Oh, Jesus …. I think I’m going to sleep over at the neighbor’s house for a few nights, guys. At least until the radioactivity dies down a bit after Mitch’s head explodes like an atom bomb.
Yes, you guessed it – it’s another one of those weeks, folks. Started out just fine. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was vacuuming the drapes. Anti-Lincoln was out walking his imaginary dog and insulting the mail carrier. Matt and I were cloistered in the studio, digging through mountains of unpublished material. Everything was going just swimmingly … and then NASA has to go an discover seven new Earth-like planets around a sun named Trappist-1. And no, not just any seven Earth-like planets, but the same freaking seven planets Mitch has been secreting away for the last decade. And he is going to bum, people.
This planetary search has simply got to stop. Not because it isn’t highly productive and stimulating from a scientific point of view – quite the opposite! I speak entirely from the perspective of narrow self-interest. Every time NASA finds new planets, it puts Mitch Macaphee into a funk. Often times they are worlds he has previously discovered – and even visited, in some cases. A true capitalist inventor, he has a decidedly proprietary approach to space exploration. Whatever he finds, he keeps. “Finders/Keepers” kind of cuts against the grain of NASA’s philosophy, so there’s bound to be conflicts. And it’s not such a good thing when both sides of a conflict have rockets at their disposal.
Now before you get alarmed, let me qualify this. Mitch is not … repeat, NOT … at the point of launching any rockets. He is principally an electrical engineer, so he’s always cooking up gadgets that bend time/space or generate black holes – that along with a lot of buzzing, whirring, and flashing. (Remember that he invented Marvin, who does a fair bit of buzzing, whirring, and flashing of his own.) In fact, I’m not convinced that Mitch hasn’t found a non-spacecraft method for traveling to other planets. And I am not talking about soul travel here, brother (though that would be an excellent name for a travel agency). There’s the time he hooked up that surplus department store revolving door to Trevor James Constable’s orgone generating device. That’s how we got Antimatter Lincoln. That was awesome.
So, hey …. seven new planets, seven new problems. That’s the story here at the mill.
Other gems from the junk pile? Well, there’s Marvin (my personal robot assistant)’s favorite: Rainbow Bridge! A “concert” movie that features about 15 or 20 minutes of Jimi Hendrix playing a set interspersed with about an hour-long montage of stoned hippies running up and down hillsides, being totally free. Why Marvin likes this so much I can only guess, though you can tell he’s been watching it when you see him rolling pointlessly around the mill with his claws up in the air. I might get him a headband for Christmas this year … or maybe some feathers and bells, and a book of Indian lore. (Apologies to Zappa.)
What’s our plan B? Not sure we have one. There’s plan 9 from outer space, but hey … that’s a movie. Plan B might be to hunker down in the Cheney Hammer Mill, record some more songs, and venture out only to retrieve nuts and berries from the nearby Adirondack woodlands. Or pizzas from the nearby Adirondack Pizza Parlor. Or beer from the nearby …. well, you get the idea. I’m not at all sure why we opt for these interstellar tours in the first place. They’re not profitable. They’re long and pointless. They’re occasionally dangerous to the point of being life-threatening. But then, a desk job will kill you after 20-25 years, so … it’s probably just as well.
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.
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.
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?
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.)
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.)
The ones that really annoy me are those mosquito-sized drones. I don’t even know how they manage to engineer a flying machine that tiny. Where do they find bicycle parts small enough to make that thing fly? They somehow even designed them so that they can replicate themselves by dropping little developmental nodules into standing water, which later hatch and …. hey … or maybe those are just mosquitoes. Okay, um … forget that last bit.
Marvin (my personal robot assistant) tends to get a little busier in the Autumn months. I think he may have volunteered for one of the political campaigns, actually. He seems to be taking an awful lot of phone calls just lately, and one of our friendlier neighbors (i.e. the guy without the pitchfork) told me Marvin was handing out flyers in the town square. (Fun fact about this little burg: the town square is round. So why don’t the cars have square wheels? Riddle me THAT, Batman.)