Usual Rubbish

Slingshot.

That looks like Rigel over there. And Arcturus. And Canopus. No, wait. That’s Canoli, a most unusual deep space object. Instead of a molten nickel core, it’s filled with almond paste. And that dusting of what looks like dry ice? Powdered sugar.

Big GreenOh, hi. Just getting our bearings here out in deepest, darkest space. Kind of hard to do without a map – yes, I’m looking at you, Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who left the map case under his workbench back home. Right, so … chartless, clueless, and nearly devoid of rocket propellant, Big Green is meandering its way to the first stop on our interstellar tour in support of Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, which is charting in the Crab Nebula this month, I hear. (Yes, I read the trades.)

How did we get into this pickle, this sitch, this hot water, this plate of spinach? Well … it all started when we hitched a ride on the charred remnants of the comet ISON as it made its way out of the solar system. It’s kind of like driving in the wake of a big semi on the Thruway to save gas – doesn’t work real well, but you can pretend that you’re doing something useful. Anyway, we got a grappling hook into ISON as it passed and it yanked us into motion, headed for the hairy edge of all we know and hold dear.

Not THAT kind of slingshot!That was the good part. The bad part was when the cable snapped in the vicinity of Jupiter, a hostile world that gave Cowboy Scat a right panning (like I said, I read the freaking trades!). We were caught in the gas giant’s gravitational pull, helpless but for the fading memory of Star Trek plot devices from fifty years ago. Or was it Lost in Space? Well, whatever the source, we used the “slingshot effect”, accelerating toward the planet and using its gravity to hurl us straight out the other side of the solar system.

Gripping drama indeed. Except now we’re, well, lost, and bobbing along practically at random. So if you’ve got friends on Aldebaran, just tell them we may be a little late for the gig next Wednesday.

Political Rants

Let’s make a deal.

There are few things in life more certain than eventual bipartisan agreement on screwing large swaths of our fellow citizens. While I’m glad there won’t be a repeat of the government shutdown / debt ceiling self-immolation ritual, this pattern of gradually ratcheting up the austerity gets very tiresome after two or three cycles. This time, the unemployed get thrown under the bus. What a great way to save money – take food out of the mouths of people who have been down on their luck for more than a year. Freaking 7% unemployment and they’re acting like the jobless are just plain lazy. That’s a truly criminal level of ignorance on the part of elected officials.

One thing, though. Let’s dispense with this notion that the Republicans are somehow against raising taxes. This has been thoroughly debunked since the House went red three years ago. Even before they took office, they killed the “Making Work Pay” tax credit, costing families like mine another $800 a year. Just last year they canceled the payroll tax holiday – another hike. Thanks, Mr. Boehner. This year, it’s a “fee” on air travel. Not something I take personally, but still … a tax by any other name.

And yet they still cling to this label, and the corporate media repeats the myth because it’s the simple thing to do, the path of least resistance. We are supposed to see the disagreements between the parties as a clash of equivalent versions of extremism, when the positions Democrats stake out in this decade are almost identical, save marriage equality, to those held by the Republicans fifteen to twenty years ago. They were conservative then. Democrats, by and large, are conservative now. Republicans are now driven by their hard right, which is more delusional than ever. This week, their leaders chose not to take their lead, but the path they are cutting is a highly conservative one, an extension of the austerity narrative, and one that will keep our economy in stasis for the foreseeable future.

Well, no shut down. Something to give one cheer for. Then it’s back to work.

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

Ison the prize.

Okay, well, THAT didn’t go so well, did it? Right. Don’t panic. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three … arrrrrgghhh.

Is Smith frying yet?It’s been a couple of weeks, so I don’t know if you recall our harebrained plan to get to the various extraterrestrial venues in our interstellar tour to support Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick (selling quite briskly on Aldebaran, I hear). Right, well… we have that rent-a-wreck rocket (or “wreck-it”) that will get us part of the way to Aldebaran and points west-southwest, but it doesn’t quite have the horsepower to escape our solar system. If we tried, at this time of year, we would get caught in the gravitational pull of the sun. Then the only pleasure we’d get out of this trip would be to watch Smith fry…

Okay, I’ve wandered a bit. Fact is, the only solution we could think up in the absence of our mad science advisor Mitch Macaphee is to launch ourselves into extended orbit around the Earth and hitch a ride on the comet ISON when it emerged from its close encounter with the sun. We would, I don’t know, throw a grappling hook onto it as it passed and it would pull us clear of the solar system, at which time the low-rent engines in the rent-a-wreck-it could handle getting us to the next star system. Simple, right?

Big GreenNot so right. Only trouble with this plan was … it could never work. Aside from that, it was sound. So we took off last week, using the Cheney Hammer Mill courtyard as a makeshift launch pad, and spent a good bit of fuel climbing up into extended orbit around the Earth ( or the “Oyt”, if you’re from East Chootica ), Marvin (my personal robot assistant) at the controls. Steady hand, indeed.

Now, 3 out of 5 astrophysicists supposed that ISON would make it around the sun in one piece. Wouldn’t you know that the other two had it right? So we’re hovering at the rendezvous point, and around the left side of the sun comes this charred looking ice chunk, tumbling along, no bigger than the average medicine ball. Try getting a grappling hook into THAT sucker.

Okay, so… NOW what do we do? Any astrophysicists out there? Methods for counteracting the sun’s gravity? Email them to us ASAP. Like, I don’t know, yesterday, perhaps.

Weird ass music since 1986