Tag Archives: Mitch Macaphee

Usual Rubbish

Last straw.

Well, at least we have a week to pack. That’s something. What? Mitch sent himself back in time a week and is demanding that we leave now? For crying out loud, I hate when he does that.

Okay, so you know that we live with a mad scientist. And if you know that, you probably knows that he has a tendency to obsess about outer space matters. Whether you knew it or not, it’s happening again, this time over star KIC 8462852, which is flickering at odd interviews. Some have suggested that this is due to some undiscovered alien Megastructure, but I am skeptical. I cannot, however, say the same for Mitch, who is intrigued by this speculative feat of engineering know-how. He wants to see how they built THEIR megastructure so that he can build his OWN. The man has a competitive streak a parsec wide.

Of course, it’s not wise to ignore the entreaties of a mad scientist. And we’ve been collecting some dust in recent years, to be sure, so Big Green got its tiny heads together and decided to do some impromptu interstellar busking as a means of accommodating Mitch’s obsession. We thought we’d borrow a spacecraft, head out towards Zenon (home of our occasional sit-in guitarist sFshzenKlyrn), and stop by KIC 8462852 (or ‘852 for short) along the way. If there turns out to be a Megastructure erected on the mysterious star, we will see if they take terrestrial bookings. Could be a decent venue there, you never know. No Megastructure? Well …. we try to cope with Mitch’s disappointment in some non-explosive fashion (hopefully).

Road trip!That of course puts us back into the spacecraft rental market. Never a good place to be, especially in this economy and with the election coming up. It’s just hard to get a low parsec ion-drive ship that can hold more than a couple of vertically challenged astronauts. We not only have our own asses, but an entourage and a whole load of equipment. (If the mansized tuber accompanies us, as he has threatened to do, we will need a greenhouse on board as well.) We’re considering a kickstarter campaign, frankly. Either that or hiring a grant writer. (Isn’t that just a fancy term for counterfeiting? If so, why the hell doesn’t Mitch just invent some freaking money for a change.)

Hey … if you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them. Just drop them in the comment field. And if you have a reliable map to ‘852, drop that in as well.

Usual Rubbish

Dronetastic.

Wait a minute. Here they come again! Everybody DOWN! Damn it. Okay, that was just a pizza delivery to the neighbors. You can all stand up again.

Oh, hi. Kind of caught us at a bad time, actually. We are in the midst of a coordinated drone attack. No, not the military kind they use overseas. These are domestic drones of the kind you can buy at the corner store. As you may have heard, there are now hundreds of thousands of these suckers. The skies are black with them. One flock covers three whole states, and when they move … oh, it’s like THUNDER! (No, wait … that was the buffalo, as described by a space archeologist on Star Trek. Sorry.)

Now, when I say “attack”, I don’t exactly mean they are targeting us. It’s just that there are so freaking many of these things, it starts to feel like an assault after a while. The pizza delivery joint down the street is using one. So is the florist. And last week our nasty neighbors bought one for their fourteen year old, and the first thing the little sucker did with it was drop a water balloon on the man-sized tuber. (Actually, he rather likes that in as much a there hasn’t been a lot of rain lately … but that’s not the point!)

Whoa, Tubey ... heads up.The ones that really annoy me are those mosquito-sized drones. I don’t even know how they manage to engineer a flying machine that tiny. Where do they find bicycle parts small enough to make that thing fly? They somehow even designed them so that they can replicate themselves by dropping little developmental nodules into standing water, which later hatch and …. hey … or maybe those are just mosquitoes. Okay, um … forget that last bit.

I should put out notice to our neighbors that their new-found obsession with drone technology is a bit like whacking a hornet’s nest with a stick. They need to be reminded that we have a mad scientist in residence by the name of Mitch Macaphee. He hasn’t taken much notice of the flying machines thus far, buried as he is in his laboratory. But I think it’s just a matter of time, frankly. And yes, he is the designer of Marvin (my personal robot assistant), but don’t let that fool you. Not all of his inventions are non-threatening lumps of useless technology. (Sorry, Marvin.)

Usual Rubbish

Boat trip!

Got everything packed? Good, good. Don’t forget the picnic (pronounced pick-a-nick) basket. Then there’s the water supply, or at least that machine Mitch invented that makes water from thin air using something that looks like a spark plug. (I think the Robinsons used it on Lost In Space, right alongside the clothes washer that folded garments and wrapped them in plastic.)

Well, it’s been a long summer, and we have done absolutely NOTHING that can be considered recreational. Yes, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) rolled over to the hardware store once or twice to pick up some machine oil and batteries. Yes, the mansized tuber struck up a friendship with some ornamental plant outside the 7-11. Yes, Mitch Macaphee went to half a dozen mad science conferences, one held in an abandoned cement plant on the north end of town. (I told him to have it here, that one abandoned mill is just as good as another, but he wasn’t having any of that.) Still, none of this can be considered recreational in a summery kind of way. (You could say that none of them amounts to summery execution, but I really wouldn’t say that if I were you.)

So, what was it going to be? Road trip? Nah. Did that last summer. Sickening, frankly. How about a boat trip? We have the Erie Canal running practically right alongside our abandoned hammer mill. All we need is a cheap gondola and a couple of oars, then it’s off to wherever that canal goes. East or west, I reckon. Just like Life on the Mississippi, except less crackery. And no Mississippi. No?

That looks like fun, kidsYou see, THIS is why we never go on vacation. We can never freaking decide what we want to do or where we want to go. The only time we travel is when we’re on interstellar tour (or when we time travel, which is disorienting, frankly, and I have discouraged Mitch from dragging us along through the time/space portal he keeps in his office). It’s like we’re just visitors on this, our home planet. Though come to think of it, the weather has been ungodly hot just lately. And Louisiana is under water. And California is on fire. Maybe this ISN’T our home planet. It does seem kind of inhospitable. Hmmm…

Okay, well … boat trip it is. Pull the gondola up to the jetty … whatever any of those words mean.