Do you really want to go? I don’t know. It’s a pretty inhospitable place. Very hot and dry, I’m told, and almost absolutely nothing grows there … not even mold. Though that’s a good thing, sort of, right? Still … I’m less interested in Mars after having played there a few times. Not our crowd, really.
Oh, hi. Just having a momentous discussion with our mad science adviser, Mitch Macaphee, about what to do this weekend. What’s that you say? A trip to Mars is too ambitious for the sabbath? Not sure I agree. In any case, we weren’t talking about going to the planet Mars; we were debating over whether or not we should go see “The Martian”. I was complaining about the condition of our local movie theater. Arid as sandpaper in there, and the seats are twice as rough. Then there’s the foul aroma of popcorn – uuuhhl …
As you know, we’re not particularly big on movies or other forms of entertainment, frankly. Mitch likes to go to science fiction movies so that he can fact-check them, particularly the ones featuring diabolical mad scientists with ambitions to (dare I say it?) rule … the world. He gets a kick out of poking holes in the flimsiest premises imaginable. The other day, he was tearing “Planet of the Dinosaurs” apart. Before that, it was “The Creeping Terror.” Talk about straw men. And don’t get Mitch started on Lost In Space or Journey to the Bottom of the Sea. He’s up one side of Irwin Allen and down the other.
I guess there’s a renewed interest in the red planet since NASA recently determined that there’s evidence of flowing water on the surface – mostly ice melt in the mountains. Hell, we could have told them that. I can’t remember which interstellar tour it was, but one time we played a ski chalet on Mount Olympus. The dry ice was up to our ankles, but there was some water ice as well – mostly in our cocktails, though. Pretty cushy arrangement, but again … not our audience. And dry, very dry.
We should do another interstellar tour this winter. Got to get Mitch and his invention Marvin (my personal robot assistant) out of the mill a little more. They’re getting like shut-ins, and that can only lead to sorrow.
One can only guess what was running through the minds of so many members of the General Assembly when they listened to this balderdash, particularly those who have been on the receiving end of American military and economic power. Sure, it’s heavy handed and gratuitous for Russia to start bombing parts of western Syria. I imagine there are countries who have sufficient moral standing to take issue with that. The United States is not one of them. We haven’t a leg to stand on in that regard, and the fact that we complain the loudest about Russia’s action is a bit too much like the kleptomaniac yelling “Thief!”
We’ve started to use Cubase a bit over the last two years, just out of necessity, but we’re kind of locked into the thingmaker, despite the fact that it’s got a beastly 486 processor and a primitive proprietary “closed” operating system – and I do mean closed! There’s literally one way to get data out of that thing other than via analog audio outputs, and that’s through the coaxial digital outputs. There is no system that currently supports Roland’s (again) proprietary R-Bus data ports. The only other bus is SCSI, which of course is toast. The CD burner doesn’t work. The optical audio outs don’t appear to work either. Thingmaker.