Who said an elevator has to go up? It could go down, even sideways, if the spirit moves it. Just ask any mad scientist.
Well, friends, in case you’re still curious (and I know you’re not), yes, we are still trying to work out a way to get to Aldebaran without trooping on board the same old leaky spacecraft and taking the same old petrifying risks we always take in the name of science… I mean, music. (Arts and sciences, as it were.) This is proving a major pain in the Aldebaran, quite frankly. Don’t know if I’ve ever seen Mitch Macaphee in a fouler mood. He’s really stuck on this 
project, and like a temperamental post-impressionist painter, he sometimes suffers through every second of the creative process. Why, he’s out in the courtyard right now with an airgun, popping holes in our wooden outbuilding. And in the man-sized tuber, I suspect, since that’s where he sleeps. (We call it the “Root Cellar.”)
His starting point in this strange endeavor has been that very edgy technology known as the “space elevator”. That’s where they throw a cable up into space, hook it to an asteroid or a passing alien star destroyer, and run a jitney between the ground and the celestial anchor. The principle is a bit like tying a cord to a rock and swinging it around your head. Try it at home, sometime… like right now. Do it for a moment or two. While you’re doing it, you’ll notice a strange phenomenon – some strange energy is smashing all of your glassware to tiny bits. That is the power of centrifugal force… a power so, well, powerful that it bowls your personal robot assistant over when he walks into the room. (Actually, it’s probably better if you don’t try this in the kitchen.)
Right, so anyway… experimentation aside, the whole idea is getting us up into the great beyond without time-consuming repairs and costly rocket fuel (now more than $573.00 a 
gallon… though if John McCain gets Exxon to drill just under where he’s standing, it will be A LOT CHEAPER!!). My sense is that Mitch Macaphee, inventor of Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and discoverer of the space warp (no, it wasn’t Zephram Cochrane, damn it), is opting for some kind of virtual cable for his space elevator – a laser or particle beam solution that he can just aim in a given direction. That means we need only confine ourselves to destinations that can be reached by following a straight-line trajectory. Piece of cake!
Of course, that’s easy for me to say. I’m not the inventor. I’ve been telling Mitch that Aldebaran is more in a sideways direction than strictly up, but he just gives me funny looks.
Obama’s running mate will be (my guess: Pat Paulson). Call me morbid, but my mind is more focused on what appears to be a strong indication of how a President McCain might be expected to rule the American empire. His stance and rhetoric on the Georgian conflict have been jaw-droppingly bellicose – torn as they may be from the playbook of paid Georgian lobbyist (and former Rumsfeld advisor… and former Chalabi promoter) Randy Scheunemann, one of McCain’s chief advisors, they represent a side of the candidate that has been chillingly consistent for as long as he’s been in public office: a knee-jerk preference for military force. As much as he’s milked his own wartime experience and mouthed platitudes about the horrors of war, McCain has been fully on-board with virtually every invasion, attack, bombing run, etc., we’ve undertaken since his return home from Hanoi. He apparently has never met a war he didn’t like.
So anyway… let’s see a show of hands. Who wants to die or send their child to die over a dispute between Russia and Georgia about a region that most Americans can’t even pronounce let alone find on a globe? Anyone? Honestly, I have to think the numbers are pretty low. And yet… why do I keep hearing that McCain is more trusted on national security and foreign policy than is his opponent? The man has neocon-fueled Napoleonic delusions about putting Russia in its place. He clings to a war that never should have been fought, and seems more than eager to start yet another. He referred to Iraq as “phase II” of the War on Terror back in 2001, working with the administration to link that country to the anthrax attacks on the basis of no evidence whatsoever. He has been dangerously wrong on pretty much every major foreign policy issue of the last decade. This man is more qualified?
No, I haven’t seen your bass drum case. What do I look like, some kind of servant? By the way, where’s my line mixer? What? No… actually, you don’t look like a servant. Why do you ask?
ones that have carried so far and so faithfully over the course of previous tours? Well…. therein lies a tale. I’ll spare you the painful details… suffice to say that they have fallen into a woeful state of disrepair. I wouldn’t drive either of them to our favorite convenience store, let alone out to Aldebaran. (Of course, to be fair, my favorite convenience store is on the planet Zenon, home of our sit-in guitarist, sFshzenKlyrn.) Guess I’ll have to come up with a different spot to buy my “smokes”, eh? (Don’t smoke… just buy ’em. It’s a shopping addiction. Long story.) 
theory. What Mitch wants to do is to apply laser or particle beam technology to this principle (as others have attempted to do), so that we can eliminate the step of securing the other end of this mythical cable. Because after all – if we can get up there to anchor the thing… why the hell do we need the “thing” in the first place? (Logic…. an irresistible force, to be sure. )