PERSEVERANCE TOUCHDOWN ON MARS!

i'M LEAVIN', ON A ROCKET PLANE!

I am about to do something that I wrote about a few years ago, I am reaching for Mars! I have a one-way ticket to the Red Planet ( something I am sure that my critics will be happy to hear)!
Check out the boarding pass shown below and note the number of miles/ kilometres to get there. I will be rich from the Frequent Flyer distance points but, of course, I will have nothing to spend it all on there.

RAMBLIN' ON #7. WHERE'S THE KARMA?

           I nearly hit a kookaburra the other day as I was driving down a country road at a country road speed. It launched itself from the edge of the road and flew straight across in front of my car's grill. I slammed on my brakes and swerved violently in the hope of it clearing the front of my car. It was with a great feeling of relief that I saw the bird rise up above the bonnet of my car with it's wings flapping madly as it tried to storm climb clear of my car, which quickly turned into a great feeling of anger and disgust when it unleashed a torrent of bird-shit that splattered all over my bonnet and,as I later found out, most of my roof!
Thinking about it, however, as the bird flew unscathed over my car then onwards out over the valley behind me it occurred to me that after the close call it had just survived, it probably couldn't have helped it! Until I heard it in a tree on the other side of the valley, laughing it's head off!
                                 

A TOTALLY DIFFERENT EXCERPT FROM 'WE ARE MARTIAN.'

So after much cajoling and begging Gorad finally agreed to let me try on a Para-suit and take it for a spin. After I had climbed into the suit, had been briefed on how to use it and the helmet had been attached and sealed I was escorted through the airlock onto the Martian surface. I stood there and looked around for places to fly to and spotted a tall mountain in the distance. I decided that I wanted to do the Superman thing and leap that tall mountain in a single bound so I launched myself off the ground. Unfortunately, I totally missed the tall mountain and continued upwards into the Martian skies, rapidly heading towards Outer Space and beyond.

“Hey Gorad, I seem to have missed the tall mountain I was aiming for and it now appears that I will be landing on Phobos, or crashing into it, shortly! So, my question to you is this;

HOW DO I TURN THIS FUCKING THING AROUND!?,

Over,”

To my great embarrassment and chagrin I could hear the laughter in his voice and in the background when he answered,

“Hello there, Drew, it’s really quite simple. Look down, find a part of the landscape to land on and stare at it while thinking how much you would really like to be standing on it right now.”

I followed his instructions, stared down at a flat piece of ground to my left and the Para-suit turned quickly and flew me towards it.

Back in my fighter pilot days there was a time when the backroom boffins were working to develop sight-guided missiles which the pilot could guide in to strike simply by staring at the target. I don’t know whether they ever produced any, I certainly was never trained to use them and never carried any but I could see potential problems with their use. The primary problem to my mind was simply this:

Once the missile had been launched and was tracking towards the target, guided by the pilot’s sight, I wondered what would happen if the pilot suddenly developed an itch that he just had to scratch in his groin or thereabouts and without thinking looked down to scratch it,.....OUCH!

The Para-suit started acting in a similar fashion. Something caught my eye far to the right of my selected L.Z. and the Para-suit veered and flew me towards that when I glanced at it. Something else caught my eye off in a different direction and the Para-suit veered once more. To an observer on the ground, (and unfortunately there were quite a few), I must have looked like a crazed human shaped Pinball ricocheting and rebounding in all directions around the Martian skies until I was finally able to lock on to a target and keep all my concentration centred on making it my LZ, which just happened to be the plain near the city where all the observers were observing me with great amusement. So it was with some satisfaction that I watched them scattering in all directions like startled cattle as I swooped down from the skies towards them.

Just before I touched down I realized that I was still travelling with considerable forward momentum and started pumping my legs as fast as I could so I literally hit the ground running. The second that I was on the ground I pushed one of the buttons on the left wristband of the suit to turn it off so it couldn’t launch me into the skies once more. This panic-inspired decision was quickly proved to be ill-advised as my forward motion was too fast for my legs to keep up with, and although the suit was no longer propelling me forward it was also no longer supporting me in an upright position which caused me to pitch forward off my rapidly, (but unfortunately not rapidly enough), pumping feet. I landed on my left shoulder and rolled, which then became an ‘arse-over-tit’ tumble across the sandy Martian landscape before I finally came to rest upside down and semi-embedded in a large pile of Martian dust and sand.

I lay there for a while trying to collect my thoughts until I realized that I didn’t have any as they had all been rattled out of my head during my arse-over-titting across the Martian landscape. So instead I started pondering why these sorts of things so often seemed to happen to me,(and only me!), until I was interrupted by the appearance of an upside-down Nick in my visor, bending over me with his hands on his knees, probably to support himself while he laughed his helmet off.

“So did you enjoy your little escapade, didja?” He asked breathlessly between bouts of chuckling,

“Sometimes I get a nasty feeling that I’m all of the three stooges crammed together into one!” I answered,

“You’re definitely an Act!” Nick chuckled as he reached down with his right hand to help me up, “You’ve no Class, but you are definitely an Act!”

He then made an exaggerated pantomime of brushing dust and sand off me when I was standing upright. I looked down at the perfect imprint of me in the pile of Martian dust and kicked it, thus erasing the imprint as the dust collapsed into it.

I was not in the least unnerved, startled or scared by my little escapade, yet it was to be a very long time before I climbed into a Para-suit again.

SAILIN' ON!

I was sitting on the veranda of the Metung pub one fine day, (actually one of many, many fine days as it’s one of my favourite ‘offices’), overlooking the lakes of East Gippsland and sipping from a chilled glass of cool white wine as I was tapping away on my laptop, when I spotted a magnificent yacht appearing around the distant point away to my right with all her sails raised and filled by a gentle eastbound sea-breeze that carried her along gently with it.

She was the very picture of serenity and peace as she skimmed across the waves following the wind until, seemingly out of nowhere, a powerful gust of wind hit her amidships causing her to keel over so far that the starboard rail went under and the tip of the mast kissed the water. I reached for my mobile phone to call the coastguard as she lay there for some time. The gust suddenly stopped just before I made the call and it was with great relief that I watched the yacht rise majestically out of the water until she was upright, caught the eastbound wind and began skimming across the waves once more.

The dark side of my mind wondered if the fish below the yacht had enjoyed the sudden addition of Chardonnay and sauvignon-Blanc to their watery world that would have spilled overboard from the glasses and open bottles of the ‘Crew Members’ aboard. My cynical suspicions may have been justified, (I thought to myself), when I noticed her changing course and starting to skim across the waves towards the Metung jetty which was between the water and the pub. This jetty provided easy access to food, Chardonnay, Sauvignon-blanc, etc., for the replenishment of supplies to a yacht.

I watched as the yacht eased up to the jetty and was made fast to the dock by two crewmen who then jumped onto the jetty and marched along it towards the stores where said yachting provisions could be purchased. I noticed the remainder of the sodden ‘crew’ standing on the deck or sitting on available bits of superstructure with water still cascading off them and onto the deck, and still holding their now empty glasses in hand.

It’s a hard life being a rich sailor-man/-woman/-person/-LGBTIQ/- or whatever!

( I guess!)

SINKING.

DON'T YOU HATE THAT HORRIBLE SINKING FEELING IN THE PIT OF YOUR STOMACH?

ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU'RE ON A BOAT!

RAMBLIN" ON #6-

I saw a perfect example of ‘Karma’ in action the other day when I was walking my dog in the park.

He had stopped and lifted his leg against a brick wall with the obvious intention of urinating on it when a Bull-ant raced at my dog’s other rear leg with the obvious intention of biting his paw. My dog began to urinate just as the Bull-ant was racing under him, quickly closing in on my dog’s paw.

I didn’t bother to walk over and see if the Bull-ant had drowned, because who gives a shit about a Bull-ant, Right? But I can well and truly testify, on a stack of Bibles and without any hesitation or shadow of a doubt, that it had been well and truly Pissed On!

I find it comforting and uplifting to know that sometimes, even though it is unfortunately only sometimes, ‘Karma’ will bite a Bastard on the arse before he/she actually commits their bastardly deeds!

(Or, PISS ON THEM!)