I tried calling them this morning. What was my response? Well … have you ever shouted down an abandoned mineshaft? It sounded kind of like that. Except hollower. Less content.
Oh, hi. Welcome to the land of the great ideas. I’m Joe Perry (not of Aerosmith) of Big Green, and well … I am responsible for many of the “great” ideas. Why “great” in quotes? Those are litotes, and I use those when I’m being painfully ironic. Which is to say … our great ideas are not great at all. In fact, most of our ideas are just plain STUPID. But hey, if we let THAT stop us, we probably wouldn’t get out of bed in the afternoon. (Did I say afternoon? I meant … uh … morning.)
Right, so … the latest “great” idea was Mars Zero – our answer to Mars One, the private initiative to land a group of humans on Mars by the year 2025. Our first reaction to Mars One was, hell, we’ve done that already, and dozens of times. Just read our blog, folks. But of course, people seldom do, so they don’t know the full extend of what humankind has been able to accomplish in the name of art in space. (I use the term “art” loosely enough to include things like Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, our most recent album.)
So what’s the problem with Mars Zero, our own attempt to reach the red planet (where we’ve already done several tours) in five years, rather than ten? Well, it’s the anticipated crush of inquiries. Mitch Macaphee, our mad science adviser, is absolutely terrified that a flood of emails will infest our servers and cause them to crash, vaporizing all of his malevolent code. I keep telling him there’s nothing to worry about – that this initiative, like so many previous Big Green efforts, will likely fall flat. He’s excitable, see … that’s the problem with Mitch.
Cowboy Scat on YouTube: Even as we prepare for the worst on Mars Zero, I have managed to upload ten songs from Cowboy Scat to our YouTube channel. The video content is a cheap-ass slide show – this is mostly for the listening. So if you haven’t heard the songs all the way through, here’s how to do it. (I’ll upload the rest of the album over the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned.)
Oh, hi. Just settling a few details with our mad science adviser, Mitch Macaphee, recently repatriated from the dwarf planet Ceres. Mitch is helping us plan the launch of Big Green’s newest venture. Let me give you the background. You’ve all heard of Bas Lansdorp’s Mars One project, no doubt. Lansdorp is inviting volunteers to go on a one-way mission to colonize Mars. He says he can get the whole thing going in time for a 2025 launch date.