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Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Down And Out On Moonbase Freedom

Date: June 1, 2019

To: President, United States, Earth

Fm: Governor Acting Governor Pro Tem, Lunar Colony, Moon

Subject:  Help us, you rat bastard! Status Report

 

Die Asshole Die!  Dear President Gingrich,

Sir, I’m writing in desperate hope that you’ll finally pull your fat head out of your ass hear our plea for assistance.  Unless we receive federal funding soon I fear this will be my last status report.

Please don’t get me wrong, we here on Luna do indeed appreciate all you have done for us so far.  We really enjoyed the inspirational movie you sent up on the last supply rocket.  Really, who doesn’t love Newt Gingrich Saves The World? Personally, Sir, it makes me want to vomit until my space boots come up I could watch it over and over. Brad Pitt’s depiction of you as a child genius who overcomes crippling morality just in time to save the world from Bill Clinton Satan brought tears to my eyes.  And I thought Orly Taitz just totally nailed the part of Monica (Honestly, I wouldn’t have guessed that she could, uh, act).  On a side note: I don’t want to complain, but it sure would have been nice if you’d thought to have NASA send up a couple of air bottles with the movie.  Ah well, I’m sure we can breath inspiration if we have to.

Despite our efforts to live up to your new American Motto, “Arbeit macht frei Annoy a liberal, work hard and be happy,” I’m sorry to report that colonization of the moon is not going well. Jesus Christ, get us the hell out of here! 

The problems are manifold and the men have taken to calling our little outpost “Beano Station” – because there be no water, there be no food, there be no fucking air! … well, you get the idea. Very soon, there will be no people – well, no Americans anyway because there’s no fucking air! The Chinese Base New Yuèliàng Province seems to be thriving and there’s been some talk about joining up with them since most of our moonbase parts and equipment come from China anyway. Now, I know what you’re thinking, Sir, but I can assure you that this kind of thinking is confined at present to only one person. I have to say though, socialism seems a bit trivial at this point.  That might sound like selling out, but some people really like breathing, plus the communists give you free pajamas when you sign up.  Also, we could use the medical coverage.

I know that you don’t believe in government subsidized assistance unless there’s oil involved, and believe me we’ve looked, but despite the expertise and assurances of Vice President Palin, there doesn’t seem to be any here on the moon. Perhaps you could send her up to show us what we’re doing wrong. I think she’d be right at home, it’s cold as hell and you can actually see Russia from here, terrestrial cloud cover permitting. 

Now, obviously, we were supposed to pay our own way, and, Sir, we tried.  We mined tons and tons of Helium-3. Unfortunately, as you may know, the market for He-3 is sort of stagnate at the moment, what with there being no actual  Ayn Rand perpetual motion fusion power plants having been invented and all. Now, I’m not saying that it’s because you had all the scientists put to death. I’m not criticizing, you idiot Sir, praise Jesus, you understand, it’s just that it sort put a damper on the whole “The Moon Will Be The New Saudi Arabia” thing when your administration fired all the teachers and shut down the public school system for indoctrinating the kids into science liberalism. Turns out colonization of the moon is rocket science after all.  Who knew?

Additionally, as you know, attempts to build an He-3 pipeline from the moon to the Lower 48 have repeatedly failed.  Personally, Sir, if we must blame somebody, I recommend we blame the homosexual environmentalist agenda for our failure to expand capitalism beyond the bulkheads of our little settlement. I suspect that despite your generous funding of the Bachmann Center for Faith Based Americanism, a few gay environmentalists remain unconverted and at large conducting subversive sabotage of our precious freedoms.  Homos hate capitalism, Sir, everybody knows that.

The good news is that with passage of the recent National Life Begins With The First Budweiser Personhood Act, individual spermatozoa are now considered people. Trust me, Mr. President, after eight years up here living in a tin can without getting any action, I’m pretty sure I can push us over the 13,000 person population threshold for statehood all by myself, especially if I can get five minutes of non-censored access to the internet. 

The bad news is that it turns out faith-based terraforming is somewhat less optimal than we first hoped.  We held a rally to ask God for atmosphere and stuff.  However, despite herculean efforts by our prayer engineers, when Colonial Governor Perry stepped into the airlock to go outside and sample our new Garden of Eden he unfortunately exploded.  We’re not sure why.  Everybody we sent in to scrape him off the walls also exploded.  We are now blaming Muslim terrorists.  Also, you’ll want to avoid Airlock 3, just saying.

I know you’re busy with preparations for your pending marriage (fifth time’s the charm!) and  the war in Iran, Praise Jesus, but I know that we will be ultimately victorious.  After eight years of invasion, you’d think they’d just give up, wouldn’t you? I must admit that we do enjoy watching the show through our telescope, I assume the bright blue flashes are the nuclear ones? 

Anyway, if it’s not too much trouble, I’d really appreciate it if you’d consider sending up some air and maybe a little something to eat. Also, if you’re looking to get rid of, say, a couple dozen morally questionable liberal types of the female persuasion, we wouldn’t mind. At all. Seriously.

 

Sincerely,

Acting Governor (Pro Tem) and sole remaining multi-cellular resident of Moonbase Reagan

 

P.S. I hear gasoline is now over a hundred dollars a gallon, are you sure I couldn’t interest the other Fifty States in some Helium-3?

P.P.S.  You ever read Heinlein’s The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress?  Remember the part about the linear accelerator? No? Pity.

P.P.P.S.  Hey, I can see your house from here! Why do I mention it. No reason.

31 comments:

  1. Hmm. Has anybody tried the simple expedient of throwing rocks at Newt yet?

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  2. Truly, if we all just disliked Newt vehemently ----immediately, it would save more time . . .and a whole moon base.

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  3. Way ahead of you, Angela, I've disliked Newt for twenty years.

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  4. I have enjoyed your writing for a long time, but this one was laugh out loud funny.

    Thanks I needed it. . . it was a long day.

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  5. Who was the last presidential type that got us involved in the moon again?

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  6. Hilarious in a very scary kind of way...

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  7. Jebus, Jim, I can't keep laughing out loud at work and spitting coffee on my monitors. Don't suggest I stop reading here, either, because some days, it's all the giggle I get.

    word verification: ationupl, the act of a republican candidate marrying the nation (and then promptly f***ing it.)

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  8. To quote some ancient wise man:
    Hyperbole becomes you!
    Keep going!

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  9. @Dan Bressler, you may be missing the point.

    It's not the moon. I'm huge fan of space exploration. I want to go, I've always wanted to go. I'd be the first guy to sign up as a colonist. I watched the moon landings. I've waited my whole life to see the lights of Luna City shining in the darkened crescent of the moon.

    However, I actually know what it would take to return to the moon in nine years - let alone build a permanent colony there. And it is simply not possible. Period. America will likely never return to the moon as a nation, not unless the political climate and partisan divides change, divides I might add that were created in large part by Gingrich himself and pompous self-serving assholes just like him. These fuckers are the very bastards who stole our future from us thirty years ago, back when we actually could have returned to the moon and gone to Mars, and on out to the moons of Jupiter.

    What really pisses me off here is this: Gingrich literally promised the moon to a room full of actual rocket scientists, people who should damned well know better and probably did, but cheered him anyway rather than ask him pointed questioned and demand detailed plans. It's one of the most pathetic things I've ever seen. It made me want to vomit, watching those particular people cheer Gingrich's smarmy bullshit. They want space so desperately, that they'll cheer an obvious fantasy, even though they know it's nothing but smoke and mirror. It's sickening.

    It pisses me off to a degree you simply cannot imagine that Gingrich would attempt to steal my dreams in a crass attempt to further his political goals. He's making promises that he has no intention of fulfilling. This is a guy who will say and do anything in order to regain power.


    "Build a moonbase" is the political equivalent of "jumped the shark."

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  10. Have you ever considered writing an actual book? I am guessing this has been asked before...but realy, you can write!!

    GREAT post!

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  11. @ Tristan, last I heard he was working on one.

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  12. I daresay the book would be farther along if ShopKat would stop trying to rewrite her chapters.

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  13. It doesn't really matter, since Newt doesn't have any real plan for getting to the moon, just wishful thinking, and made that up just to try to get some Space Coast votes from Floridians (gosh, how well did that work for the Newt? Not well, apparently, since he lost the Space Coast big-time!). Free market magic fairy dust isn't going to get anybody to the moon anytime soon because there's no "there" there -- no resources not more easily obtained on Earth, nothing of any real scientific interest, nothing. It's just a big dusty ball of space rock, already examined in sufficient detail by robots to tell us that there's nothing of any commercial interest there.

    I mean, c'mon. We've had the technology to send people to the moon for over forty years now. Yet nobody's gone back since the last American left that dusty shore. That in and of itself says more than a little something...

    - Badtux the Pragmatic Penguin

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  14. Jim, you site is the second I read each day. The first being my E-. My E-mails seem to be necessary because coffee seems to be so much more enjoyable when inhaled. These constipated conservatives do that to me. I must inhale deeply when I read their bullshit.
    I 'ditto', even mega-ditto the suggestions that your write a book. I have lots of time and know that any book from you will be a couple thousand pages because you have a way of addressing the embarrassing the crap.

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  15. LOVE this! (And fwiw, I love Heinlein, too.) Really glad I had already finished my soda, though. ;-)

    nitpick: as a frequent typo-ist, I happened to notice that your final E is missing from the word breathe in at least one instance. Not that I think Newt would notice or care, since education is so NOT his favorite thing.

    Thank you for the laugh today, and the many other great posts I've read in the past.

    Gretchen in KS

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  16. The room full of scientist were jeering because Newt unrealistic (especially the financial part) "plan" to return & colonize the moon mean JOB SECURITY!!

    With President Obama ending much of the space exploration, these guys are looking at re-enventing themselves for future employment.

    exactly where is the money going to come from. American people will be in for a huge surprise when ending all social programs doesn't bring instant balanced budget and free money for all.

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  17. The thing is that getting rid of SOCIAL PROGRAMS will solve exactly NONE of the budget issues. However, cutting the military weapons programs and stopping our last useless wasteful war would... After all, on the money that we've wasted fighting two useless and futile wars probably WOULD have gotten us a moon base... :) Ok... Maybe not but we'd be a heck of a lot closer...

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  18. @Jim - I wasn't so much missing the point as enjoying the irony that the last president who wanted to send us to the moon was Kennedy.

    I'm right with you on space exploration (though I probably wouldn't make the cut as a colonist, darn it). I didn't realize that Newt suggested this to people in the space industry specifically, but that surprises me not in the least.

    Newt embodies the worst in the Republican establishment in that what he says is completely irrelevant. His words have the same purpose as a stage magician's patter: to distract the audience from his real intentions. If you want to know what Newt will do, you have to ignore everything he says and watch what he actually does.

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  19. O'Neill Colonies BABY!! Sieze the Lagrange Points for FREEDOM!!!!

    Space WOLVERINES!!!

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  20. I still say that Newt should be the first to go live on the moon.

    Another good one, Jim.

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  21. Yay!

    That's all I got.

    Dr. Phil

    oombushe -- the mind boggles with the symbolism possibilities...

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  22. Aren't you being extremely hard on President Gingrich ? President Obama has not exactly been a Moon Occupier's best buddy .

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  23. Thanks for the Heinlein reference! And thanks for the laugh. It was a long day so the hysteria I'm currently engaged in is greatly appreciated. I sent the link to my son (writing in another room) and am now listening to gales of laughter emitting from that direction. Horribly 21st century I know but the combination is about as good as the toddle of Scotch that is forthcoming. Please keep writing.

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  24. Anonymous@5:54 Aren't you being extremely hard on President Gingrich ? President Obama has not exactly been a Moon Occupier's best buddy

    The difference being that President Obama didn't promise a bullshit moon colony in a blatant attempt to play on people's dreams in order to get elected.

    Obama has never been a space enthusiast and never claimed to be. I would prefer that he was, but at least he didn't lie about it.

    Gingrich's bullshit empty promise to build a moon colony by the end of his supposed second term is one of the most outrageous bullshit empty promises in an election cycle of increasingly outrageous bullshit empty promises (you want another one, try Ron Paul's utter fucking nonsense about being able to balance the budget in his first year without raising taxes).

    Granted, Obama has not made good on certain campaign promises, notably the closing of GitMo, but he fully intended to do so when he made that promise and he did indeed try. He got a reality check on it, but that's not the same as Gingrich's bullshit.

    The difference, Anonymous, is that Obama has something Gingrich doesn't, and never has and likely never will, i.e. integrity.

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  25. I was thinking of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress while I was reading your post.

    I read it over and over until it fell apart, and am always looking for a used copy. I love that story.

    And I love the reference to seeing his house from there.

    Thanks for all your straight-shooting perspectives, Chief.

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  26. Jim, I have to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed this post. Yeah, I’ve read The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress along with every other Heinlein book I could lay hands on. Throwing rocks, hummm, that has potential; kinetic energy is so flamboyant!

    As for Newt and his empty promises, I really never expected anything else. Eventually his millionaire friends will realize that he can’t be elected no matter how many of their millions he spends on commercials.

    I don’t think we (as a nation or a race) will gain a real foot hold on space until material science is capable of providing us with what we need to build a beanstalk (space elevator). That’s my opinion and I’ll freely admit that could be wrong. Then again, this isn’t really about the space race is it?

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  27. Lee27 - wondering.. was your 'jeer' a freudian slip?

    AIUI, Newt's proposal was to set aside 10% of NASA's budget as a prize to a private company that could fulfill the challenge.. Since, as Jim points out, it is pretty much impossible, all Newt is actually planning is cutting NASA's budget by 10%.. & likely adding the funds to the already over-bloated Pentagon budget.

    So, the scientists really should have _not_ been cheering the cutting of their funding.

    as ever, it pays to realize that Newt is incapable of speaking an honest word.

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  28. Oh, but where to put the base?
    I'd vote for the "dark line" (on the line that divides the "dark" side from the side that faces us.
    Then we could go look at the stars without the glare from the United Light Pollutin' States.
    I'm not really sure if I'd like the 14 days followed by 14 nights though.

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  29. Nick, the base goes in Tycho Crater. Good lord, man, haven't you read your Arthur C. Clarke?

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  30. I was gleefully reading this, howling, and planning to point out "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" in my well plotted comment- one of the best SciFi books ever...a-n-d...then you hit that last reference to above book + "I can see your house from here...". You owe me a keyboard, and another glass of tea, dammit! I love you, man!
    On a more serious note, I watched the Landing on the Moon with both of my grandmothers, my parents and my much younger self all in the same room. Ah, a day like shall never come again in my lifetime for so many reasons. I remember it with awe and love and glory...

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  31. Two extremely optimistic video tributes to space flight...Unfortunately, I am afraid the hopes expressed here will never fly again. But they are beautiful and should be shared. Besides which, hope should not die...thats why its called hope.
    Hope Eyrie
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cVOOXQo22o
    Fire in the Sky
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ryd_p20XEU

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