Now what?   This is the worst part of writing: Getting up off of my butt and actually writing something when I don't feel like it. It is hard because I have about a dozen half baked ideas that I want to write about but none of them have any sort of conclusion.   Note: I used to collect what I called unfinished knock, knock jokes. The only one that I can remember goes like this...   Knock, knock. Who's there? Jamaica. Jamaica who? I dunno...   The problem is that it seems to have a pretty good set-up but I'm either too stupid or too lazy to come up with a punchline. I think the worst part is that any punch line will wind up being a letdown, that a "Jamaica decent knock, knock joke without a punchline and people will be pretty pissed off." kind of ending just doesn't work. It's almost funnier to leave people hanging with "I don't know. Doesn't it seem like it would be a good knock, knock joke?"   So now I'm at a point where I need some way to finish one of these incomplete themes and have no idea how to go about doing it. I guess I'll just pick some of the things at random and see where they want to go. So here are two of the ideas.   Movie Review: Mission to Mars   I just saw the movie Mission to Mars and spent the last half hour of the movie screaming at the television. It has been a long time since I've seen a movie that has pissed me off this bad. I've talked to others about the movie and they seemed to think it was OK. This only makes the problem worse.   Mission to Mars Synopsis:   Guys go to Mars.   They probe a Martian hill with a radar and the hill opens up and swallows all of the crew except one person. The hill disintegrates and leaves a huge, pristine white face that looks towards the sky. The EMP destroys all of the computer equipment and leaves the lone survivor with no way to get home.   The survivor goes on to grow plants and survive in a tent. The plants provide oxygen and food for him while another crew is sent to rescue him.   The other crew loses their ship, Timothy Robbins dies, but they make it to the surface with everything they need to repair the EMP blown computers.   The crew figures out that the face thingie reacted to the radar as it did because it was looking for specific input, namely, the completed sequence of the partial DNA code that it emits on a regular basis. In other words, the face thingie killed the crew because it gave the wrong answer to the question that the face thingie was asking.   They find the right answer, find out that aliens used to live on the planet, that the aliens left due to a meteor strike, that the aliens went somewhere else, and that the aliens "seeded" earth with DNA and we are their offspring of sorts.   Gary Sinise gets into an alien ship and departs to places unknown, the rest of the crew leave the planet and life is beautiful.   God, did I hate this movie.   Some points...   1. The idea that the Face on Mars thing is real is nothing but insane. The JPL fool that promoted this lunacy is a crackpot beyond all belief. Being an Art Bell listener of days gone by, I've heard this kook go absolutely insane on this and any number of other topics. When he finally brings around all the collaborative evidence to the point of the face on mars, he has managed to tie it in with every possible conspiracy theory known to man. And for Hollywood to build a movie around this retardation is insaner than the original Face on Mars premise itself.   2. On a really good day, the high temperature on Mars is something like 25 degrees and at night it drops to 800 million bajillion degrees below zero. The atmospheric pressure on Mars is nearly nil and any oxygen generated by plants would immediately dissipate. And the lone survivor lives in a friggin' TENT?!?!?! Did fucking MacGyver write this script? While I cannot explain the oxygen thing, I do have a theory about the temperature problem. If this guy was shacking up with my mother-in-law prior to his departure to Mars, he would truly enjoy the balmy temperatures of Mars. Whatever....   3. Timothy Robbins Chows Down the Screaming Greenies. I played the Tim Robbins Gets the Air Sucked Out of Him Scene over and over and over until I felt that he had paid the price for his mistakes. Ever since he made a movie that made all Republicans look like hypocritical scuzwads, I've absolutely hated him. While I can handle most political stuff in movies, this one crossed the line. Robbins had an axe to grind with the political right and wrote himself a movie to do so. What a scumbag. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, point number four...   4. The All Benevolent Martian Race NUKES a crew for doing experiments because doing experiments is THE WRONG ANSWER!!!! WTF? How in the hell did this race ever evolve into a "friendly" species with a grading system like this?!?! Can you imagine going to friggin' SCHOOL on Mars? Can you imagine the PRESSURE??? This insanely Spartan approach to knowledge would make the students GRATEFUL for a Columbine Day every once in a while.   5. In finding the right answer, they learn that we are nothing but a sheet stain left behind by the departing Martians. Great, just what I needed to know, that I'm Space Splooge. Thanks, man.   6. Why in Hell did Gary Sinise get into the ship? With the kind of grading curve they use in their testing, don't you think that you may wind up zorched for getting your favorite color wrong? Hell, after another five billion years of evolution, they probably kill people that ask the wrong QUESTIONS much less get the answers wrong. When he stepped into a hollow tube, he was apparently being preserved in a vat of fluid before he left on the ship but he was still able to breathe, I was hoping he would drown in a tube filled with formaldehyde. It would have been funny to watch him die an extremely painful death before lifting off. I am consoled by the idea that he is being preserved in a vat of Martian barbecue sauce and that he may be eaten as soon as he lands on the Martian's new home world.   I think what bothers me most about this movie is that audiences watched it and didn't question shit. They left the theater thinking about how lovely the Martian race must've been and went to sleep dreaming of wonderful Martian scenes.   This movie sucked.   Speaking of Mars....   I've been a fan of space stuff and enjoy reading about what we are doing to send our trailer loving comrades to new and unseen parts of the universe. I remember when Viking landed on Mars and thought the pictures were cool. Well, kind of cool. Actually, I thought we landed in Arizona. So, I guess I liked the idea of launching a gadget two trillion miles to a place on earth that kind of LOOKS like mars.   Anyway...   I've been following the Mars Rover sites since they landed and I've been, to say the least, a bit puzzled by what I have seen. I understand that this is probably due my own ignorance of what needs to happen when one lands a remote control car on another universe. Here is apparently the vital sequence of events that need to occur.   1. The rover needs to transmit back a picture of cheese just before it lands. Actually, three pictures of cheese. I've looked at the pre-landing pictures and I assume that these are pictures of cheese that the rover took with it just to make sure it sent back the proper photography. Why cheese? I don't know. It obviously isn't Mars. Somehow, cheese pics are important to JPL.   2. The rovers need to sit in one place for a week and analyze the molecules of its airbags before it does anything significant. JPL was apparently concerned that moving the rovers off of their perch prematurely would cause too much excitement for those of us out here in Non-NASA-Land. Lord knows we already think it's an out of control episode of Dukes of Hazzard with all of the jumping of ravines and stuff that we saw on the LAST mission to Mars.   3. JPL must have spent years of research developing the point and shoot software that is now being used on Mars. The next step is to use the ultra-high-tech TYOWAC software to photograph all elements of the rovers' new environment. TYOWAC is the acronym for the artificial intelligence program that is currently being utilized by both rovers. The Three Year Old With A Camera software mimics exactly the actions of, yes, a three year old with a camera. It repeatedly takes pictures of its own appendages, track marks in the dirt, the sun, and an occasional rock or two. This has seriously reduced the cost of the mission as it would be fairly expensive to send an actual three year old with a camera to Mars.   4. The news of the rovers' achievements must be farmed out to every conceivable publication before being placed on the actual JPL Rover web page. The last time I looked, according to the JPL page, they were about to decide where the rovers should land. I think they were still torn between Mars and Arizona.   5. People on earth must watch Mission to Mars in order to have insane expectations of the Mars Rover Missions. This also gives NASA an opportunity to answer questions from the general public like: Where's the face? Did you use a Radar yet? What's DNA? And where is Tim Robbins? Oh, wait, he got the air sucked out of him, that's right. I take back the last question.   Yeah, I really like that space stuff...   Copyright 2009 by Frank Emsley