fter years of fiscal excess in the 1980’s, when the organization famously spent millions of dollars on magic space beans, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s legendary cost-cutting backfired this week when NASA head Dean Michaels admitted that he personally regrets equipping the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, currently orbiting Saturn, with a 27-shot disposable camera.

“Though the decision seemed a wise one at first,� apologized Michaels before we cut him off to identify the speaker, “due to the camera’s low cost and ease of processing at over 10,000 Photomats and convenience stores across the country, we are finally now coming to understand why no one has ever used one of these things for deep-space photography before: They suck big-time.�

Providing an array of blurry, blown-up photographs to illustrate his point, Michaels offered a shot-by-shot analysis of the confusing images from Cassini’s Fuji QuickSnap Outdoor.

“Jesus, that’s not even what we were aiming at!� Michaels yelled while examining the first photograph. “That’s the Alpha Centauri! Fucking Fujifilm.�

“This one, I have no idea what this is,� Michaels admitted, gesturing to a blurry gray photograph featuring a vaguely floral print. “Can anybody see anything in this? I’m not even sure if we’ve got it right-side up.�

Most intriguing of all the shots, however, was #17, which seemed to provide bizarrely compelling evidence that Cassini had somehow managed to snap a picture of a NASA technician’s thumb from deep space.

“This one’s a miracle of bad photography,� explained Michaels. “People should be praying to this thing instead of some batshit on an underpass somewhere,� Michaels added, referring to the Mother Mary apparition discovered earlier this year under a bridge in Illinois.

Beyond the photo quality issue, NASA also ran into problems with the camera’s 27-exposure capacity, which is fine for most weddings or a day at the beach, but somewhat restrictive when trying to capture the vast wonder of the solar system.

“Yeah, that was a boner,� admitted Michaels. “We’ve only got three shots left and four more planets to go, so it’s going to be tough. We’re going to have to line them up for a panoramic shot or something, hopefully without the sun in the background since that always makes everything look all dark and washed-out. What can I say? We were in the checkout lane and it seemed like a good idea. It has definitely served us better than the Bic lighter and CrystalBurst gum that Stevens wanted to get for the same money.�

Critics are citing the Cassini debacle as the organization’s biggest embarrassment since the 1990 launching of the super-powerful Hubble telescope, which has mostly been used by technicians to take scarily detailed bird’s-eye view photos of their homes from outer space, after expensive repairs were made to fix the out-of-focus lenses NASA ended up with when a sponsorship deal and partnership with mall-based eyewear provider LensCrafters backfired.

But NASA supporters call such claims ludicrous, since they totally disregard all the malfunctioning toy trucks the large contingent of RC-car enthusiasts at NASA have landed on foreign planets between those two events.

“We went to the fucking moon, people,� Michaels snapped after this reporter asked if they might have been better off trading up to a disposable camera model with a built-in flash, considering the darkness of space. Michaels defaulted to a common NASA dodge that comes up whenever critics point out the organization’s frequent misadventures. “Think about that for a second. The moon. What have you done?�

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"Fight, men! Like you've never fought before! — Try winning this time."

I was just in my first fight yesterday. Well, the first fight I ever won. It was closer to a draw, maybe, but I didn't get the shit beat out of me. Unless you saw it. In that case, it was the first fight I started on purpose, but I fought the good fight, like the saying goes.

After you fight it takes a long while to "come down." You walk around on edge, ready to jump on everybody. It's like all your senses are heightened and shit. You're some kind of kung fu maniac just waiting for an excuse to tear someone a new ass. This five year old kid set off a firecracker and I spun on him with the hands of death ready to kill. That was the second fight I ever started. I felt better about that one, I think I'm getting close to a win with every punch.

There are some people who don't fight, no matter what happens. Like Gandhi. He wore a toga everywhere because he was a real party animal. People would get drunk at parties and always want to start shit with him, but he would tell them to settle down, he wasn't going to fight them. They would kick his ass and he still wouldn't fight back. Eventually it paid off because he got a free Indian. They made a show about it, you may have heard of it… Kung Fu? Of course, in the show he had to fight because they don't do TV shows about pussies.

When I first heard of Gandhi, I thought it sounded real familiar. Then I remembered Kenny Rogers did that "Coward of the County" song about him. Kenny Rogers must have been a big fan of Gandhi's. And I love that song, when they keep calling the guy a pussy and eventually he starts to leave but he finds the door's locked, so he has to fight his way out. That's like the story of my life, except I haven't gotten to the last verse yet.

When someone fights when he doesn't want to, he's called a pacifist. That's what he calls himself anyway. There's good reasons to not fight, like you could get killed. There was a famous saying some teacher told me once, about not fighting: "It takes more muscles not to fight than it does to fight." I'm not sure what muscles she was talking about, she asked me to leave the class before I got to that part.

As good as pacifism is, I think I'd rather fight. In fact, if I had to do it, I'd probably like to fight a pacifist. As long as you don't lock them inside with you they can't fight back, it's against their own personal legal code. So you could really kick some ass, and get it on tape. Then I'd show it to the guys who whupped my ass before and just tell them I didn't fight before because I was a man of peace. Hopefully they wouldn't ask why I kicked the pacifist's ass then. I haven't thought of that part of the lie yet.

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I am in no mood to talk, gentle readers. Fortunately I can do my column in a written fashion, although it throws me off my game not to hear my own voice ranting as I freestyle my diatribe. But my voice hurts too much to even think about talking—see? That just now hurt really bad. I am sick with the influenza.

At least that's what doctors tell me. I have much darker suspicions that I have been infected with the CIA's latest death virus.

Doctors, friends, and those folks at the radio call-in show are quick to doubt me, I know, but it only makes my suspicions stronger. They ask me, "Why would the CIA waste time trying to kill you?" Of course, that question has a list of answers a mile long. There's my controversial columns which someone must be reading, influencing a whole generation of hypothetical readers toward an underground revolution. Or there's what I did last year in the city of Branson, Missouri's water supply. And these two things are only at the top of the list. Frankly, who knows? They're the CIA. I don't pretend to understand their motivations, even as I make them up.

All that matters is this may well be true. As you may know, the CIA are not to be fucked with, sir, when it comes to death viruses. They invented the best of them—AIDS, syphilis, Hong Kong flu, herpes. I hear tell one of them even escaped the lab and got a talk show under the name Jenny Jones. These people are clearly the go-to folks when it comes to inventing death viruses. And if this one is their latest, it stands to reason I'm in big, contagious trouble.

The doctor was right about one thing—nothing you can do but let it run its course. So I'm taking a fatalistic approach to it all, I suppose, saying what happens happens. Of course, this doesn't stop me from making our Marketing VP Sully work on a cure 24 hours a day, minus lunch. I've also cursed the name of God for letting this happen and trashed a church, but I was probably going to do that anyway.

The worst thing about any cold, even a death virus, is being sick all the time. Snotty, sore throat, always rushing to the bathroom at the drop of a hat, or something less hat-like. Everything in my office is germ-ridden and nasty. I've gotten the commune cleaning staff (a.k.a. the copywriting desk) to come in and scrub down my office every two hours, just to keep it less contagious—also, I admit, I'm a little curious to see how quick they catch it, to see what this death virus can really do. I've also had them empty all my jars of urine, since when they began to get in the way I had to confess I really didn't have much idea what I was saving them for.

In the even of my death, however, seeing as how this is a death virus, I believe the commune will be in good hands. I've assigned editorial duties to Sully, Mazie the Chicken, Lil Duncan, and celebrity heartthrob Leif Garrett, just to shake things up a bit. Each will have the reigning editorial duties on a certain day of the month, from first to fourth. On the event of a rare fifth Monday, responsibility for those duties will be determined by a battle to the death. Perhaps a bit extreme, but I'm damned to determine to see the creative control doesn't suffer due to my brother's meddling and the CIA's attempt to kill me.

Sure, I suppose I could get better, but you have to plan for the worst. After all, this all probably could have been avoided if I had invested in that hermetically-sealed personal bubble I planned on buying after seeing that John Travolta movie all those years ago.

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