Tag Archives: robots

Usual Rubbish

Planet pool.


We’re off the charts? Finally! Took long enough. What the hell… this band has been going for 25 years and we… What? Oh. We’re off the star charts. Right.

Well, space travel has just gotten a lot more confusing, people. Much, much more complicated than even a few weeks ago when we left planet Earth to embark on this ENTER THE MIND: THE ULTIMATE BIG GREEN EXPERIENCE tour. It seems that normal (i.e. not mad) scientists back on Earth have discovered the existence of literally millions…. perhaps BILLIONS of Earth-sized planets circling stars throughout our galaxy. As we’re bobbing around out here, trying to find our next destination (Kaztropharius 137b), we’ve been scratching our heads, trying to figure out where all of these freaking planets came from. None of them are on the charts. Lots of them look alike. This is bloody ridiculous.

Okay, so… where do we start? With the mad scientist, of course. Mitch Macaphee knows everything about planets and planetoids, from concocting them to blowing them up (particularly the latter, truth be told). We caught him in the middle of one of his favorite experiments – turning lapis lazuli into marble fudge. (It’s not exactly a value-creation experiment, but hell… I did say he was mad, didn’t I?) The conversation went something like this:

Joe: Hey, Mitch?
Mitch: Can’t you see I’m busy
Matt: Wait…. Is that lapis lazuli?
Joe: Never mind that. Mitch, the planets, Mitch…!
Mitch: Yes, yes? What about them? Yes??
Matt: I didn’t know lapis lazuli is blue. Thought it was …
Joe: There are too many of them! How do we tell them apart?
Mitch: Don’t ask me such foolish questions. When you want to blow them apart, let me know.

As you can tell, we weren’t getting a lot of help from him. A little later on, he sent Marvin (my personal robot assistant) into my quarters (an empty storage bin, actually) with a recorded message. “Use the laser cannon,” Mitch said on the recording. “If a planet splits straight down the middle, it can’t be Kaztopharius 137b. That thing is made of solid quintilium. The best you can get is a clean hole, no split. Just keep shooting til you find it.”

I’m not sure, but I think Mitch is suggesting we incinerate multiple worlds, and personally, I’m a little uncomfortable with that. (Anti-Lincoln seems kind of keen, though.) Better take tonight’s watch, just to be sure.

Usual Rubbish

Dipper in road.


No, no – that is Antares. This is Betelgeuse. And Kaztrofarius 137b is way over here, not here. Jesus christmas, Mitch! I thought you said you could read maps.

Okay, well… that’s great. Only the third leg of ENTER THE MIND 2010: THE ULTIMATE BIG GREEN EXPERIENCE – our current interstellar tour – and we’re freaking lost like a bunch of rubes in blindfolds feeling their way around Manhattan. When? When will I stop listening to people when they tell me shit that isn’t true? Mitch Macaphee, a man who can build robots, invent planet-busting snake oil, and repair an ion-drive engine with egg cartons and bailing wire, told me that he was an expert with star charts. Well, guess what. He exaggerated. Slightly. Just slightly. Like… not at all.

How lost are we? Hard to tell. I asked Marvin (my personal robot assistant) what he thought, and he just blinked his lights on and off for a minute or two, said nothing. A deathly silence from this man of brass. Not a good sign when you’re lost. Though I looked out the portside window and a few of the constellations looked familiar. A little farther away than I’m used to, but familiar none the less. The big dipper actually looked small, and the little dipper was microscopic. I mentioned that to Lincoln, and he went into this long meditation about the infinitely large intersecting with the infinitely small, and how we may all be mere subatomic particles in the vast body of our universe, etc., etc. Pretty esoteric stuff from a man of the 19th Century, wouldn’t you say? (I think he’s been watching my old Cosmos tapes.)

This is taking a bit longer than we thought, and we may be losing our performance “edge”, if you will (or won’t). As you might expect, it’s a little challenging to rehearse in a zero-gravity environment. Sure, the guitars, keys, and drums float away from time to time. But what’s worse is when you play up tempo stuff – we actually start floating in circles around each other, rotating on multiple axes as if we were mounted on gyroscopes. It’s a little unnerving… except for sFshzenKlyrn, who does that sort of thing all the time, gravity or no. It’s kind of his natural state. So… yeah, we’re getting rusty up here.

Damn! I should ask sFshzenKlyrn where the hell we are? What am I thinking? Have to sign off and suit up (he’s out on the hull smoking a Venusian cigar).

Usual Rubbish

Dog days.

What the hell. I thought I put that sucker out to the curb. Is that the same one, or another, identical one? Hey… same to you, Lincoln! Jeezus. Why are you so bad tempered?

Man, I’ll tell you – tempers run short here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in the middle of July. All this heat… it’s driving us mad! Those of us who weren’t mad to begin with, that is.  (Strangely, it kind of drives Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, sane.) I’m just trying to clear out the clutter a little bit, and I threw out a beam of wood. I mean literally, I threw it out the window in hopes the trash collectors would pick it up. Next thing I know, it’s back in the freaking hallway. I guess Lincoln (or perhaps anti-Lincoln… I keep mixing them up because the heat makes them switch personalities) has grown attached to that particular fallen roof beam, or was perhaps planning to whittle it into something more attractive. Don’t know for sure, but he appears to have taken the heat. Calm down, Mr. President!

Well, now, I know in these dark, dark days, you probably have your own troubles to consider, so let me get straight to the point here. I will just offer you my Big Green report and go merrily along my way, so that you may return to whatever it was you were doing before you stumbled upon this rambling account. (What was I saying? Ah, yes…) It seems your friends in Big Green are preparing for yet another glorious interstellar tour, taking in the inner (and out the outer) planets, swinging on a star, etc. Just working up the itinerary while I type these words. Yes, I’m a multi-tasker from way back. Would you believe I’m also cleaning my oven? (Check your 60s – 70s vintage t.v. ads for that reference.) That’s to say nothing of what I’m simultaneously doing in other dimensions and the various parallel universes. Boggles the mind, quite simply.

Still, as many of you probably know, the main consideration with these tours is logistics. I don’t know if you’ve followed our previous outings, but typically we run into some kind of technical or manpower-related difficulties at some point in the proceedings, then mayhem ensues. That’s been the pattern. Why, you ask? Well, it could be because we’re just plain unlucky. Or maybe because we’re getting a little old and codger-like. But I think the most convincing explanation is that we rely too much on frail human faculties to carry us from solar system to solar system. We need more automation. And watching all that footage of those BP robots working furiously on that spill in the Gulf, I’m reminded that robots – excluding for a moment Marvin (my personal robot assistant) – are an under-utilized resource in this operation.

Perhaps we need an automated vehicle this time, eh? What do you think, Lincoln? What? Do you even know what that gesture means? Here we go… damned heat!