I never get invited to the good symposia.

Can you believe there was a symposium on the subject of exploring deep space and they were taking suggestions? Can you further believe that it was sponsored by the Pentagon? Yeah, The Pentagon. Am I alone in being uncomfortable with the idea of deep space exploration being brought to you by the same people who gave us Predator unmanned planes and the F-22 Raptor? And while we're at it, Predator? Raptor? When did we become Cobra?

The Pentagon recently earmarked $80 billion dollars to construct a Terror Drome, 
thus ending America's reliance on foreign Dromes (figures sold separately).

Space is big. Good work everybody.

Anyway, the thing's over now and the consensus is that traveling to another star system is going to be like really, really hard, which we already knew. But I'm feeling a little left out and since I didn't get to go, I'd like to offer some suggestions of my own. And by my own, I mean things I've seen on TV. Yeah, TV. Unless science fiction has lied to us, there are plenty of ways to overcome the incomprehensible distances between stars. These guys just aren't looking hard enough. Here's a list of space exploration options in ascending order of implausibility:

Also a problem: Freezer Burn.

The most scientifically plausible (i.e. boring-est) method of interstellar travel is probably going to involve freezing people and then thawing them out decades later when their slow-as-hell ship makes it to the next star system. The obvious flaw to this plan is that the round trip could take a couple hundred years. That's centuries of potential asteroid collisions, power failures and face-huggers. Not only that, but if/when the astronauts do return, they would find that everyone they knew and loved was long dead and that future music is unfamiliar and off-putting. Sort of like the way Auto-Tune sounds to anyone born before 1985.


Also, two-hundred years is a really long time for science. Any discoveries they might make could be way out of date. It would be like Lewis and Clark rolling into D.C. now, pointing west and going: "Hey, the Pacific's that way. Don't eat the poison oak." And then we'd be like: "Psscht, thanks losers, we already figured that out."

Pictured: dumbasses.

Sure, the Hoff's got KITT. MacGyver's
got wormholes. Advantage: Mac.

Not a fan of returning home to find the Earth populated by super-intelligent apes? Fine, maybe Stargates are more your thing. They're basically a network of magic space doors left behind by aliens who, according to Richard Dean Anderson's documentary series Stargate SG-1, also terraformed thousands of planets and populated them with Canadians. Awesome. The only downside to exploring space via Stargate is that the plan relies on a super-advanced race of aliens leaving one buried under the pyramids for us to find. Not super-likely, but you never know.

The planets the Stargates lead to generally fall into the budget-conscious 'Canadian Zone.'

Matter and anti-matter?

What could possibly go wrong?

Then there's Warp drive. It would get us there pretty quick and while it's fictional, some people are actually working on it. The basic idea is that by compressing the fabric of space you can propel a ship through the void like toothpaste squeezed from the bottom of the tube. All you need is a sufficient energy source like a matter/antimatter reaction or a black hole or something. Simple right? Of course nobody knows how to build a warp core and on Star Trek they tend to explode with the force of a thousand suns, but once we work out the technical details we'll be ready to boldly split some infinitives.

See? Lot's of options open, so get cracking science. What's that? Where are we going to find the money? Gee, I don't know, if only there was some area of human endeavor that soaked up vast amounts of resources but doesn't really make the world a better place...

Anyone got any ideas?

This doesn't say 'tremble in fear' so much
as 'you forgot to stop at the store.'

Well, I can't think of everything, however I would like to propose that we hold a symposium on the name Milky Way. I know, right? Why do we have to call our galaxy the Milky Way? It's like we're begging the Andromeda galaxy to come and kick our ass. I mean, I know that someone thousands of years ago looked up and said: "kinda looks like milk," but could we maybe come up with something a little more intimidating? Someday aliens from another galaxy are going to roll in and ask: "What do you call this place?" And we're going to have to explain that it's named after a substance we squeeze out of mammal teats. And then we're going to have to explain what mammals and teats are. It's going to be a whole thing.

I suggest 'Galacticus Prime.' The '-us' on the end makes it sound sciencey
 and adding 'prime' just makes it sound cool. 

Nontraversy!

Hey look, the news has picked up on another video game related non-contraversy! There's a new Super Mario game coming out and the Tanooki Suit is back. What the hell's a Tanooki suit? Well, way back in Super Mario 3, one of Mario's power-ups was this little raccoon costume that granted him the powers of a raccoon: flight and the ability to turn into a statue of an old man.

So Mario likes to dress up like an animal and hang around with like-minded adults
in a non-judgemental atmosphere. What's wrong with that?

Seriously Japan, what is up?

If you just said 'Hey, that doesn't make any damn sense' you'd be correct. But Super Mario comes from Japan, so it makes Japan sense. You see, in Japanese myth there's this magical raccoon dog with giant testicles called a Tanuki. Legend has it he once murdered an old woman, made soup out of her and fed it too her husband. In a brilliant move, someone at Nintendo thought that a psychopathic raccoon monster with giant balls would be a great fit for a Super Mario game and the Tanooki suit was born.

Anyway, someone at PETA apparently caught wind of the Tanooki suit's return and decided to get angry about it because he's wearing fur. Yup, PETA is upset that a cartoon plumber who's been stepping on turtles for thirty years is dressing up like a raccoon. They even went so far as to create a super-violent parody on their website:

Above: That's a skinless raccoon dog chasing a skin-suit-wearing Mario through the bowels of hell.
Thanks PETA, that aught to haunt my dreams.

Fun Fact: The average Fox News
viewer is, in fact, Helen Lovejoy. 

But are they really all that upset? Is it at all possible that PETA is exploiting the media's deep stupidity when it comes to video games? Like seriously, all you have to do is come up with some bullshit about how a new video game is in some way controversial and the news eats it up. Remember when Fox News made up some crap about Mass Effect's non-existant alien sex-simulator? Yeah, in typical Fox News style they even called the story 'SeXbox.' And then there was GTA San Andreas' Hot Coffee, and really anything related to Mortal Kombat.

For some reason news outlets are really good at missing the point with gaming. It'd be one thing if they just didn't get it, but it seems like there's an almost willful ignorance going on.

To put it into SAT analogy terms: The video game industry is to the media,
as the ocean is to medieval mariners.

Holy shit guys,
like really?

Part of the problem is that they treat it as a passtime for kids despite the fact that the average gamer is 37 and the industry pulls in about $10 billion a year (putting it up there with the film industry). So when some lunatic thinks she hears 'Islamic messages' in some shitty DS game she gets a platform for her crazy. Meanwhile someone makes a movie about a guy who sews people together (mouth to anus) so he can see how long it takes them to die and it's just another horror flick. I've got to think PETA knows exactly what they're doing, I mean sometimes they don't even have to try. Like the time the President swatted a fly in an interview and everyone looked at PETA to see if they would get upset. They didn't, they sent him some humane fly traps and soaked up some free media attention.

Look, even if you sometimes find yourself wondering what dolphins taste like, or praying to god that McDonald's will bring back the McRib in your lifetime, you have got to admire the way they ride the media like Muad'dib on a sandworm. Advantage: PETA.

Although PETA has been exploiting naked people for years,
when's someone going to call them on that?

Frank Miller hates your iPhone

I like Batman. I like Scooby-Doo. That
doesn't mean they should hang out.

Wow, did you see this? Frank Miller isn't quite the bastion of rational thought we all think he is. If you don't know who he is, he wrote the graphic novel 300 (which the movie was based on) and is the guy famous for taking the aging, campy and downright Scooby-Doo filled Batman of the 1970's and turning him into the badass we all know and love. Last week on his blog he went off on the Occupy Wall Street movement, and in the process also made a hilarious poop joke. Read carefully, or you might miss the rapier-like subtlety.

Miller, seen here reclining on a pile of
 corpses, is better at 9/11 than we are.

In the rant, he compares the demonstrators to babies, clowns, thieves and rapists who need to go get real jobs, you know, like drawing comic books and then licensing the movie rights. Miller, who unlike those thieving clown-baby rapists who currently occupy Wall Street, was in New York during 9/11. He, along with Glenn Beck and a few AM Radio hosts, was one of the few people actually affected by it while the rest of us were too busy living comfy lives in our parent's basements playing Lords of Warcraft* on our iPhones.

You see what we don't understand is that the real threat to our culture isn't the ever-widening gap between rich and poor (or Baron and Serf) it's Muslim people and their army of Orcs led by a nine-foot hermaphrodite who want to take away our freedom. Did I mention that he fixed Batman?

In this scene from 300, the evil King Xerxes threatens to have gay sex with the American flag.
Historical accuracy is extremely important to Miller.

*Yeah, I don't know what Lords of Warcraft is, but it must be a videogame so awesome that it distracts us all from the un-relenting terror we should all be living in.

It's Super-Lucky Veteran's Skyrim Doomsday!

Hey, it's November 11th, 2011, one of the most under-appreciated doomsdays of the year! So what's the deal? What did Y2K have that 11/11/11 doesn't? I mean, it looks like something that would screw up computers, maybe 111111 is binary for 'launch the missiles' or 'erase the NASDAQ.' We just don't know. Crazy doom people are really missing a great opportunity here as far as ominous dates go.

"And lo, upon the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year of the third millennium,
there shall be a great explosioning. Also, watch out for the Conquistadors, those guys are dicks."

-Ancient Mayan Prophecy

At least I still have Chairman Meow
to keep me company.*

Today is also a super-popular date for weddings in China where people are not only way into numerology but it's also Singles Day, a holiday invented (probably by the Chinese equivalent of Hallmark) in the 90's to make single people feel better about dying alone. Yeah, so everyone's sticking it to singles by getting married on a day set aside for the lonely, childless shut-ins. Way to go Chinese newlyweds. 

A 'sky-rim' is also a sex-act performed
on a plane. Google with caution.

Speaking of lonely, childless shut-ins, the universe hasn't forgotten us completely. 11-11-11 is also Skyrim's release date! What the hell's a Skyrim? You know, I'm not really sure, but what I do know is that it's a new video game that promises to give me and nerds like me a reason to get up in the morning (figuratively speaking, as I have a remote and a wireless Xbox controller). Skyrim gives you a sword, a Viking helmet and some magic and lets you run around a pseudo-medieval world fighting monsters. Think GTA but with more dragons and slightly fewer prostitutes. 

However, it's not everyone's lucky day. Given the shaft this 11/11 is Veteran's Day which now has to share the date with some blind coincidence of the calendar. The date was chosen because it's anniversary of the Armistice with Germany which was signed at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month 93 years ago. If you know your history, the treaty ended not only German military ambition, but also war itself forever. 

It also brings us blow out savings on a new fridge from Sears! Thanks armed forces!

*p.s. Sorry. Also, I don't really have a cat.

Decision: 2367

You know, sometimes it's hard to maintain one's dewy-eyed, Sorkin-esque political idealism when you couldn't possibly give less of a crap about who's running for what. But dutifully I did drag myself out of bed early yesterday to go down to the polling place and make my apartment-renting, childless voice heard in this year's local elections.

Do I know anything about the local school board race? Do I care about your children's future?
You don't know! How do you like democracy now?

Pictured: Not the former Mayor.

In addition to some other offices with 0% relevancy to my life, there was also this ballot measure about mayoral succession. You see, our old mayor, Bob 'The Mayor' Duffy, became the Lieutenant Governor of New York, so the Deputy Mayor stepped into Duffy's old job, because that's what deputies do. But the city charter's wording isn't totally clear so there was like a fight or something. I don't know, I wasn't here. So how do we avoid this in the future? We could make the candidates arm wrestle over knives. The winner is mayor and the loser gets a knife through the hand. I saw it on Star Trek. Klingons know how to get things done.

What? I watched a lot of Star Trek growing up. Also, now.

S-M-R-T

But since this is a democracy, the city went with a referendum. The problem is that the ballot was worded like a dyslexic SAT question:

Should the Local Law of the City of Rochester changing the manner of filling the office of Mayor in case of a vacancy, which generally provides for the Deputy Mayor to serve until a Mayor is elected at the general election or at a special election, be approved? Answer yes or no.

I'd like to think of myself as reasonably intelligent, but I have to admit that I wasn't not unconfused by this. Although I did enjoy the symmetry of a referendum to address unclear wording that was itself, unclear.


Anyway, speaking of Klingons (wasn't I?) this November you have a choice (well, actually the Arbiter of Succession does). So get out there, make your voice heard, and bring glory to the Empire! Qapla' nerds, Qapla'!

vs

Yeah, well, they would say that...

"Bullshit."

-The White House

In response to petitions, a spokesman for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has released a statement saying that the U.S. Government has never been contacted by aliens, never recovered any alien spaceships or technology and has never engaged in a massive conspiracy to hide evidence of extraterrestrial life from the public. Furthermore, while it's statistically possible that life exists on other planets, it's pretty damn unlikely that we'll ever encounter it given the vast distances between stars. Bummer.

The spokesman, Phil Larson, goes on to say that there's no Santa Claus, the universe is a cold god-less void and that we'll all die alone. Thanks Phil.

Interestingly, the report does mention that unicorns are real. The last one was shot and dissected by the
National Parks Service in 1974, in front of a panel of sobbing 9 year-old girls.

Yup, no resemblance there.

Right, sure, because if there's one thing governments love to do it's come clean because a bunch of people signed a petition. Conspiracies only work if you keep things secret. If you've ever watched The X-Files, you know that 80% of the government is dedicated to keeping aliens secret, do we really think they're going to just give up on decades of document redacting, trench coats and witness murder because we asked nicely?

You might as well try typing 'Area 51' into Google Earth and expect to come up with something that isn't just a big, pixelated blur or covered by a big-uh...

...oh...well, how 'bout that?

What else are they hiding, Mole People?
It's Mole People, isn't it?

Look, I'm not calling Larson a liar. It's entirely possible that this report is on the up and up and the U.S. Government is actually clueless about the vast alien empire whose unfathomable curiosity can only be sated by turning our cows inside out. Remember Independence Day? The movie, not the holiday. There's this part where the Secretary of Defense kept Bill Pullman out of the loop on the alien thing so that he has plausible deniability. Maybe that's what's going on. Maybe the military or some secret element within the government is sitting on the Rosewell ship or something and the White House just wasn't told.

On the other hand, the statement mentions projects like SETI and the Kepler array that are looking for aliens. If someone in the government is hiding aliens, they're letting us waste an awful lot of money and time looking for them in the most tedious ways possible. Listening to background radiation on the off chance that the alien equivalent of AM radio might somehow make it to Earth? Couldn't we just get crackin' on a warp drive?

"If you ask me, it's these Klingons who cross the Neutral Zone
and take jobs away from decent, hard working Bolians."

-Hars Adislo, 

Host of 'The Hars Adislo Show' 

The #1 talk radio show in the Bolian sector

Come on, just take a Sharpie to some
documents, for old time's sake.

Man, what if they really are telling the truth on this one? What if Rosewell was just a weather balloon and alien abductions are just a bad combination of Miller Light and menthols? It would come as a major disappointment for nerds like me who like to think that proof of life on other planets is just sitting in a warehouse somewhere. At least then there's the hope that it would be leaked to the public somehow or whistleblown by some disgruntled Air Force UFO test pilot. But what if this is it? What if there's no more secret files or blurry UFO sightings followed by emphatic yet unconvincing denials?


And I don't know, as much as I'm all for transparency, I find myself oddly comforted by the idea that there's a vast shadow government that's working to keep us from the terrifying truth. Without the men in black (in this case, not the movie) keeping tabs on Galactic Affairs, how can we possibly be prepared for the horrors that await us under alien-rule?

"Sure, the Aliens brought us hovercars, cures for all known diseases
and peace on Earth, but the probings, oh, so many probings."

-Steve Breckinridge,

resident of New York, 2121 A.D.

It's Squeaky Fromme Night!

Of all the Alan Moore adaptations
to inspire effigy-burnings...

Tonight is Guy Fawkes night (again), which is a British holiday that celebrates the foiling of the Gun Powder Plot. To mark the occasion, British people (or Br'ish pe-poe as they are known to the Cockney) make effigies of Hugo Weaving's mask from V for Vendetta and set them on fire. Great. but what the hell are we, as Americans, supposed to burn in effigy? I consulted the oracle, and have been given to know that Guy Fawkes Night was once celebrated here, but it was called Pope Day and was an indictment of, you guessed it, popery.

Nice hat, jerk.

Besides, Pope effigies were taking up
valuable Christmas decoration space.

The American version of this holiday fell out of favor in the last couple hundred years because it was kind of, you know, dickish, and we were left with a gaping hole in our calendar of excuses to light things on fire. I therefore suggest we begin a new effegy-burning tradition to rival the Brit's fascination with lighting assassination patsies on fire. Here's what I'm thinking: Squeaky Fromme Night. Unlike Guy Fawkes, Squeaky's plans were much less elaborate and involved not so much a widespread conspiracy as a looney charge at Gerald Ford with a gun. Fortunately, she was foiled by not knowing how to work the weapon and spent the next 34 years in prison.

Squeaky was released in 2009 and is, as you read this, stalking the streets. Sure, Gerald Ford has since passed at the senseless age of 93, but I mean the guy's got children, grandchildren and probably great-grandchildren whose lives are at risk every moment she's free. To keep Squeaky in line, I propose we burn her in effigy on every corner. Maybe now she'll think twice before putting on her crazy hat.

The Secret Service caught up with Fromme in her tree where she was
attempting to bake Fudge Stripes cookies. They were delicious.