Moon Breaker

It’s time, once again, to put a man on the moon. Now that we have grown accustomed to people who blow up themselves, watching network television has become a jaundiced affair. The nightly stew of two men robbing a bank and escaping in a hybrid motorcar no longer fires the imagination, nor do images of brain, bone and fragments of clothing mixed in with the oranges in a blown Tikrit marketplace. See, I’m even becoming familiar with the names. I can now say Fallujah without you thinking I’ve just contracted a rare virus from the Mumba-Mumba forest outside of Lusaka.

It’s time to create another colossal spending bill of interstellar proportions and what better place to throw it but at the moon? It’s accessible, not to mention visible. The beauty of this accessibility means that our progress can be tracked using a $20 telescope bought at your nearest monolithic discount store chain. And it’s close enough that Geraldo Rivera will want to make a trip there; you know, to interview someone, anyone and make his usual startling revelation. He could begin with an expose on the other side of the moon not being really dark, or something like that.

Having gone back to the moon, we shall have to do something when we get there. After all, spending untold trillions to go somewhere and not even enjoy the fly fishing is a terrible waste of time. That is akin to running in circles or driving in ovals, as you like it. The question, of course, is what to do when we go back to the moon. After a short while, moon rock sales will go bust so we must start thinking about the next big thing as soon as possible.

Short of anything like a long term plan, the type of which NASA fervently avoids, I would suggest we start by digging a hole. Marvelous things have turned up from hole digging exploits of ancestors past. First we invented wells, then gold and the last true breakthrough from digging holes has been oil. Now I’m not suggesting anything the size of an oil well. I am talking about the mother of all nappy-headed holes, the kind of which you would be able to drive an aircraft carrier through…sideways.

And the use of this hole you ask? Why, to fire the imagination of course. Think of it as the ultimate speculative venture of all time. And imagine the conversational possibilities. Whole university departments will be cobbled together to study this phenomenon. Network TV will devote the entire nightly news to a gusher of talking heads, waxing knowledgeably on The Hole. Archaeologists will lose interest in the great pyramids. The Russians will surrender as they will be certain we are digging the largest launch tube the world has ever seen. The Chinese will harken back to the old adage about digging a hole down to China and become very circumspect in their dealings with us.

Of course, such a venture will require huge amounts of labor and will put paid to our dilemma of what to do about our immigration problem. And then, holes of the magnitude of which I speak are sure to need a little blasting from time to time. I happen to know just where to find some experienced hands…in Fallujah.

Mike McFarlane
4.15.07