Well, I haven’t seen it. What kind of belt is it? Nothing of the kind. What am I, your valet? Damn it, man – use your eyes! Oh…. the Kuiper Belt. Right… nope, haven’t seen it.
Then there’s that third reason. A little known fact about the “Goldilocks Planet”: it lives right next door to the mother of all black holes (I believe that’s referred to as the “Three Bears Neutron Star”). Before we took off, we asked the Gliseans how best to navigate back in the direction of our home system. They gave us what was, for them, some pretty typical advise – go left, but not too far left; then take a right turn at the asteroid… not the BIG asteroid, not the LITTLE one, the JUST RIGHT one… and so on. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) took all this down in his memory banks, then plugged himself into our spacecraft’s navigational computer and passed the directions along. (It may have been my 
imagination, but he always seems to have a self-satisfied smirk when he hooks up with that terminal. Nevertheless…)
Okay, so we follow these asinine directions, and we find ourselves being drawn off course by some unseen force… a mysterious power beyond the understanding of man or machine. Mitch Macaphee called it … “gravity”. Yes, the black hole just to the right (not too far!) of the Goldilocks Planet was drawing us in relentlessly. Next thing, everything goes dark. It’s like driving through the Holland Tunnel. All the way to Holland. Need I draw you a picture?
So, okay, we’re supposed to be at a gig in the Kuiper Belt by Tuesday of next week. Care to start a pool on whether or not we make it? I’m betting no. Cover me?
Yes, this is Big Green, reporting live from the Goldilocks Planet, recently discovered orbiting the star Gliese 581 – technical name is Gliese 581g, actually, one of six sibling planets (Did Goldilocks have siblings? Don’t know. What an exasperatingly ill-defined folk tale!) After its recent discovery, we decided to make it a stop on our ENTER THE MIND: THE ULTIMATE BIG GREEN EXPERIENCE interstellar tour, but now I’m beginning to have some regrets. It’s just to damned perfect down here. It’s a planet of anal retentive mo-fo’s (though they’re not too obsessive about it … which if anything is even more exasperating).
It gets worse. When they get really, really frustrated (which took us about half an hour to accomplish), they retreat to their beds and pull the covers up over their oddly-misshapen heads. (Strange thing is, they all seem to have three beds, even the ones who live alone…. and they always sleep in the smallest ones.) I’ll tell you, it’s a good goddamn thing we brought our own craft services with us (the mansized tuber is our chef this time out), ’cause all these fuckers eat is porridge. Peas porridge. And they don’t care if it’s hot or cold. (Sometimes they leave the stuff sitting around for days on end… deeeeee-sgusting).
I want to start this week’s “usual rubbish” blog with a thank you to all of those who helped bail us out of the Kaztropharian jail. (You know who you are.) Not sure how everyone worked out how the bail-bond system works on Kaztropharius 137b – must have looked it up on the interwebs. (You have to put up at least three cases of cotton swabs per pound of body weight. It can get costly… so hey, thanks.) Well, as much as I like it on Kaztropharius, we left the moment they opened the cage door, overdue as we were for the next booking on our super-fantastic ENTER THE MIND: THE ULTIMATE BIG GREEN EXPERIENCE interstellar tour. A little place called…. The “Goldilocks” Planet.
What was our Thanksgiving like? Well, about as good as it can get in deep space. We brought out a couple of days’ rations and squished it all together in the shape of a roasted turkey. Then we buried it, because it was disgusting. Burial in space, you understand… you put the waste in the wasted disposal tubes and order Marvin to hit the eject button. Then we gather around the starboard port, like the little family that we are, and watch the mangled wads of tofu disperse into the void. That’s what we call Thanksgiving.