Wait, I didn’t hear that last bit. Are you saying that we can’t even get in the front door let alone the living quarters? What the fuck. Where is that Goldilocks Planet again? Cygnus?
Oh, hi. Well, we have made our triumphant return to planet Earth, our somewhat disapproving mother, having completed Interstellar Tour 2014 in support of our latest album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. And as any of you who travel in interstellar space know all too well, when you get back from a long journey, typically you find that everything has gone to hell in your absence. It’s a severe disincentive to traveling, I can tell you. But what’s the alternative? Hole up in a leaky hammer mill all winter? Not a chance.
Big Green’s loaner rocket touched down in Central New York around 1:00 a.m local time on Thursday, only to find that someone had changed the padlock on the gate to the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, where we have made our home for the past decade or two (because, as Frank Zappa said, all of the bands live together). Different lock, for sure – unlike the old one, this one works, and none of us had the key, so we sent Marvin (my personal robot assistant) over to the local constabulary and asked for assistance. (Marvin was promptly arrested for impersonating a robot, which seems unjust and vaguely insulting.)
Okay, turns out, someone moved into the Hammer Mill during our absence, and they don’t seem eager to relinquish their squatter’s rights in deference to our own. What’s worse is that they appear to be affiliated with that rancher out in Nevada – what’s his name again? You know – that dude that has been grazing his cattle for free on federal land, owes about a million dollars in back grazing fees, and got together a posse of sorts to take up arms and fight off the Bureau of Land Management. The folks in the mill, well … they’re kind of like the Led Zeppelin tribute band version of those Nevada militia dudes. They got the hats, they got the pickup trucks, and … crucially … they got the guns.
Just trying to negotiate entry right now without getting my hair parted by a 30-30 rifle round. That Goldilocks Planet is looking better all the time. I wonder if they have the extraterrestrial equivalent of QE2 up there.
Rocky landing. We weren’t here five minutes before someone got the idea of sending Marvin out there to plant the Big Green flag – the one friend of the band Leif Zurmuhlen made for us back in the day. Hey, well … it’s a little icy out there, so Marvin took a couple of tumbles before finding a spot flat enough to accommodate a flag on a stick. There’s no atmosphere to speak of, so we asked him to hold the free end of the flag while we snapped a picture or two. When we get those back from the pharmacy on Neptune, we’ll share them with you? (Yes, another episode of Luddites in space.)
The fact that most of these strange worlds have been featured in American movies and television shows from the 1950s and 60s is little help when you’re trying to determine the precise composition (and toxicity level) of a greenish atmosphere. Sure, you can have that kind of trouble back home, in South Carolina or West Virginia … but at least down there you have your pick of mad scientists. Up here, we’ve got Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and his converted wall barometer.