Antlers? Not antlers. That won’t work at all. You need something more simian looking. A chimp’s muzzle, perhaps, or lemur tail. Prehensile, yes… that’ll do the trick.
Oh, it’s you again, mister Spindle-legs. (A quote from Lost In Space, sorry to say.) Welcome back aboard the S. S. something sacred, where yours truly is coughing up copy for the commodore. Who’s the commodore? Well, that’s the guy in charge of Loathsome Prick records – the fellow who sent us off on this fool’s errand to planet Mars, where Big Green is slogging through some promotional performances to support the release of our next album… the one that ain’t done yet. Want a good time? Try careering 143 million miles through interplanetary space in a converted piece of playground equipment piloted by a crew of genetically modified, oversized root vegetables. You don’t know the meaning of the word “excitement” until you’ve done that once or twice. (Frankly, once is enough for me.)
As many of you will have surmised, we did eventually catch up with that speedy planet Mars, in spite of our poorly-planned trajectory. Man-sized tuber “A” (the original one) 
loaded a few more logs on the atomic propulsion fire and gave us enough additional thrust to reach Mars about 20 hours late (right about when we were scheduled to start playing our first gig, in an open-air stadium at the foot of Mount Olympus, the tallest peak in the known solar system already.) Luckily, time is not as precious on the red planet as it is on the green, so we were able to gather ourselves together, take a few quick belts of kilulu juice (official beverage of Big Green), and take our places on Mars’s most prestigious concert stages. Oh, yes, friends, this is the top of the world out here. No doubt about it – ask any Martian. (Note: This is what our Loathsome Prick publicist told us to say. Actually, it seems a hell of a lot like a graveyard to me, but…)
So anyway… we’ve played a bunch of numbers for a bunch of Martians and other unidentified space critters, pulling out archival tunes like “Special Kind of Blood” and “Don’t Give Up The Ship”, as well as tunes from our upcoming album (with tantalizing titles like “The Bishop” and “Do It Every Time”). 
Pretty soon, we started wondering about the crowd… could there be that broad a variety of head shapes, body sizes, and antennae styles? Seemed odd. Then John noticed an alien with a pirate hat on, and we realized what was up. Hallowe’en on Mars – guess it’s pretty big in these parts, or so Marvin (my personal assistant) tells me. (Don’t ask me how he knows. Like Tonto, he hangs out in those barrooms and hears things, I imagine.) And of course sFshzenKlyrn, our perennial sit-in guitarist, had a thing or two to say about this imported tradition. (He tells me the bastardized Martian term for the holiday, literally translated, is “Hollow mo’on.” Doesn’t lose much, actually.) So when in Rome…. don a costume and join the festivities. (But no antlers, Marvin. They don’t suit you.)
So, I’d say the first Martian gigs went okay. No major upheavals or breakdowns. A good time was had by all and sundry. Sure, the spaceship won’t start and we’re stuck here until we can find a competent mad science mechanic, but that’s nothing. Nothing at all. (Until our oxygen runs dry…. oh, man….)
dead – that’s just a little more than one a day (a bitter pill for someone to swallow, but no one who counts, apparently). I don’t recall what the Iraqi corpse figure was – it had four digits, for sure – but (and this is important!) the first digit was smaller than last month’s. Progress! Or so we’re told by the administration, the “commanders in the field”, the mainstream press, and supporters of the “surge” in general. This is, after all, best framed (from their point of view) as some kind of ball game wherein the winning team is the one with the highest (or lowest) score. It makes the war easier to sell, report on, and defend. But war differs from sports in one very important respect – in sports the object is simply to win, so numbers count; on the other hand, there is typically a strategic or tactical purpose to any war, and this one is no exception. While we should be thinking about why we’re in Iraq, the “surge” cheering section wants us to think about how well we’re doing. There’s light at the end of the tunnel! they tell us… but what’s the destination?
we invaded to establish that “enduring relationship” Bush now speaks of; a long-term military presence in the heart of the middle east’s richest oil producing region. In this respect, the mission has succeeded, because now both major U.S. political parties support the idea of staying in Iraq for years to come. If the administration, the major parties, or our military leaders gave a damn about the Iraqi people, they would make some minimal effort to a) determine how many have been killed, injured, or displaced by our invasion, and b) pay reparations for the terrible toll we have taken on their lives and their nation. This won’t happen (unless we insist upon it), and our so-called experts – Republican and Democrat – will do and say anything it takes to keep our military in the heart of Iraq. That’s the point of this game. 
Trans-Martian insertion commence… four… three… two… one… one… ONE! Commence, damnit! What’s the matter with you clones? Geebus!
the fact is, folks… funny story. Turns out, it is rocket science. And self-sufficient as we may be, we are not bloody NASA, okay? So yes, we did manage lift off (with some difficulty), but that was the end of the easy part. On Matt’s advice, I had Marvin (my personal robot assistant) point the nose of the ship towards our objective – planet Mars, where bookings awaited us. Right… now this is the complicated part. Turns out shooting for Mars is shooting at a moving target. That sucker’s speeding along at some ungodly speed. So by the time we’re what should have been half-way there, it’s way the fuck ahead of us! That meant making some kind of complicated course change that required more hands than we could muster. Oh, there was one other option. You know… being screwed. No one’s favorite, as it happens. 
anything… that could get us out of this jam (even if it was just a rope to hang ourselves with). Buried under some novelty tee-shirts (“I’m with Frankenstein”??) and other throw away items was one of Mitch’s many inventions – a small device he had been obsessed with over the course of several weeks… something he called the clonolator. He was going to try and sell it to