent attempt at organizing a freaking interstellar tour. Who put this bullshit together, anyway? Me? Oh … oh dear.

Well, as usual, I spoke too soon.  Not the first time. Honestly, I don’t know why my bandmates don’t look over my shoulder when I volunteer to do shit like this. After all, I’m just connecting dots on a map. I’m not a rocket scientist or anything. Sure, I used to launch Estes rockets when I was 10 or 11, but that was kind of a long time ago, and I think technology has moved on a bit since those days of cardboard tubes, butyrate dope, and solid fuel engines. Oh, and ignition wires. Yeah …. Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, has moved beyond those texts. He of all people should have known that what I was suggesting was just plain impossible.

Let me explain. The third leg of our Ned Trek Live Springtime Extravaganza Tour 2019 brought us to Sirius and then back to the great red spot on Saturn. All well and good, right? Trouble is, our next gig is on Saturday in the Small Magellanic Cloud, which I am now reliably told is nearly 200,000 light years away. Jesus. No wonder it looks small. Even pedal to the metal, it will probably take far longer than the rest of human history for us to get even halfway there.

Damn. Just imagine the size of the BIG one.

What’s worse, even if we were to make it the the Cloud by Saturday or several aeons after that, it’s a freaking galaxy that is itself about 7,000 light years wide, so it may take us a while to find exactly where we’re expected to perform. (My contact in the Cloud told me we couldn’t miss it, but then she or he is a transcendental being without form or persistent location in time-space, so everywhere is as close as it needs to be for that fucker.)

I hate to cancel a paid engagement, but unless we find a serious wormhole or radically rewrite the laws of physics in the next day or so, we may have no choice. Besides, that gig on Sirius was a serious pain in the butt, and the big Red Spot isn’t as hot as it used to be back in the day. Hell, the older it gets, the slower it turns, and well … there goes the electricity, my friends. So I’m for packing up and heading home. What about the rest of you? Show of hands? All in favor, say aye! Anyone for an aye? Don’t all speak at once.

Usual Rubbish

Tourmageddon.

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Idle hands do the devil’s work, right? What about idle minds? Are they commandeered by some other malevolent agency? Inquiring minds want to know.

We appear to have arrived at the doldrums of summer a bit early here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in beautiful upstate New York. Just finishing up a stretch of 90-degree plus days, some of them feeling over 100 degrees with the humidity. When it gets like that, we go subterranean – down into the cavernous basement of the mill, where it’s about 30 degrees cooler and wherein we have built an alternative habitat of sorts. Makeshift furniture made of bits and bobs. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has a charging station set up down there. It’s a big, dank, windowless home away from home, perfect for summer staycation.

Okay, I’m exaggerating. It’s anything but perfect. It’s drab as hell and it reeks down here. Even worse, there’s nothing to freaking do except scratch on the walls and think about shit. That’s where the idle minds come in. I don’t remember if it was my idea or someone else’s, but at some point we got to talking about how we haven’t done a tour in years, why that was the case, and where we would go if we decided to go on the road again. Before we knew it, we were scratching out the rough outline of a 40-city tour, using a sharp piece of slate on the cellar wall. I say rough because Anti-Lincoln can’t tell the difference between Jupiter and Saturn – he keeps mixing them up, putting the rings around the wrong one. You may think that’s a detail, but once you’re out in interplanetary space, these details matter.

Io, Lincoln? I don't know ... Okay, so …. here’s the hole we dug ourselves into, at least on paper (or, rather, concrete). Two weeks of engagements in the greater Jovian system – you know, the Great Red Spot, then on to Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto (we limit ourselves to the Galilean moons because, well, they’re more well-rounded). As stop-over at Saturn and Titan (always a lively show). Then from there, straight out of the solar system, assuming we can rent a vessel that will handle interstellar travel. Our mad science adviser Mitch Macaphee says he knows a guy. We’ll see about that.

I must confess – I’m not sold on this idea, but if it keeps my colleagues content for a couple of weeks, there will be peace in the basement. And when the heat wave breaks, then maybe I can talk them out of another tourmageddon.

Usual Rubbish

Big marble.

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No, I haven’t seen your camera. Or your enlarger. What the hell do I look like, a custodian? For crying out loud – if I were a custodian, I would be retired by now on a decent state pension … instead of cooped up in this drafty squat house with a mad-man inventor who can’t find his freaking camera.

Oh, hello. You’ve just caught me in the middle of a small dispute with one of the members of Big Green’s retinue. As I am the very soul of discretion, I will refrain from saying which one … Mitch Macaphee. (I didn’t say it, I typed it.) Suffice it to say we have our share of disagreements, and it’s usually over stupid shit. Last week it was some old piece of quartz he had mistakenly left at the local watering hole. By the way he was carrying on, you would have thought it was the only quartz in the world. And I can assure you … there is more quartz out there … more than you ever dreamed of.

Now – this week – Mitch is cheesed off over some photographs he saw on the Internet (though why he wastes his time surfing the web is beyond me … that thing is never going to amount to anything). NASA just posted some shots of Jupiter from the Juno spacecraft that make the planet look like a giant marble or close detail of a Nice brushwork.Van Gogh painting. Mitch got a little overwrought when he saw them. He claims that they were photos he took on our last interstellar tour. He started pacing up and down the corridor, grousing about how NASA is always using his material without compensation or attribution. Then he disappeared into his laboratory.

We all hope he’s just sulking in there. I sent Marvin (my personal robot assistant) in to check on Mitch; he returned with some kind of electronic device attached to his torso. It has flashing lights and makes an odd, whirring sound. Not sure whether or not it’s having an effect on Marvin – he seems to act normally, though I did notice that he now eats corn-on-the-cob on a vertical axis. Could be a coincidence. People change, right? So, too, of robots.

Okay, well … we’re trying not to let the strange sounds emanating from Mitch’s laboratory distract us from our primary task: that of making strange sounds emanate from our recording studio.

Usual Rubbish

New frontier.

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Interstellar Tour Log: February 25, 2014
Between Neptune and Pluto, or thereabouts

Big Green“Steve Lawrence”, Matt says. My reply: “Jennifer Lawrence.” Lincoln’s turn: “Jennifer Hudson.” Everyone looks at anti-Lincoln, who scratches his temple thoughtfully. “You lost two points on that one, Abe,” he says with a smirk.

Right, well … you have to occupy your time somehow in deep space, and rather than doing something productive, we’re playing Name-Chain. Yeah, it’s really fun. You name a famous person, and the player to your right has to name another one with the same first or last name, and around it goes. Lincoln got penalized because if you name someone of the same sex, you lose two points. Then you all multiply your score by the square root of corn meal and, well … it gets complicated after that.

Did we play on Jupiter last week? Well, the less said about that the better. Not sure what happened, but whatever it was it left a big red spot. Not exactly what we had in mind for our interstellar tour in support of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. Hell, nobody on Jupiter had even heard of Rick Perry.

Interstellar Tour Log: February 27, 2014
Near Pluto, I think. (That’s the yellow dog with no clothes, right? Yeah … near Pluto.)

Uh, how bout Uncle Milty?Well, the good news for our Interstellar Tour is that we’ve got a whole boatload of possibilities for new venues. NASA just discovered 715 new planets, and scientists say that the law of averages dictates at least 3% of them must have indie music venues. Even better, our sit-in guitarist from Zenon, sFshzenKlyrn, has been to at least half of these newbie planetoids, and has established relationships with the relevant booking agents. He’s out ahead of us now, greasing the wheels a bit. I was hoping he’d take Marvin (my personal robot assistant) with him, but alas … sFshzenKlyrn flies without a spaceship and Marvin gets vertigo easily. Useless bag of bolts.

Did I just say that out loud? Whoops. Let’s see…. “Al Franken” …. “Franken Beans” ….

Uncategorized

Next stop: who knows?

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Interstellar Tour Log: February 19, 2014
An unnamed rock garden in deep space, somewhere east of Jupiter

Big GreenWell, once again, we were sold a bill of goods. I think we’ve got some canned peas in there, maybe a little hard tack, some burlap sacking material (in case we have sack races), a jar of peppermints for the children, and an oil lamp. Who knew there was a general store on Ceres?

Aside from that, though, we were given bad advice. That Mr. Nerim character wasn’t telling us the truth at all. Apparently, hydrofracking is not utterly harmless. My evidence? Ceres, the alpha asteroid – the big brass buckle in the asteroid belt – is now a little smaller than it was when we arrived. Fact is, part of the asteroid was blown to bits and hurled into deep space. And as luck would have it, it was the part that we were camping out on.

So when old Nerim pushed the plunger on his cartoon-TNT detonator rig, it sent that side of Ceres (and our sorry asses) on a journey of undetermined length and destination, our battered rent-a-spaceship floating in a swarm of asteroid fragments, some the size of a house. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is beginning to regret having accompanied us on our Interstellar Tour in support of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. His rationality processor must be working properly.

Oh yes, one more thing …  YAAAAHH!

Interstellar Tour Log: February 21, 2014
Orbit of Jupiter, gas giant

Let's check it out, man. (You first.)Well, after several days of drifting aimlessly, we appear to have settled into orbit around Jupiter, the bull moose of the outer solar system. Our sit-in guitarist from the planet Zenon, sFhzenKlyrn, has volunteered to visit the surface of the gas giant to see if there are any performance opportunities, since we’re in the neighborhood. I’d go myself, but alas, I require oxygen and Earthlike temperatures, to say nothing of solid ground. Sure, we’ve played the Great Red Spot before, but that was back in the day. (It’s probably a gas station now, like most of the clubs we played back then.)

Usual Rubbish

Jupiter rising.

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Great red what? Jesus christmas, I don’t have time for that. I’m trying to stay focused on the Mars mission. Then there’s Voyager, all alone out there at the edge of the solar system already… whoops. Someone’s reading this. Look busy!

Hi, friend(s). You may wonder what I’m rambling about. Though probably not, if you’ve visited this blog before. We run on and on about pretty much anything that flows into our heads. Hell, I was looking at a pizza menu the other day that featured deep-fried Oreos. But does anyone want to hear about it? God no. So we’re going to talk about something more interesting today …. like Jupiter. (The planet, not the derivative Roman god.)

The other day some massive asteroid supposedly hit Jupiter. I say “supposedly” because, to be perfectly frank, I think this incident is actually the work of our mad science advisor, Mitchington V. S. Macaphee III, M.S.D., C.M.F.  (For the curious, his honorifics are short for Doctor of Mad Science, conferred by the University of Berzerkistan, and Crazy Mother Fucker … not so much a degree as a description.) Mitch got the interplanetary exploration bug this past summer with the recent Mars probe (which he almost immediately hacked into for his own nefarious purposes). But Mars wasn’t big enough for him. Eventually he turned his attention to the king Kahoona of planets …. (wait for it!) … Jupiter.

Okay, so here’s how our household works. Those of us who are not involved in the hard sciences share the upper levels of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. (I myself occupy a suite just outside the old forge room, basically a storage bay where they kept the hammer handles. I sleep on hammer handles, is what I’m saying.) Down in the basement, next to our makeshift production studio, Mitch Macaphee maintains a mad science lab where he builds, I don’t know, little projects like Marvin (my personal robot assistant), time travel devices, and … crucially… interstellar space vehicles.

You have to understand the fevered mind of the mad scientist. Jupiter has a red spot, right? Mitch sees that as a challenge. Can he make a blue spot? How hard would it be? Would they call it the Great Macaphee Spot if he succeeded?

What happened next should be kind of obvious. I don’t understand the science, so don’t ask me, but sometime last week there was a loud, rocket-like sound in the early morning hours, and the next thing I know, Jupiter has two spots instead of one. Or so Mitch tells me, anyway. Sheesh. I’ve got an album to produce. And a podcast to finish. Don’t bother me with such trifles!

Usual Rubbish

Tune it.

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Turn the first little knob on the top. Yes, that one. Turn it. A little more. More. Right, now back it off a little. Good… now the next one – turn it clockwise. I said CLOCKWISE! What do you mean you’re from the land down under? What’s THAT got to do with ANYTHING?

Ho, man. Just getting ready for BIG GREEN’S [INSERT NAME HERE] INTERSTELLAR TOUR 2011, and as you can see, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) will be the guitar tech again this time out. Thought it might be wise to go over the basics, just one more time, before we really need his help. No, he can’t tune a six-string guitar all by himself. He needs someone to hold the fat end while he turns the tuners – but that’s not the main drawback. You see, Marvin is made of bits left over from other experiments, in essence, including machine parts from Mitch Macaphee’s shop – air powered tools, drills, vise-grips, sanders, and the like. Sometimes when you ask him to do an open tuning on the Martin, he turns that tuner like he’s taking an air wrench to a lug nut… then it’s SNAP!  He also gets very confused on Matt’s Ovation 12-string, which Matt has set up like a six-string. (Too many machines.)

Would that that were our most serious problem on this tour. Not a bit of it. I told you, I seem to recall, about the dark vessel Mitch appears to have hired for our transport. It resembles that ship that took that fateful journey to Jupiter in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Now, that wouldn’t make me particularly nervous… except that Jupiter is on our itinerary. Seems like too much of a coincidence. No one else seems uncomfortable, but… well… I am. Open the pod door, Marvin. I said OPEN THE POD DOOR, MARVIN!

Guess I should start being nicer to the boy. At least pre-emptively. You never know what kind of situation you might find yourself in. I can imagine a scenario wherein we might find ourselves trapped in a reality that resembles what people in 1967 thought 1999 would look like.  That would not be good. But anyway….

We have a tour to plan. Bookings to book. Shoes to pack. Songs to rehearse. And guitars to tune. MARVIN!! (Please…) 

Usual Rubbish

Hard feelings.

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Hey, what can I tell you? I didn’t intend to piss him off, guys. Not my intention at all. Nor was it my intention to destroy the planet Jupiter. Furthest thing from my mind.

Oh, hi. Just caught me in the middle of a little band meeting. (Bret? Here. Jermaine? Here. Murray? Here.) I’m being raked over the coals by my fellow Big Green members and our various hangers on – Mitch Macaphee (our mad science adviser), Lincoln, anti-Lincoln, Marvin (my personal robot assistant), the man-sized tuber… even Big Zamboola has chimed in. What’s the “issue”, as they say? Oh, hell… it’s about our perennial sit-in guitarist from the planet Zenon, sFshzenKlyrn. He’s been a house guest here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill for the past week or so. That is to say, he was our guest, up until he departed yesterday in a bit of a Zenite huff. (How do I know? His radioactive vapor trail was tinged orange around the edges. Sure sign.)

So, why the hurried departure? Was he on his way to, I don’t know, Joseph A. Bank to get two free suits after buying one overpriced suit? No, no, nothing like that. It’s down to me, I’m afraid. One of those obscure cultural faux pas you run into when dealing with the denizens of another galaxy – kind of like showing the soles of your feet to an Iraqi. I insulted sFshzenKlyrn in some way, apparently, when I turned down his generous offer of Zenite snuff. I believe that, combined with a hand gesture I made involuntarily, is the equivalent of telling a Zenite that his specific gravity is roughly equivalent to that of Yak dung.  (For those of you who are unfamiliar with Zenite etiquette, that is considered a particularly grave insult.)

sFshzenKlyrn left in a cloud of radioactive dust. I imagined he was going straight home, using his typical method of traveling between the dimensional layers of the wobbly thing we call reality. Not so. I guess he was a little madder than he looked, because he felt the need to act out his anger. And he did this by driving straight into the planet Jupiter, causing a bit of a disturbance. (I’m told he did that one time before, some few years back. Left a bit of a red spot, as I recall.) What this has meant to the inhabitants of Jupiter I do not know, though I suspect we will hear about it the next time we go on interstellar tour. (Late this summer, I believe. Stay tuned!) It did, however, cause quite a stir back home here, with people calling it a dramatic collision, a missile, an asteroid, and so on.

Nah. Just a pissed off Zenite guitarist, that’s all. And from the ‘splosion he created, I guess his specific gravity must be quite a bit greater than that of Yak dung after all. Whoops! Sorry, sFshzenKlyrn!