Hunt Planets From Home

CNN Headline – 4/14/11

Washington D.C. – People are growing sick and tired of going to outer space. What has been almost commonplace for literally dozens of people over the last 4 decades is starting to become a chore for the American public as well. For those of us unwilling to put in years of training and preparation all for one stupid little planet hunting trip amongst the stars, good news is on the way. Researchers at NASA and Rockstar Games have teamed up and are developing a new technology that will allow us to hunt and destroy defenseless planets without the chore of having to go all the way to outer space.

The lure of blowing planets into oblivion is pretty goddamn self-evident to me, but my uber-fucking-picky editors want me to explain why this awesomeness is happening. So, despite most likely coming off as an idiot, I asked NASA engineer Stephen Blemica to explain why NASA and Rockstar were developing this kick-ass technology. “Americans are all about what’s new and what’s fresh,” Blemica said. “And going to outer space has been done. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and almost definitely several others have been there, done that. So to most Americans physically being in outer space is no big deal. Also it takes a lot of hard work to get there, which no one wants to do. So we decided it was time to team up with a company like Rockstar, which we knew through playing GTA and Red Dead Redemption, and develop something we could market to an average American. We contemplated what aspect of outer space we wanted to offer consumers, going over everything from gravity space bounces to making it with an alien, but deep down we knew all along what everyone wants to do in outer space. And that’s blow up a planet.”

The timing couldn’t be better. Americans are so bored with things these days, that it’s almost impossible to find something that can capture someone’s attention beyond 140 characters. Rockstar marketing executive, CJ Johnson, believes this is the ideal time in our country’s history to start marketing technology that can blow up planets from couches. “People don’t care about experiencing things anymore,” he said. “Why go two-million light years into outer space, when you can blow the shit out of some dumpy planet from your couch? Why go talk to people and socialize when you can just go on facebook and make friends, or jack-off to pictures of hot girls you’d have to otherwise go to a bar to see? Why slave over a meal when Easy Mac is virtually the same thing? It’s 2011 and doing things just doesn’t make sense anymore. It’s not a very economic use of your time, and if the downfall of the economy has taught us anything it’s that it is incredibly important to be economic – technically speaking.”

NASA and Rockstar will initially sell this technology at a price only tycoons or moguls can afford, but both companies claim it isn’t all about the benjamins. “It isn’t all about the benjamins, I mean, not 100% completely,” said Johnson. “The money will be nice, sure, but our goal is to produce this technology on such a large scale that anyone with a trust fund and a comfortable couch can hunt and destroy a planet without missing any of the awesome TV that’s on at night these days. We want to make this technology available to normal people, people like me or you, people who, since they were able to remember, have dreamed about going to outer space, finding some shitty little planet that just rubs them the wrong way, aiming a laser ray-gun at it, and blowing it to a billion little pieces. For all the people who started smoking weed, or drinking, and got fat or something along the way so that they couldn’t go to astronaut school anymore, and lost track of that childhood dream, well, now we can help them rediscover what they lost so long ago.”

Sounds beautiful, majestic even, like what it must look like to see an entire planet explode from the inside out. I, for one, can’t fucking wait.

-Pete Higgins