My latest Pajamas Media column is up.

For the record, all I know about the science stuff is what I read on Wikipedia, so don’t consider me an expert. But it’s fun to read about.

Ron Paul is a nut. I don’t know if that needs repeating, but it feels like it. He’s in bed with truthers, which make him a scumbag comparable to racists — which he’s also in bed with. But he’s also just stupid and completely out of touch. When asked about Palin, he said here supporters are “more establishment, conventional Country-Club type of Republicans.”

Yeah, that’s the problem with Palin: Too elitist. She’s always flying around in her fancy helicopter plane shooting wolves with her brand name rifles because she just feels she’s too good to walk around the ground throwing rocks at them like Ron Paul salt of the earth types. I bet her supporters have to use brand name Reynolds Wrap to make their hats instead of just buying the store brand tin foil even though both block out government mind control signals just the same.

I kid, but Ron Paul does have a long career ahead of him… dancing on the street corner for nickels.

As we look back on the moon landing forty years ago, I can’t help but think what a bunch of pathetic sissies we are. Sixty-six years after the Wright brothers’ plan flew a couple feet, we made it to the moon. In the forty years since that, we’ve done crap. Yeah, the new iPhone now has cut and paste, but there is a whole universe out there to explore and conquer and we don’t even really have a plan on what to do with it.

The sad fact is we can’t nuke the moon because we still need the moon to practice landing on so we can go to other planets. I dream of the day we’re like, “Screw you, moon! We don’t need you any more!” and launch a barrage of missiles at it, but we’re far from that point.

So why do we suck? Some of it is we’re risk averse. Today it’s unimaginable to strap a couple people on a giant rocket and try to land on the moon using less computing power than the average person has on his cellphone. While we had a giant war going on! Most of it I think is just our general sissiness. We’re too focused on little dinky problems like global warming to think big about the human race. Even conservatives will be like, “We spend too much because of Obama to think about space.”

Well guess what: Space is the solution to these problems.

As soon as you land on another planet, we no longer have to worry about global warming, poverty, or war because that will now be some other planet’s problem. As for Obama, we just say, “Screw you, hippie!” and start a new libertarian society on Mars like from some Heinlein novel.

So, we need a plan. I don’t want my kids to have to watch old documentaries about the Apollo missions to be inspired by space; we need new heroes and challenges. I don’t know if we have to boost private industry into space exploration or what, but we need to do something and make it a priority. It doesn’t matter if it makes since economically or what-not; it’s a matter of pride. It’s a matter of reaching our potential as the human race. We’ll always have these Earth-problems, and the only solution is to go somewhere else.

Last time I told you about RiffTrax doing a live show, they made a fool of me — a fool! — but this time instead of doing it through that buggy and untested new internet thing, they’ll be broadcast live in over 400 different theaters nationwide on August 20th. I already got tickets for the Edwards in Boise, so they better not screw it up this time.

They’ll be riffing Plan 9 from Outer Space, often considered the worst film ever (I’ve watched it before and its the fun bad instead of just the tedious bad). Michael J. Nelson once spoke at my college and I remember his explaining why MST3K never took on the movie, and I can’t remember the exact excuse, just that the excuse was lame.

BTW, RiffTrax DVDs are now available on Amazon.com and Netflix. They have DVDs of their shorts and the older movies they could get actual rights to. If you’ve ever watched MST3K, the shorts are some of the funniest things since they shove so much earnest stupidity into a very short timespan. If you have a dollar to spare, check out Drugs Are Like That.

While I’m randomly plugging stuff, The State is finally available on DVD. I remember that show being one of the funniest things ever, but I last saw it like a million years ago (high school) so I could have just been dumber then. My favorite sketch was the pope visiting an Italian restaurant which was such a stupid and not at all clever sketch that it somehow was clever. Looked for it forever on YouTube, but maybe it will pop up now.

ME: “I don’t know how Dirty Harry could stand living in San Francisco.”

DAD: “Easy. He shot people.”

It is the official position of IMAO and all of its subsidiaries that SarahK’s birthday should be happy.

That is all.

UPDATE:

It also the position of IMAO and all of its subsidiaries that Basil should have a happy birthday, but not as happy as SarahK’s.