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Usual Rubbish

Inside the April podcast.

Interstellar Tour Log: April 3, 2014
On the surface of Dwarf Planet 2012 VP.

Still out here in Ort Cloud land, taking a bit of a break before heading back home to see what condition the Cheney Hammer Mill is in since our departure some ten weeks ago. (Lawn probably needs cutting.) While I’m reclining in a hammock, waiting for Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to deliver my next High Ball on a silver tray, this seems like a good time to tick through some of the highlights on our brand new March …. I mean, April THIS IS BIG GREEN podcast. Or is it March? Well … no matter.

Anywho, here it is:

Ned Trek XVII – The Romney Syndrome
It looks so realWho would have guessed that we would have made it to the 17th episode of this monthly audio mash-up of classic Star Trek, Mr. Edd, and the 2012 Republican National Convention? Not I. Even so, this episode (introduced as always by Lee Majors) is a riff on the classic series episode, the Paradise Syndrome – Captain Romney bumps his head in a stone outhouse on an alien world, loses his memory, and goes all native CEO on the cigar-store Native American stereotypes who inhabit this television paradise. Oh, and the Nixon android has a zero-gravity tryst with an automated mining vessel.  (You … kind of have to listen to it. )

This month’s Ned Trek features no less than six new Big Green songs, written to move the ponderous plot along. They include:

My Masterpiece
Richard Pearle’s neocon ode to the merits of his greatest work, the Iraq war.

Space is the Devil
Chief Engineer Welsh sings this sea chanty to caution Mr. Ned against engaging the warp drive engines. A stunning performance. (I’m still stunned. Bring me another high ball!)

I Place You First
This is the sick little song a love-struck Nixon android sings to the Halliburton mining vessel before he, well … docks with it. Androids will be androids.

This Horse’s Sense
Mr. Ned laments the stupidity of his human comrades in his signature style.

Happy and Peaceful Here
Romney’s song about finding his way through his idyllic life on the surface of Nobodelcarus, where he has become Chief Financial Officer in his amnesiac state.

Lies from the Pit of Hell
Doc Coburn’s rocker about his personal hero, Congressman Paul Broun of Georgia (and of the Middle Ages).

That’s the show. Hope you enjoy it as much as I’m enjoying this hammock.

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.

Usual Rubbish

Geek to me.

Connect blue wire (A) to terminal (3). Check. Connect yellow wire (F) to terminal (48c). Check. Hit boot switch, but first, insert index fingers (K) and (M) into ears (7) and (8). Hmmm…. okay.

Big GreenOh, hi. Caught me in the middle of something, as usual. Always some task to perform here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted squat-house in lovely upstate New York. As you may recall from previous posts (or not), we are preparing for an upcoming interstellar tour to support extraterrestrial sales of our new album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. Fact is, we make most of our money on units sold outside the bounds of the known solar system. (The rest we make on Neptune and some of the smaller, rockier moons of Saturn.)

Anyhow, as you might suspect, we will be needing some means of transportation for ourselves, our hangers-on, our instruments and gear, our provisions, etc. We have an old 1954 GMC City Coach (or we at least have access to it in the junk yard across the street), but it’s seen better days and probably isn’t up to a journey of 1,000 light years across the trackless void of space. (The windows haven’t been caulked in a couple of decades, so I doubt it’s space-worthy.) We used to simply “rent” spacecraft from other fictional narratives, like Lost in Space or Here Come The Brides, but that option is walled off by lack of funds. Our mad science adviser Mitch Macaphee is still in Madagascar, enjoying the sun, so we’re left to our own devices.

The one on the leftRight, so … using Mitch’s credit card, I ordered a do-it-yourself space ship from Heathkit. (Yes, I know … they no longer exist. I had to go through Mitch’s time portal to place the order.) So here I am, perhaps the most technically challenged member of Big Green, a man without a smart phone (I still use that brick phone my dad lent me in 1989), assembling a deluxe interstellar space cruiser stick by stick, armed only with a soldering gun and a pair of superannuated pliers.

No need to back away. I haven’t gotten to the volatile rare earths part yet. Stay tuned.