One and a half G’s. Holding steady. Watch that panel, Mitch. Watch it… watch it…. Two G’s. Two and a half. Fuel consumption ratio rising. Damn it, Mitch – the panel, man… keep watching!
Oh, hi, reader(s). What’s up? Not so much, what’s up with you? Yep, just another one of those days. You’ve had ’em. Piling all your gear into a space ship, strapping the man-sized tuber into his humidity controlled terrarium, pumping the tank full of highly-explosive fuel, and then hurtling headlong into space… all this before it dawns on you that you need a qualified pilot. Oh, sure… I know we have our mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee. Big Green relies on him for just about everything these days… even things that he can’t, well…. do very well… like piloting a spacecraft. What the fuck – we’ve used him before. But I swear to you, five minutes after we clear the gantry, Mitch turns to me and says, “Okay, so you’re taking it from here, right?” And I’m like, WHAT? And he’s like, “OH, YEAH!” And I’m like….
Oh, hell… I’m like nothing. And when it comes to flying spacecraft, I got nothing. So don’t even ask how the rest of our ascent went… don’t even ask. It was shaky, it was blistering, it was loud, mega-loud. Couldn’t even hear myself sweat. We topped out at eleven G’s…. 
that’s a lot of gravity, kids. That’s like having all of your Facebook friends stand on your sternum at the same time (and I mean all your friends, not all mine… who, while they may have greater average mass, number far less than yours). After moments of being paper-thin (a new experience for most of us), that’s when the turbulence began. My trajectory was a bit shallow, I’m told, and even worse, there were asteroids all around us. Big, mean looking asteroids, like an interplanetary motorcycle gang, gunning their engines as if to tell us, if you steer that ship…. that achy breaky ship… it might blow up and kill this band.
Now, it’s one thing to have your life threatened in low Earth orbit. It’s quite another to be taunted with Billy Ray Cyrus lyrics. We all have our limit, and I reached it at that moment. I grabbed the controls and yanked them wildly from side to side, determined to sell our lives 
dearly in the face of this menace. Nothing happened. I yanked them wildly another time. Still nothing. Dumbfounded, I turned to Marvin (my personal robot assistant), whose metallic features are, well, permanently indicative of dumbfoundedness…. so I turned to my other companions. Apparently they had rigged up some phony controls for my amusement; a “Captain Peachfuzz” bridge, as it were, with pilot controls connected to nothing. (Well, actually, I think they ran the blender and the microwave down in the galley, because dinner was waiting for us when we went below.)
There’s a vote of confidence for you. And a decidedly reality based one, as well. What’s next? A keyboard that’s midi’d into a toaster? We’ll see on Jupiter.
family. If it does, they should dedicate a bridge to every one of the more than 4,300 sacrificed needlessly in that seemingly endless war. I doubt we have enough bridges to name for all the Iraqis who’ve died as a result of the 2003 invasion. (I don’t know – are there a million bridges in America?) Whenever I hear about these dedications, monuments, memorials to war dead, I can’t help but think of that eulogy Marc Antony delivered in Julius Caesar: “I come not to praise Caesar, but to bury him.” We always hear about how they died “protecting our freedoms,” when really they died because of our ignorance as a nation and our inability to stop this travesty from happening.
congressman’s office, or we shake our head at the news, but without the prospect of conscription threatening ourselves and/or our children, there will be no fire in the belly. That is something our political class and our military have long since worked out. They’ve long since adopted the imperial formula for endless war – a foreign legion made up of volunteers, supplemented by mercenaries. And they name bridges after those sacrificed on the alter of our stupidity. So perhaps we need a different kind of monument, one dedicated to those persistent killers that live within us: ignorance and apathy. That’s it – dedicate a bridge to our own foolishness. Or chisel Dubya’s face into Rushmore so that we’ll remember who talked us into this travesty. Anything to memorialize the historic, disastrous mistake we’ve made, so that there’s some small chance we won’t repeat it.
Well, I shudder to say it… because it usually ends up not being true… but I really think we’re ready to lift off this time. We’ve got the ship all loaded up. We’ve got anti-Lincoln bailed out of jail and sober as a cowbird. We’ve got our maps unfolded and our compasses oriented true north. We’ve got our tent-pitchin’ gear, our bottles of sterno, our pots and pans, our paper plates. Then there are a stack of pic-a-nic baskets, just in case Yogi drops by. Actually, Mitch Macaphee had ordered Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to load up a couple of cases of Spaghetti and meatballs, but my illustrious brother – no big fan of Chef Boyardee objected. And around here, what Matt says goes. (Unless he complains about my Rice A Roni. Then, fuck ‘im. )
different here in Big Green land. I swear, if we had room in our rented, randomly-ventilated spacecraft, we’d take the whole freaking Cheney Hammer Mill with us, lock, stock, and hammer. That would just be indulging our worst impulses, though, and lawd knows, we never, ever, EVER do that. (If I could get anti-Lincoln away from his Jack Daniels long enough, he’d tell you himself.) So we take essentials and as many hangers-on as we can squeeze into the somewhat limited cabin space our interstellar ride affords. This time around, we’ve got a fairly lean passenger list, given the state of the economy and such. (No one can afford to leave their hovel for six weeks… it’s just an economic reality.) But I’d say we have a quorum.
invitations to Trevor James Constable and several other tag-alongs from previous tours, but most of those returned unopened, postage due. (Are stamps still 34 cents or did they go up?) Big Zamboola will be staying behind to keep an eye on the mill…. that’s just a practical consideration (he takes up a bit of space). The man-sized tuber has agreed to come along as well, not that he has a whole lot to say about it. We just load him into the terrarium and he’s ready to fly. (I think that’s what they used to call getting “crimped” back in the day.) Of course, we made the mistake of having everyone sign ship’s articles this time out, so now John has taken to calling himself admiral and the rest of us midshipmen. I think we need to talk.