“With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and we learned a tremendous amount about the vehicle and ground systems today that will help us improve on future flights of Starship. Thank you to our customers, Cameron County, and the wider community for the continued support and encouragement. And congratulations to the entire Space team on an exciting first flight test of Starship!”
— SpaceX statement 04.20.2023

“Where’s the KABOOM?
There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering KABOOM!”
— Marvin The Martian

So, I was hitting some sativa bud and banging my head on the table the other day trying to shake loose a decent France uprising cartoon, and THIS weirdness fell out. I’d given up on a France cartoon at the moment and was just doing my daily space geekery, reading about the spectacular SpaceX launch failure and the attendant “hah, I MEANT to do that” spin from SpaceX, when I found my train of thought wandering to the Twitter valuation crash and the Paid Blue Check shitshow and was suddenly, like…

…like, yeah; Musk was really laughing off the Twitter valuation and the hot mess about the paid Blue Check accounts that’s been all over the news lately, and then a day or two later another one of his goddamn Starship tests goes sideways on him and the SpaceX PAO flacks are babbling a bunch of balloon juice about how much they learned today, and it was one of those moments of inspiration and serendipity that screamed “quit twisting your panties trying to think of a France cartoon for a moment and jump on THIS shit, man! Here it is!” Like, yeah — crashing and burning, in metaphor and reality.

11 x 17 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 420kb

Continue reading "A Successful Launch" »

Those of you who know me well enough have heard me often joke about my now-customary Daily Accidental Random 15 Seconds Of MSNBC. For the past two weeks or so, it’s been the Donald Trump Indictment Show almost 24/7, to the exclusion of everything else going on in the world — uprising in France, poisoned air and water in Ohio and Indiana, Pentagon leaks exposing Amerika’s ugly naked ass over its action in Ukraine, you name it.

One morning about a week or so back, for the entire 15 seconds it took me to bring in Mrs. F’s coffee and Washington Post to the master bedroom, the babbling anchorbabe creaming her panties over the Trump indictment must’ve burbled the word “democracy” at least a dozen times. Normally, I’d suggest a drinking game, but I wouldn’t want to be responsible for anyone ending up in the ER after trying to throw back a shot every time some talking Barbie doll queefed out the word “democracy” on MSNBC.

The really hysterical thing is that — as per usual in this goddamn town — the Pushing Wing of the Party is more than willing to instigate the arrest and trial of a former guy — uhh, former President who leads the Shoving Wing of the Party, but not for any actual crimes against the People, as the leaders of the Pushing Wing of the Party are entirely complicit and would expose themselves. So, a cheap-ass sex scandal it is — again.

And what especially sucks is that the sonofabitch will never, ever see the inside of a prison cell for any crime ever, because the Democrats need him to run against. Hell, why provide a viable progressive alternative when you can just make up an enemy to jerk the Left back into line, amirite? LBJ never went to trial for any crimes, or Nixon, or Reagan, or Clinton — hell, George W. Bush not only never stood trial for his crimes, he got a goddamn one-man show at the Kennedy Center. Bah, fuck art.

17.5 x 18 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 1.1mb

Continue reading "Barbie Anchorbabe presents: The BarbWire" »

JEEEEEEzus christ, man, wotta goddamn shitshow, huh? Not that anyone with two synapses to rub together could tell you that the US boss media were pulling it straight outta their ass, that it wasn’t a “spy balloon” and probably not even Chinese, given the US media’s record over the past 30, 40 years.

Finally, about 2 weeks into this Mel Brooks movie, the Pentagon Amateur Hour crew starts shuffling and backpedaling and stammering like Porky Pig that well, OK, it wasn’t really dangerous and probably not a surveillance balloon after all — and while that’s going on, a bunch of Top Gun wannabes piss away $2m worth of our tax money shooting down what was probably some kid’s science project, likely to get Marjorie Taylor-Greene to shut the hell up. And btw, when a fascist freak like MTG is allowed to sit in Congress and yell for something to be shot down as if it were “Call Of Duty” or something, you know your Rules-Based Order™ is circling the shitter.

So, if you’re thinking that Uncle Joe’s handling of this and other foreign policy batshittery he’s stoking up is looking more and more like a rejected Pinky And The Brain plot — except that P & the B actually had their shit together a little more — join the club, kiddos. Hell, the Chinese were showing more class in their little finger than the US and the West at large, who spent the last 2 weeks filling every pair of BVD’s in the drawer.

Ha haahhhhh, NARF.

11×17 medium-res color .jpg image, 1.7mb

Continue reading "Balloonacy (don’t panic!)" »

11 x 17 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 802kb

Continue reading "2023 and Me" »