Hey, Ground Control, what’s up? It’s me, Lieutenant Jeff Lafferty.
Look, ever since you guys told us we don’t have sufficient oxygen to make it home and that we’re almost certainly going to die in space, the crew’s been fighting a lot. We’ve got this limited supply and everyone’s got their own idea of how we should use it before we disintegrate into nothingness, return to the infinite, or go to heaven (like Astronaut Anne and her rosary beads keep talking about!) The team’s totally split and every kook and crazy’s got on his or her soapbox. But to me, it’s a pretty clear choice: we either have enough oxygen for six days or for one really awesome party.
Am I alone in this opinion? No. Am I outnumbered? Yes.
Which is why I’m contacting you. Colonel Peters has brainwashed everyone with all these accurate calculations, organized graphs, and to-scale diagrams showing that if we detonated the nuclear weapons on board, it would increase our velocity by 43%, allowing us to return in five days time and thereby saving our lives. Come on!!
I, on the other hand, have collected the support of both the Serbian cosmonaut you guys put on board for diplomatic purposes and the marsupial you put on board for scientific purposes after I made a few doodles with meat paste on a napkin. It was my depiction of Astronaut Anne’s boobs that really won them over, I think. Thank God for the Serbs cold, godless, Slavic pragmatism, otherwise I’d be relying solely on the marsupial to corner people and extort their support.
We all know we’re in the HOV lane on the highway to hell. The very fact that you won’t write us back or answer our calls is a pretty bad sign. And the last time we did talk it ended with you saying, “Soooo now that I’ve briefed you on how you’re all gonna die, I’m gonna offer you a lot of comfort and consolation, and… wait, sorry, hold on, bad reception…”
Heads up, we could actually see Lieutenant Black and Sergeant Stover behind you making static noises with their mouths because it was a video. But whatever. Let’s let sleeping dogs be bygones and get over our petty fights with each other so you can help me in this petty fight I am having with Colonel Peters.
I guess that’s why I’m reaching out to you: Colonel Peters is totally your bitch. He was always saying shit like “Ground Control says we can’t manipulate the oxygen level to get us all a little high” and “Even if Astronaut Anne is a little high from artificially elevated oxygen levels, she’s not going to sleep with you," and also, “There’s been complaints that you’re still violating the ‘at least underwear’ clause of the Pajama Bylaws.” And although he’s totally turned on you ever since you guys abandoned us to die in space, I bet if you say something he’ll still do it.
I can assure you I’ve been really scientific about this hypothesis of mine to use up the rest of our air to have an awesome party. I’ve even taken the care to consider what type of party would best utilize our oxygen supply. A straight up, bona fide fuck fest, although fun and cool to see Astronaut Anne’s boobs, would give us only about three hours more to rage against the metaphorical dying of the proverbial light that Bob Dylan (?) was always talking about. On the other hand, a wine and cheese book club, with all its polite silences while someone else is speaking, would give us roughly seventeen hours—just not a seventeen hours I’d like to spend.
My proposal is a good mixture of the two: a “College House Party.” We’ll do a bit of dancing and a lot of singing along to the Mountain Goats. We’ll challenge each other to ridiculous feats that have no real-world applications. And yeah, at the end of the night, I’ll pay my roommate to hook up with that girl he doesn’t like but who likes him and he’s hooked up with before so that I can bring Astronaut Anne back to my dorm and see how far I can get before she gets emotional about her dad or ex-boyfriend. All this buys us exactly seven hours and twenty-three minutes, the perfect amount of time to rage against the alleged dying of this “so-called” light (That is Bob Dylan, right?)
Will the cigarettes we smoke be a huge waste of oxygen? Maybe. But not smoking cigarettes is an even huger waste of the rest of our short lives. Is the process of fermentation of the bootleg moonshine I’ve been making out of Tang draining our oxygen supply? Again, maybe. Did I stuff a Manned Maneuvering Unit with crumpled up newspapers and cut a fuckhole in it and name it “Astronaut Anne”? This time, definitely, yes, I did do that.
Also, Colonel Peters has got this holier than thou idea that if the nuclear explosion doesn’t save us, at least it will get our ship into orbit, increasing the chances that rescue crews will be able to retrieve the breakthrough research we collected on the positive effect a mineral found on the moon has on marsupial cancer, which I agree with him is really important. But at the same time, the marsupial beat cancer! All the more reason to celebrate!
The way I see it, we’ve got six days of heavy sighs about how sad we are that we’ll never get to go home to that girlfriend we found out was cheating on us halfway through the mission, or we’ve got seven or eight hours of thumping subwoofers, dirty dancing, and seeing Astronaut Anne’s boobs to avenge our ex-girlfriend by playing into the small and unfounded jealousy she had for Astronaut Anne when we first joined the mission.
If you can’t help me with this one, maybe you could at least get a video to Julie Klepper in Fresno? It’s me humping a stuffed Manned Maneuvering Unit with Astronaut Anne’s name tag and badge on it. You did abandon us to die in space, so if you could do that for me, that’d be great.