Tag Archives: interstellar tour

Uncategorized

Up the creek.

What the hell, Mitch. A week ago you didn’t care whether we went on this tour or not, and now you’re acting like the mill is on fire. What’s the matter with you, boy? And don’t point that deadly laser at me – you know how nervous I get about that kind of thing.

Well, it seems like Mitch is in kind of a hurry now to get off this miserable pimple of a planet known as Earth. Not sure what’s behind the sudden change of mood. He woke up in a bit of a mood Wednesday afternoon after a long night of what I assume was mad science experimentation, and now he’s all about planet KIC 8462852. That’s fine and good, right, but if we’re going there in the Plywood 9000 rocket we rented from SpaceY, well … we may have trouble breaking out of Earth orbit. In fact, we may have trouble clearing the treeline. The truth is, that thing isn’t getting off the ground at all.

Nah. That'll never work.What’s our plan B? Not sure we have one. There’s plan 9 from outer space, but hey … that’s a movie. Plan B might be to hunker down in the Cheney Hammer Mill, record some more songs, and venture out only to retrieve nuts and berries from the nearby Adirondack woodlands. Or pizzas from the nearby Adirondack Pizza Parlor. Or beer from the nearby …. well, you get the idea. I’m not at all sure why we opt for these interstellar tours in the first place. They’re not profitable. They’re long and pointless. They’re occasionally dangerous to the point of being life-threatening. But then, a desk job will kill you after 20-25 years, so … it’s probably just as well.

I told you last week about the latest episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN, our podcast, which should be posted soon-ish. We’ve done rough mixes of all 7 songs, and it’s a strange lot, I will admit, but you be the judge. Hey, be the jury as well. What the fuck, go ahead and throw our sorry asses in music jail. At least THAT would keep me from having to climb aboard a Plywood 9000 rocket with a madman at the helm. P.S. …. HAAAALP!

Usual Rubbish

Last one out.

Try moving it to the other side of the tail fin. No, not that one! The dorsal tail fin! Okay, now hit it with a hammer a few times. Nothing? Hmmm …. how about if we light it on fire. Sometimes that helps.

Oh, damn. I didn’t realize I was typing this all into our blog. (I think that’s called auto-typing.) Well, as you can tell, Big Green is working furiously to get our rented Plywood 9000 space rocket ready for launch before the election on Tuesday, when all hell is likely to break loose. At least, that’s what the little voices in my head tell me. There are times when you feel compelled to stay and fight the good fight, and then there are those other times when you … well … decide to take a rented rocketship to another planet. That’s a hasty decision, I know, but again … those persistent little voices!

Seriously, I am looking forward to a perhaps non-remunerative jaunt out to the Kuiper belt if only to free ourselves from the pressures of terrestrial life. You have no idea how much maintenance an abandoned Hammer Mill requires. If you’re wondering why we haven’t put out a new episode of our podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN in nearly two months, there’s part of your answer, my friend. At least on planet KIC 8462852 we might find time to finish a project here and there. And my guess is that Marvin (my personal robot assistant) won’t have to worry about being apprehended by Trump’s ICE deportation force. (He has nightmares about that stuff.)

Is that really where the fin goes on this thing?Sure, we’ve had our head down with music production just lately. Matt and I are working on 7 songs for release on the next episode of Ned Trek, the Star Trek political parody that comprises the core of our TIBG podcast. You might say, 7 songs! That’s practically a freaking album, man! Why don’t you just put out another album, freak!? Well, first of all …. don’t call me “album freak”. I don’t deserve that. After all, we haven’t put out an album in three years. (And our LAST album was Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, so technically we haven’t put out a sane album in eight years.) What was I saying again?

Right. Spacecraft maintenance can make your mind wander. Check back a little later this week when I don’t have a monkey wrench in my fist. (That’s what I’m doing wrong! I need a rocket wrench!)

Usual Rubbish

Serious gravity.

Well, maybe a larger booster rocket would help. Or some tightly wound springs. Then there’s the lever option, like a catapult – give me a lever large enough and I will move the world, that sort of thing. No? Okay, never mind.

Oh, hi. Yes, we’re grappling with the same conundrums that so vexed our predecessors in flight – how to defeat that old devil gravity. It’s a little hard to imagine being able to reach planet KIC 8462852 without finding some way to break the surly bonds of Earth, whatever that means. Sure, it would be easier for Big Green to just give in and start doing terrestrial tour dates, packing ourselves into a multi-colored school bus and teetering down the road to Springfield and Lodi and East Aurora (unless we get stuck in Lodi … again …), but that would be an abandonment of all we hold dear. And in all frankness, gravity would still be vexing us! (Especially after a particularly long night.)

The other day, a big semi backed up to the front gate of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill (our adopted home) and dropped an enormous cardboard box with Mitch’s name scrawled on the side. We had Marvin (my personal robot assistant) haul the thing into the courtyard as a precautionary measure – it was ticking and smelled vaguely of sulfur, so I certainly didn’t want to touch the sucker. Well, it turns out that the box contained our ride to the Khyber Belt: the promised Plywood 9000 space rocket we rented from SpaceY, some assembly required. It’s here, it’s here!

So that's it, then, is it?Mitch Macaphee retreated into his lab and began tinkering with the thing, and just yesterday morning I awoke to the sight of a nosecone peaking over the courtyard wall. He managed to piece the thing together, but there were apparently a few parts missing. Engines, for one. (Or more precisely, for four, since there are supposed to be four of them.) Being a mad scientist, Mitch took this as a kind of challenge. Whereas any sane person would just phone the company and tell them to send the missing parts, he started adapting some odd pieces of technology he had lying around his workbench. There was that anti-gravity device he tinkered with a few years ago, for instance.  Then there’s that big blow-dryer he invented.

So, I don’t know. Maybe a big catapult is more practical. If you have random thoughts on advanced interplanetary propulsion, please send them here.