The Case for Mars

My felow Earthicans, the time has come for a great undertaking that will define our generation and change the course of our lives for the better.

For too long, we have been at peace with a neighboring red planet that has done absolutely nothing for us other than hang there in the sky, like a big red bulls-eye without the rings (that's Saturn. It's still a tad too far away. Also, made of gas. And yellow).

With this in mind, here is a complete and total list of the reasons why we should invade Mars:

1) Mars has no regard for its environment. Whereas our atmosphere is still mostly breathable, the Martians have squandered their oxygen supply. They have proven that they are completely incapable of regulating their environment, and so, to protect the planet Mars, we must invade it.

2) They have money. And if there's one thing that's been really, really obvious here on Earth, it's that we need money. We need it for our college educations, our unemployment benefits, our plastic surgeries, our iWhatevers, our compliance costs, and our heating and water bills if we ever get around to paying them. Now, some people might argue that the Martians have a right to whatever money they've earned. Poppycock, I say! They've only earned that money by completely wrecking their environment (see point 1) and by exploiting their working class.

3) They're exploiting their working class. You can tell because there has never even been so much as a radio transmission from Mars. Even when we landed probes on the planet's now-inhospitable surface (again, see point 1), the poor, helpless workers were unable to get a signal to us. They are probably kept under lock and key 24/7 (or however long a Martian day/week is). We need to do something about that!

4) Just as they can't prove that they aren't exploiting their working class, so too are they completely unable to prove that they don't have massive oceans of oil under their surface. We should help ourselves to some of that. Just think of the jobs that we'll create for all the deep-space haulers who can bring that stuff back to Earth!

5) They almost certainly have weapons of mass destruction by now, and it's only a matter of time before some lunatic comes to power and decides to turn our planet into a parking lot. You might think that this is an argument against invading Mars, but it is not! You see, we have already landed probes on Mars (see point 3) without provoking a response. We have no idea how much time we have left before a new regime that disapproves of our probe-landing comes to power (in a coup). We must strike first before they do! Surely any reasonable citizen can see that.

6) They're godless athiests who need to see the light. I can categorically state that God is not worshipped anywhere on or under the surface of Mars. This is absolutely terrible, and surely the day cannot be far off when He will take issue with them. Look what happened to Venus! You think all that sulphuric acid just showed up one day by its lonesome?

7) Mars has been eyeing our moon for a while now, I just know it. Look at their two crappy little moons; do you think those puny lumps of rock can give the Martians a decent tide? I don't.

8) Earth is overcrowed. And one way or another, that won't be a problem after our war with Mars.

If you agreed with numbers 1, 2 or 3, please vote for the Communist candidate in the next election. If you agreed with numbers 4, 5 or 6, please vote for the Republican candidate in the next election. Finally, if you agreed with numbers 7 or 8, please never vote again. Thank you, and please remember that this is a satire.

An Announcement from Our Benefactors

People of Earth, it is time for me to speak to you yet again about the state of your ineptly-governed lump of rock. While it is clear that you have faced many hardships in the past year, that does not excuse certain actions and trends I have noticed. It is with great displeasure that I must actually voice my concerns; I honestly thought you'd grown out of this childish phase.

I am, of course, talking about annoying teenage pop stars.

And many, many other things.

Let's get one thing straight, mankind, your best creative years are behind you. There are those among my people who think Star Wars is a documentary and The Phantom Menace is a deliberate parody. Your planet is never going to produce another band like the Beatles. Da Vinci, Monet, Van Gough... gone. Today "art" either means "a convenient way to get nudity past the censors" or "a random splotch on a canvas."

Now then, on the subject of auto-tune: if you told me, back when I subjugated/liberated [delete according to personal taste/whatever the censor board feels like] your world that in twenty years people who cannot actually carry a tune would be able to sell records seriously with the help of a computer, I would have laughed in your face. And my laughter is deadly to your face, so that wouldn't end well.

Same goes for your movies: if you told me you'd use computers instead of actors, I'd say you were trying to sell me an extended video-game cutscene. Yes, Cameron, I'm looking at you. I see these ads for some new movie "from the director of Titanic and Avatar." I don't want to see it. I want to see another movie from the director of Terminator and Aliens. Hell, Aliens was so good I let it get past the censor board... Verhoeven had to maneuver around them by claiming his bug hunt movie was a parody. But I digress.

It's a curious dichotomy, mankind: as your movies get more and more "realistic," by which I apparently mean they contain finely-detailed smurfs in loincloths, your pop albums sound more and more like they were sung by robots. Are you trying to hold a normal mirror up to nature, or one of those goofy funhouse mirrors that makes your necks look as long as mine?

No, wait, I know, you're all a bunch of pigs, all concerned only with looking out for number one. And what's with this nonsense at the Oscars this year? You've got that movie about the stutterer versus that movie about that webernets thing, and that movie that honestly seems like The Matrix without the robot war part is the long shot. Don't get me wrong, I loved Inception. But part of the reason I loved it was because pretty much everything that could be done without CGI was done, well, without CGI.

In conclusion: Don't make me come down there.
-Overlord C'patu

ps - upcoming Who Reviews: "Vampires of Venice" on Feb 5 and "Love and Monsters" on Feb 6. "Flesh and Stone" sometime next week, plus updates of "The Hungry Earth" and "Cold Blood." Possibly "Fear Her" late next week. In case you can't tell, I'm working through seasons 2 and 5 simultaneously.

Fake News 1

Funnyfarm, WI - Students at Funnyfarm University have resorted to burning their computers to protest the college's notoriously slow internet connection. "We have historical precedent for doing this," says Ellen Strick, '10. "For example, in the 80s, religious folks would burn their metal albums to protest the satanic lyrics. In the 90s, anarchists burned corporate headquarters to protest employment. We're just continuing the trend."

Meanwhile, Bobby Davis, '11, says, "Look, I never thought much of the Oscars, but that's not to say I burn them, I just don't watch them. True art doesn't even make it to the screen, man. But I got sidetracked. Violence is not the answer, man."

"That's precisely your problem!" shouts Alexander Smith, '09 (courses incomplete), a fraternity member. "You'll never get their attention if you just shut up! We must burn our computers and modems and then, when the administration gets faster ones, everyone will be happier. And we can make the pledges pay for the upgrades, of course."

Bobby Davis said something else at this point, but Smith made "Baa baa" noises that completely drowned out any insight Davis may have had about the back of his hand.

Jennifer Drake, '12, suggests that once all the computers are burned, "we will be able to commune with nature once again." Campus security asked her to please put her clothes back on, but they were drowned out by Smith and his frat brothers, who were whistling loudly.

"This is all nonsense anyway," says Professor Hank Ferguson. "Once they burn down their dorms, we'll have to ask for even more federal subsidies to re-build them. God forbid I ever take a pay cut just because all the students of my political science class are deluded, violent anarchists."

Something lighter

After a post about how futile life is and another one about how the zompocalypse(tm) will kill us all, I consulted my magic 8-ball and asked "will I write a lighter post today?"

"No. You won't."

Since that's not a standard magic 8-ball response, I shook it again and got the answer "give Bob all your money."

This raised some questions. Who was Bob? Why was he so desperate to get his hands on $93.02 that he'd go through all the trouble of hacking my magic 8-ball? How did he hack my magic 8-ball? And, most importantly, why was I taking advice from a magic 8-ball?

To answer those questions in their respective order, "some guy," "because," "magic," and "because my usual advisor was out."

Of course, I've just gone and spoiled the ending for you. So now I don't need to tell you the story of how I arrived at these conclusions, which is a shame because it involves drunk police officers, a high-speed chase to the border, twelve quarter-pounders with cheese, a mysical ring of power, the theft of a blank CD, and enough explosions to satisfy the demands of the next dozen Michael Bay movies.

Sadly, by the time I'd actually figured out who Bob was, the $93.02 he was after had been spent, mostly on bribes. We had a duel to the death, and that's where the explosions came in. Then we stopped playing video games for a while because we were both flat broke.

New Market Enterprises #2

What follows is a work of fiction. Any resemblance blah blah blah unintentional. You can find the original NME story here.

We here at New Market Enterprises have been making tremendous breakthroughs in brain manipulation. And by "have been making tremendous breakthroughs" we actually mean "we had a visitor from the future show up, stole his time machine, and stole lots of cool stuff from the future." One of these things we're calling the "Brain Blaster," but that's because our marketing department gets all their advice from their 8-year-old sons.

The gun can alter people's state of mind (as opposed to altering their perceptions of reality, this one alters their reaction to these perceptions). Our first use of it was to get Doctor Sanderson out of his closet at long last. Once we did that, we found a secret passageway at the back, but that's a story for next week.

On a particular setting, the gun increases the subject's concentration and decreases the subject's potential to be distracted. I regret to report that three members of our team starved to death after testing the gun on themselves and then reporting the effects in such minute detail that they weren't going to let a little thing like hunger distract them. We still have a lot of bugs to work out.

Again, this is not the sort of weapon that we'd like to fall into the wrong hands. Doctor Beth Fisher has been hit with it twelve times by twelve different co-workers who all tried to make her fall in love with them. We discovered further unfortunate implications when we programmed the gun to make us not want to use it for personal gain; no-one has the slightest interest in pursuing the project anymore except me, because I was in the bathroom when this decision was made and no-one had the willpower to zap me when I came back.

I have hidden the weapon. I tried to use it on Doctor Cribbins, to make him want to use the gun for humanity's greatest benefit; his head exploded. I have not endeavored to repeat the experiment, I and I would offer condolences to his family but our NME contracts clearly state that this sort of thing is expected to happen all the time. At any rate, we have more than enough tissue to put a clone together and I confidently expect Doctor Cribbins to return to us within a year. And, as I said, I hid the gun. Its capacity for good is undeniable; we can force people to vote Democrat, for example (hey, we need more federal funding. What else would you do with that money, start a war?), but we suspect that someone else may have beaten us to that one. However its capacity for evil is far greater, and every time it is used, someone's right to make up their own mind is violated.

No, just kidding, we're scientists. We're geniuses, of course we know what's better for you than you do. Now... forget you read this, and give me a raise.

(c) 2010