Blast-Off Minus 10 Days

I, Byron Barnett, want to discuss luck.

What is it exactly?

Is it an energy?

Can you really get good luck from a rabbit’s foot? (Just remember: it didn’t work for the rabbit.)

Do people deserve whatever their luck is or is it random?

And will my forthcoming move to the Moon change my luck? 

What I mean is, do differences in gravity and sunlight have any effect on luck? Which it seems like they would if luck is an energy.

Incidentally, my luck often looks quite bad to the untrained eye—I have a tendency to break my bones and such. But usually there’s a twist.

Like when I broke my arm last year after I fell off a cliff in Question Mark Canyon. (It’s called Question Mark Canyon cause it’s long and narrow and curved at the top and has a big round boulder right at the bottom like a question mark’s dot.)

I had to get a fiberglass cast on my humerus. Your humerus is your arm bone, the one from your elbow up to your shoulder not the one from your elbow down to your hand.

Kids at school signed my cast. Teachers too.

My English teacher, Mr. Motesfont, wrote a quotation on it from the playright Will Shakespeare. He used a purple magic marker, so it stood out from all the other signatures. 

He wrote:

Byron—

This above all: to thine own self be true.

—Mr. Motesfont

I looked it up. It’s from that play called “Hamlet” about a ghost who comes back to haunt a castle. 

Here’s a famous picture of it:

The quotation that Mr. Motesfont referred to is highly thought-provoking. It means that no matter what else you do, you have to do what’s right for you, not just what everybody else is doing. Otherwise things won’t go your way.

Anyway, around the time I broke my arm I’d been thinking that patrolling the Eleven Deadly Realms was quite risky. Cause of all the unknowns. And if one night I just didn’t come back from one of The Deadlies and my mom called me on the intercom to come downstairs for dinner and I didn’t answer and she never heard from me again, she’d be pretty irritated.

So I’d almost made up my mind not to go on patrol anymore.

Then I looked down at the cast on my arm and I thought, “to mine own self be true, to mine own self be true.” And what could be truer to mineself than patrolling interdimensionally?

After all I am the Envoy Plenipotentiary to The Eleven Deadly Realms, not to mention the Nomad in the Ninth Dimension. And I love my work.

So I went. But unfortunately that night when I popped over to the Third Deadly Realm I materialized right in the middle of a hungry horde of space-vermin.

There were so many of ‘em, I’m pretty sure they could’ve devoured me. It was the biggest horde I’d ever seen, six or seven times the normal size. Way too many for me to fight off as per ordinarily.

The Main Vermin (that’s what I call a horde’s leader) zipped forward to take the first bite of me.

I jerked up my casted arm in a kind of reflex to protect myself and he bit down on it with full jaw-power ...

… and broke off all his teeth!!!

Normally a space-vermin’s teeth, which are somewhat like the teeth of a piranha fish’s, somewhat like the fangs of Dracula, can cut right through you. But my fiberglass cast was too hard!

The whole horde saw what happened. The Main Vermin’s teeth all broke off and his gums started gushing green vermin-blood.

It scared the rest of the horde so bad they turned around and bolted.

I was in the clear. I did my patrol and made it home with enough time to wash my hands and comb my hair before mom called me down to dinner. 

But if I’d never’ve fell in Question Mark Canyon and broken my arm, I’d never’ve gotten my cast. 

And if I’d never’ve gotten my cast, I’d’ve been eaten by space-vermin. 

Let’s see how my luck works on the Moon.

More soon,
Boon

Blast-Off Minus 9 Days

I, Byron Barnett, am highly interested in bones.

The human body has over 300 bones at birth, but a lot of ‘em fuse together as your body develops … so by the time you’re a grownup you’ve got 212 left.

The largest bone in the body is your thigh-bone.

The smallest bone is your middle-ear-bone, which looks like the stirrup that you put your foot into when you’re riding a horse. It collects vibrations from sounds and helps you hear things.

Bones are basically white, but wouldn’t it be nice if people had different color skeletons?

I’d want a purple one. Like so:

Bones aren’t just made out of hardened minerals and stuff. They have nerves and blood vessels inside. 

And when you look at a bone through a microscope, you see it’s some kinda flexible fabric that’s being woven and re-woven by super-tiny specialized bone cells. Also all the bone cells are talking to each other all the time to get the job done.

How does all this just happen?!?!?

Here’s another poem I wrote:

What’s in a bone
Once your bone’s grown?
Hard as a stone
Like a rocket’s nose cone

But what’s in a bone
Between known and unknown?
My research has shown
It’s a mystery zone

So what’s in a bone?
I won’t leave it alone
Till all facts I own
About what’s in a bone

The meaning of the poem is that there’s a lot going on inside of us that we don’t understand yet. It’s quite significant. 

Relatedly, I’d like to know what effect living on the Moon has on your bones.

And do they bury people on the Moon? And if so, since there’s no bacteria and such to eat away your flesh, how does your dead body turn into a skeleton?

Maybe they pack you in ice and send you back to Earth for that?

Or if you die up there do they just cremate you and sprinkle you across the lunar surface so you mix with the moon-dust?

All good questions.

More soon,
Boon

P.S. Your funny bone is not a real bone.

Blast-Off Minus 8 Days

I, Byron Barnett, just found out that I have to get a shot right before I board the rocket-ship taking me to the Moon. (The Biarritz.)

This brings me to a subject I spend a lot of time thinking about: deadly diseases.

A really great thing about the Moon is, they don’t have any.

No Bubonic Plague, no Ebola, no Malaria, not even Influenza (aka The Flu).

I don’t believe they even have colds on the Moon, cause you’re not allowed to get on a rocket if you’re sick.

Also, as I mentioned, you get that shot in the pre-boarding room at the spaceport.

It contains supergammaglobulins.

What it does is, it pumps up your body’s immune system so in a couple of hours the last little viruses and such that might be hiding inside you are wiped out. By the time you land on the Moon, you’re quite salubrious.

You might still feel woozy or whatever, but you’re not infected with anything anymore. So you’re not contagious.

Not that I’m happy about the giving of shots willy-nilly. I abominate shots almost as much as I abominate hangnails.

(Unless there was a shot to stop you from getting hangnails. That shot I’d take in both arms.)

But the supergammaglobulin shot is rather useful. I can’t say it isn’t.

After they jab you, you can still get sick on the Moon, but only with stuff that comes from inside your own body’s DNA, not from stuff you caught from somebody else.

And then there’s space-allergies. Which is a whole other kettle of fish which I’ve already talked about.

Did you know that Bubonic Plague, aka The Black Death, killed one out of every three people in Europe about six hundred years ago

This was before there was science and real medicine. If you get Bubonic Plague today, you’ll be okay. It won’t be fun, but you won’t die or have bubbles pop up all over your body. 

But like I said, they don’t have deadly diseases on the Moon anyway. You don’t even need to use hand sanitizer up there.

More soon,
Boon

P.S. Today at the comic book store Mr. Berkenbosch gave me a going-to-the-Moon present. He’s quite magnanimous. Sometimes he gives me an extra comic for free if I don’t have enough credits left from my allowance.

What he gave me today was a copy of a famous space-painting from when he was a kid. It’s highly artistic. Not that it shows real life in space. It’s an old-time type picture out of the artist’s imagination—it’s what he thought the future would look like, way back when.

I might leave it in my room at home instead of taking it to the Moon with me, but it’s the thought that counts. Here it is:

Blast-Off Minus 7 Days

I, Byron Barnett, now record in this chronicle that both my letters to the Board of Directors at Galactic Snacking Solutions Incorporated in regards to my Ambassadorship have gone unanswered.

No phone call.

No telegram. 

No postcard.

Which can only mean one thing: 

An interdimensional whammy has occurred.

Possibly some space-vermin slipped in from the Third Deadly Realm and intercepted my letters. In revenge.

Yes, space-vermin’s skin turns to the crispness of a potato chip in our dimension, so they almost never come here, but they might’ve risked it to get back at me for one of the times I vanquished them lately. Most likely the incident of the Main-Vermin-Breaking-Off-His-Teeth-When-He-Bit-The-Cast-On-My-Arm.

Right now a horde of vermin might be outside my very window. Or hiding behind one of our larger cactuses in the driveway, watching for me to put my mail in the mailbox. Then eating it before the letter carrier comes.

Or they might ambush the letter carrier after he leaves here and gobble up everything in his satchel.

If this is what’s been happening to my letters to GaSnakSo, I’m gonna have to communicate with them another way. And briskly. Cause I leave for the Moon in a week.

What I think I’m gonna do is, I’ll write another letter. But instead of putting it in the mailbox, I’ll get Taji to drive me downtown to the main post office. I’ll put it directly into the hands of the Postal Service.

That should work.

But what to write with so little time?

…

…

…

Got it.

First I’ll recap my offer of being their first Off-Earth Snacks Ambassador ...

… then to prove my knowledge of and/or expertise with snack food, snack bars, and snacks culture, I’ll give them a couple of pages about the history of snacking, so they’ll see they’re not dealing with an amateur.

Also I’ll include a couple of recipes. For instance, “Ants On A Log.”

What you do is:

1) You take a celery stick. 
2) You spread peanut butter on the celery stick.
3) You put raisins on top of the peanut butter.

Then you’re done. And if you use your imagination when you look at it, you see ants crawling on a log. But tastily. And with a high degree of nutrition.

Ants On A Log happens to be a vintage recipe from at least twenty years ago. I’ll bet even the Board of Directors at GaSnakSo isn’t familiar with it. It used to be quite popular.

I have an idea for a cookbook that brings back all the great snacks from bygone eras. This would be one of them.

It’s just a sample of what I know about the history of snacks.

I’m sure GaSnakSo will find my credentials a good fit for the job of off-Earth Snacks Ambassador.

I just have to get to them in time.

More soon,
Boon.

P.S. Here’s a snapshot of Ants On A Log. In case your imagination was having trouble picturing it.

Blast-Off Minus 6 Days

I, Byron Barnett, can’t understand why people think the dictionary is boring. It’s my favorite book.

The little section underneath every word that tells you where the word came from (its “etymology”) is like a very short detective story that solves the mystery of what a word’s origin was way back in time.

My math teacher told me last year that I sounded like I swallowed a dictionary. I think he thought he was insulting me, but I just thanked him for being so commendatory and then I laughed all the way to the cafeteria.

Ha-HAH!

José Ignacio says I frequently get words wrong, but I enjoy my mistakes. It’s quite charming of me.

Also I love my space-encyclopedia. It’s probably my second-favorite book.

An encyclopedia can either be one big book or a whole shelf of books that give you information on either a whole lot of topics or one topic in particular.

For instance, my space-encyclopedia is one big book, 1224 pages long, that’s all about space.

But my brother has the Encyclopedia Brittanica in his room that’s 29 books long and has 40,000 articles in it. It talks about everything there is in existence.

I’m thinking of writing my own encyclopedia.

Mine would be called “The Encyclopedia Barnettica.” It would be all about topics that I find interesting. 

I’m not sure if I would write it all myself or if I’d hire other experts to work under me.

Depends on how long I make it. If it’s 1000 pages or less I might write it myself.

If it’s between 1000 and 5000 pages I’ll probably hire people.

I’m not sure yet how much I’ll charge people to buy it. If I’m already the CEO of Galactic Snacking Solutions by then and getting a salary of 50,000 credits a year or more, I might give the Encyclopedia away for free.

I can be quite philanthropic.

More soon,
Boon

P.S. Here’s my idea for what the cover should look like. (I made this myself, I didn’t need Taji’s help.)

Blast-Off Minus 5 Days

I, Byron Barnett, might like to be a movie reviewer on the side.

I could do it in my spare time, on weekends and such, even in the future when I’m CEO of Galactic Snacking Solutions Incorporated. It would be a juggling of responsibilities, but I’m sure I could make it work.

Actually I could practice fitting it all into my schedule while I’m being GaSnakSo’s Snacks Ambassador up on the Moon starting next week.

I could do my ambassadoring after school during the week and my reviewing of movies on the weekend.

Except now I’m suddenly realizing: DO THEY EVEN SHOW MOVIES ON THE MOON ?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?

Yes, you can always watch a movie on your telescreen, but what I’m asking is, do they have a cinema where they project movies onto a silver screen, the way that motion pictures were meant to be watched   ?   ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  !!  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ?  ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????!

I don’t recall reading anything about it in the relocation packet.

If they don’t have a real cinema, I’ll have to speak to the Governor about that immediately.

I don’t want to catastrophize (that’s a habit of José Ignacio’s that I refuse to pick up), but if they don’t show movies the right way on the Moon, our very space-based culture is at stake. We might as well open a portal into the Third Deadly Realm and invite hordes of space-vermin to come gobble us up.

I’m wondering by the way if we can get some major movie stars up to the Moon for a lecture series?

Maybe I could start the First Annual Lunar Film Festival. I could be its Founder and Chief Creative Officer.

That way we’d definitely get all the best new releases for screenings on the Moon and we could attract big names from the acting biz to come up for Red Carpet Events and whatnot. 

Maybe for a Moon-themed movie we could even get the movie studio to let us give it its premiere in Cosmopolis.

(“Its” premiere or “it’s” premiere? I tend to get my itses mixed up. Let me consult my dictionary …
…
…
…
…

… okay, I was right. It’s “its.” Its premiere.)

Anyhow, I wouldn’t mind being the first to see “Panda Bear Uprising Part 9,” which I hear has scenes in space, if not exactly on a lunar footing.

The first “Panda Bear Uprising” was of course the best in the series, though “Uprisings” Three and Four were quite watchable. Five and Six were okay, Seven was a dud, but then they got the director back who did One and Four, so I have high hopes for Nine.

Also as Head Of Festival I could bring in a large number of spine-chillers, my favorite of the cinematic genres. Preferably spine-chillers with off-Earth plotlines. Like “Dracula On Mars.”

But even if a Lunar Film Festival doesn’t work out, I’d still consider being a movie reviewer. I have some things to say about the state of the current cinema that I think people will want to read.

More soon,
Boon

P.S. Here’s a poster I made, to further illuminate my concept:

Blast-Off Minus 4 Days

I, Byron Barnett, have been looking up the names of the Moon in other languages besides English.

Por ejemplo:

• La Luna (in Spanish)

• La Lune (in French)

• La Luno (in Esperanto)

• Ka Mahina (in Hawaiian)

• Inyanga (in Zulu)

• Le Masina (in Samoan)

• Al-Qamar (in Arabic)

• 月亮 (in Chinese)

and so forth and so on.

(I got all those from the translator-pad I sent away for with twenty proof of purchases off single-serving boxes of French Fries from the Idaho Potato & Polyglot Company, so if any of those words are wrong, you know who to blame.)

Where was I?

I believe I was thinking about how important the Moon’s been to people around the world since the beginning of people. And not only cause it keeps the ocean tides going.

In India they have a day for the full moon called “Purnima” when they hold all their festivals and such. I think we should have more festivals on full moon days. It just makes sense.

Every year the “Old Farmers’ Almanac” publishes all kinds of info on weather and eclipses and farming advice and whatnot for the next twelve months, but they also include a lot of lore about the Moon.

Their publication’s motto is: “Useful, With A Pleasant Degree Of Humor.”

That’s a pretty good motto if you ask me.

On the useful side, they give you the dates for every month’s full moon coming up … plus old-time names for every month’s full moon. The names are pretty intriguing. Here they are:

January: Wolf Moon
February: Hunger Moon
March: Worm Moon
April: Fish Moon
May: Milk Moon
June: Strawberry Moon
July: Thunder Moon
August: Green Corn Moon
September: Harvest Moon
October: Blood Moon
November: Frosty Moon
December: Long Night’s Moon

There are other names for every month’s full moon, but those are the ones I prefer.

Did you know that our solar system has 219 moons in all?

Saturn on its own has 83 moons. (In my view that’s too many moons. That’d be 83 names for full moons every month! Too hard to keep track of for one planet. I prefer our 1-moon system.)

I have to go now. I have my last on-Earth doctor’s appointment with Dr. Delsalto. To make sure I’m in tip-top condition before blast-off.

THREE MORE DAYS TILL THE MOON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

More soon,
Boon

P.S. Here’s a Farmer’s Almanac:

Blast-Off Minus 3 Days

I, Byron Barnett, am not too worried about death.

You know what Will Shakespeare says about it in his play about that ghost that I mentioned a while back. He says:

“All that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity.”

What he means is, when you die it’s like going from this dimension into another dimension where you keep on existing, just differently.

Not unlike my own interdimensional expeditions. The only difference being that my expeditions are roundtrip. 

It’s all very natural though. And there’ll be a lot to experience once you’re dead and your spirit is zipping through eternity. 

Nevertheless, I am thinking a lot about where my body will be buried upon my demise.

Like: will I be buried on the Moon? Do they even have lunar graveyards? And is there a lunar graveyard caretaker who maybe does Japanese-type designs with a rake in the moondust over the graves?

All good questions.

Speaking of graveyards, If I’m buried in Arizona I’d like my gravestone to say:

Byron Barnett
The Adventure Continues

Instead of Flowers
Please Leave Snacks
(Chocolate-Based Please)

I’ll be dead so I won’t be able to eat what people leave, but the birds and squirrels and rabbits and worms will. It’s magnanimous to help out the animal kingdom whenever possible.

Some people put in their will that they want to be cremated. That means your dead body goes into a special furnace that heats up to 1800 degrees Fahrenheit and turns you into a mound of ashes. It’s extremely clean and germ-free.

Then your family gets to sprinkle you somewhere you liked when you were alive, like a lake or a ski slope. 

I’d be okay with being cremated, but I’d want some glitter added in. Preferably purple. To make me sparkle in the snow or wherever they sprinkle me.

Actually, burying me on the Moon probably makes the most sense. 

Specifically:

I’d like the people handling the event to put my real coffin with my dead body in it UNDERNEATH a fake-out coffin on top with a copy of my body in it made of chocolate.

Why?

a) Why not?

b) Because any space-vermin who come to get revenge on me for our past encounters will mistake my chocolate corpse for the real me (since being from another dimension they won’t know that humans don’t turn into chocolate when they die).

They’ll eat the chocolate Boon on top and won’t even think to look for the real Boon buried underneath.

And I’ll get the last laugh while zipping through eternity.

More soon,
Boon

P.S. I also wouldn’t mind a gravestone that automatically dispenses a chocolate bar to everyone who visits me. Even when dead, I can be quite considerate.

P.P.S. At my request mom baked me a chocolate-with-spider-web-frosting birthday cake last year for my 9th. I took several pictures before I ate it. Here one is:

Blast-Off Minus 2 Days

I, Byron Barnett, just wrote my fourth and final letter to GaSnakSo. Final letter from Earth I mean.

The central theme of it was: communication.

Here’s a copy, minus all the addresses and what have you:

Dear Madames, Sirs, and any Others:

As regards the last letter that I sent which I personally dropped off at the main post office, and following up on my two prior letters that may or may not have been eaten by space-vermin before reaching you …

I’m writing now to remind you that I leave for the Moon the day after tomorrow.

As I’m pretty sure you’ll want to exchange views with me about my offer to be your first Off-Earth Snacks Ambassador, may I suggest a tele-conference at my earliest convenience? Let’s aim for right after my lunar relocation.

Feel free to contact me via the Cosmopolis Switchboard & Messaging Service. During school hours is fine—I’m sure they’ll let me out of class for an important call.

I look forward to hearing from you on the topic of my ambassadorship.

You have nothing to lose.

Sincerely,
Boon

P.S. I have fourteen new snack ideas to go over with you.

P.S.S. How about a fascinating new catchphrase for your products? Something like: “Suspiciously delicious!”

P.S.S. You need a better logo, one that reminds a person’s subconscious of candy. I made a sample for you to mull over:

BLAST-OFF TOMORROW!

Instead of another day’s chronicle, I’m updating my monthly Action List here, since I don’t have time to do both, since I have to go see my grandparents today then get a haircut then go with my mom to deliver several cactuses—they’re goodbye gifts to her friends and various persons and acquaintances.

ACTION LIST

1. Finish packing.

2. Move to Moon.

3. Do tele-conference with Galactic Snacking Solutions and become Off-Earth Snacks Ambassador.

4. Look for dinosaur bones on Moon (i.e. frozen ectoplasm that’s buried).

5. Summon Moon-ghosts (if any). Set them free.

6. Start Lunar Film Festival.

7. Get job writing movie reviews if there’s a job for that in Cosmopolis.

8. Test out José Ignacio’s voltage-ray in lunar gravity.

9. Develop six new flavors for Space Cakes. Propose them to GaSnakSo.

10. Come up with snack company name in case I decide to start my own company instead of working for GaSnakSo. Example: Boon’s Nibbles & Nosh Ltd.

11. Try to keep up patrols in the Eleven Deadly Realms if reachable from Moon.

12. If not, find out why not.

13. Get a good night’s sleep.

14. Set booby traps on lunar surface for space-vermin. 

15. Convince Taji to focus less on cars, more on art.

16. Be nice to Mom.

17. Be nice to Dad.

18. Get José Ignacio a personality transplant.

19. Decode existence.

20. Fix it.

*** Inform people that when they write to me up in Cosmopolis, they have to use a Moonmail stamp. Regular postage isn’t enough. They can pin this reminder to their bulletin boards:

March Forth Into Space With Boon!