Okay, we didn’t go on the boat trip up the Erie Canal. It was a stupid idea, I admit. Sounds like one of mine. I should remember where it came from, but I often forget the provenance of my worst ideas. Call it a self-defense mechanism … or call it “Lenny,” if you like. Whatever floats your boat.
As is always the case, life intrudes on the best-laid plans. We were all ready to load up our non-existent gondola with pick-a-nick baskets, life jackets, and a bunch of other stuff we don’t own, and then the news broke: Astronomers had discovered a small, Earth-like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star system to our own. As the story worked its way into newspapers, television and radio broadcasts, and web sites, it quickly reached the attention of our mad science adviser, Mitch Macaphee. His reaction? Let’s just say that there was a little mushroom cloud where his head used to be. I thought he was experimenting with some new anti-personnel weapon – a personal nuke, perhaps, like Edward Teller’s version of the personal pizza – but he was just mad. Hopping mad.
Why the anger? Well, Mitch has anger issues. I suspect you’ve gleaned that from previous postings. Zero patience, my friends. The guy just needs happy pills or something, but you can’t tell him anything. Anyway, it appears that Mitch has been using the newly discovered planet, 
Proxima b, as a staging area for some of his experiments. Why pick that one and not, say, Wolf 1061c? Well, it’s closer, for one thing. Like I said, the fucker is impatient as hell – he doesn’t want to spend a lot of time in transit. And while he does do some of his mad science work in remote areas of our own planet, Proxima b (or “Sven Njordlosc’s planet” as Mitch strangely calls it) gives him the space to do fun stuff like change the composition of the atmosphere or switch the gravity on and off a couple of times in rapid succession. Great times!
In preparation for our last interstellar tour, we looked into doing a performance on Sven Njordlosc’s planet. No dice. The inhabitants only want to hear Norwegian Carpenter Songs. “Pleasures of the Dance” is their favorite record, even if it’s just a joke cooked up by Monty Python. We don’t play stuff like that, I think you know.
Oh well … I know what I’m getting Mitch for his birthday. Xanax. Lots of Xanax.
Conway is a good con artist. I suppose you could find her convincing if you choose to forget that in 2012, Trump was birther-in-chief, claiming that his operatives were turning up “unbelievable” stuff on Obama’s birth certificate – a campaign that was always about race, about being the “other”, about legitimacy. I suppose you could buy what she’s selling if you choose to forget the last year or so of fevered rhetoric – NOT gaffes or errors, but deliberate, repeated statements – about immigration, about foreign policy, about law enforcement policy. And I suppose you could believe Conway’s contention that Trump is a hard-working, honest fellow who treats people well if you haven’t been paying attention to the last 30 years of his very public life. I guess you can believe whatever you want to believe if you try really, really hard.
You see, THIS is why we never go on vacation. We can never freaking decide what we want to do or where we want to go. The only time we travel is when we’re on interstellar tour (or when we time travel, which is disorienting, frankly, and I have discouraged Mitch from dragging us along through the time/space portal he keeps in his office). It’s like we’re just visitors on this, our home planet. Though come to think of it, the weather has been ungodly hot just lately. And Louisiana is under water. And California is on fire. Maybe this ISN’T our home planet. It does seem kind of inhospitable. Hmmm…