Canto Thirty-Seven – On the Moonbase of Gundahl
Starbright used the material synthesizer to make a wide variety of synthetic meat dishes. Tellerons really didn’t care for that sort of protein-heavy fare, but if the synthesizer had not run out of molecules in the storage bin, the little lizard people would’ve eaten until they burst like over-filled balloons. As it was their little lizard bellies were round and stuffed to the point of hurting on the synthetic meat and Skoog gravy. The lizard children all curled up in satisfied but stomach-achy balls on the control center floor and drifted off into hibernation-like slumber.
“Now that you fed them into a stupor,” said Farbick, “I will pick up all their weapons, and we are in control of the situation at last.”
“You don’t fight fair,” growled Stabharh the violent little lizard man. “You are not supposed to win the battle by feeding my troops into a coma. There was no blood and death and drama. Where’s the glory in that?”
“I don’t think we were looking for glory,” said Starbright. “Victory for us is staying alive… and possibly finding a new place for our people to live.”
“Not here!” protested fat Bahbahr. “This moon is my sacred property, legally purchased with the blood of slaves and warriors, and owned by me and my family for all time.”
“You have family?” asked Stabharh surprised.
“Well, not any more. Senator Tedhkruhz probably ate them when he took over Predator’s Preserve and all the military bases I owned on that sub-continent.”
“What about these children?” asked Farbick. “Were you going to share this place with them?”
“No,” said the fat overlord, “we were planning to eat them, since we are running out of edible food all over the planet. These are all merely low-class slaves and chattel. I might’ve saved a female or two to fertilize eggs with… there don’t seem to be any other living nobility besides Tedhkruhz and Rekhpahree and a handful of their kin.”
“Those young soldiers still belong to my command,” growled Stabharh. “You will turn them over to me when you let us out of here.”
“What if we don’t?” asked Farbick. “We could put the two of you down on the planet with the force-field box you are trapped in. We could keep this Moonbase for ourselves, and let Harmony Castille teach these lizard-tadpoles some manners.”
Bahbahr howled incoherently at that.
“What kind of mind-control device is a Harmony Castille?” asked Stabharh. “Especially one that is strong enough to control lizard brats that I have trained as killers? It would take a very powerful force.”
“Harmony calls it Christian Bible-teaching,” said Starbright with a shrug. “I have noticed it has the power to make Tellerons feel shame and self-loathing. And it can apparently also help any species to care about one another in a self-less way. I’d say that was pretty powerful mind control.”
“Well, you better hope it works at a distance,” sneered Stabharh. “You see that monitor over on the control panel? The one with the blinking red warning lights?”
“Yes,” said Farbick, suddenly concerned. “What does it mean?”
“One of Senator Tedhkruhz’s space battle cruisers is headed here to destroy this moon for all time.”
“That can’t be good,” sighed Starbright. “How do you know that that is who it is?”
“Because only Tedhkruhz still has working space ships, and you lot stupidly allowed one of them to survive its encounter with us. He obviously figured out who we were and where we were going in spite of your lah-dee-dah invisibility cloaking field.”
Stabharh’s evil smirk was loathsome and foul to look at, Farbick thought. Even serpents on Telleri, the really big ones, weren’t as horrid to look at as this reptile was. Even if he was about to die right along with Farbick and Starbright, Farbick knew this lizard-man was going to enjoy whatever happened next.
*****
Catch a Falling Star 
Apparently, What Winning Looks Like
Somebody who has an orange spray-tan on his face, a wig made out the remnants of the Scarecrow from Oz after the Wicked Witch was done with her revenge, and tiny, tiny hands once promised that if elected, he would make us sick of winning. Heck, I was sick before the battle started. And winning so far this week has meant merely that the Trumpcare/no-care/death-care plan failed spectacularly in the GOP controlled House. And why did it fail, providing me with a backhanded win? Because the Freedom Caucus couldn’t agree to a plan that wasn’t cruel enough to the old, the sick already, and the poor. Seriously, they wanted a healthcare plan that didn’t cover mental health, prescription drugs, hospitalization, or basically everything that I might need an insurance policy to cover. They want, ideally, to give us health insurance where we must continually pay premiums month by month and then, when we get sick, choose to die at home and get no benefits. So winning for me means that I can continue to get the crappy insurance coverage I already have under Obamacare to keep me perpetually on the brink of bankruptcy. And it IS a win compared to what the Evil Republican Empire wants to do to me.
But one thing that makes me even sicker about this kind of winning is that it is simply a temporary stay of execution. They are going to do it again. How many times, after all, have they voted to repeal healthcare already? I have lost count. Republicans really, really, really don’t want us to keep any of our own money when we can give it to some soulless corporation instead. And the budget that lurks around the corner is just as big, bad, and brutal as the whole healthcare kerfluffle. They mean to roast and eat Big Bird like a Thanksgiving Turkey, steal food from school children, fire everybody who works for the government and even thinks about preventing corporations from pouring poisons into our water and air, and cut funds to the State Department so that diplomacy and prevention of wars is seriously impaired.
So what, as a concerned citizen, am I gonna do about it? Well, I’m a sick old former school teacher who likes to write humor pieces while I’m busy slowly dying. So I’m going to make fun of the bad guys. Seriously, the best I can do is try to ridicule them to death.
So let’s start with the Trumpinator’s penchant for hiring evil leprechauns to torment us.
And I want to take a moment to talk about the perils of allowing turtles to do politics.
It is true that “slow and steady wins the race” but, come on! It also apparently allows you to steal Supreme Court nominations and have no clue what “hypocrisy” means. He is offended when Democrats refuse to accept and love his party’s proposals, but demonstrated absolutely no ability to say the word… you know the word… the one that means the opposite of “no”… when Democrats were in charge.
And then there’s the lovely zombie-eyed granny hater that we have allowed to eat the social security system. His plans for Medicare, Healthcare, and Social Security are all featured now on posters in the Grim Reaper’s public relations office.
So there you have it. That’s the best celebration of the recent win that Mickey can come up with in his stupid little head. It’s no wonder we are tired of winning already.
Leave a comment
Filed under angry rant, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, humor, politics
Tagged as evil leprechauns in politics, healthcare, humor, Jeff Sessions, Mick Mulvaney, Mitch the Turtle McConnell, Obamacare repeal, Paul Ryan, politics, Trump winning