When I’m done, fall days won’t get darker and colder
BONUS COLUMN by Dr. A.G. Sohnejaeger
So I’ve been mulling over a problem that has plagued humanity since the beginning of time: the sun. As we know, the sun is lazy trash. Don’t you wish you could do something about that thing? Half of the day it’s in your face being all hot and bright, and the other half it shrugs and lets the moon run things. Have you seen the way the moon runs things? It lets everything get dark. And that’s just summer; the sun really burps up its lunch in winter, when it’s blazing down on us but somehow it can’t even melt snow. What the hell, sun.
Luckily for all of us, I’ve worked out a simple solution that can be put into place easily and effectively. All we need is some rope, a system of pulleys and levers, and a few odds and ends you can pick up at the local hardware store. That’s right: I’m going to tie the sun in place and winch it a little closer in winter. I surmise that the sun can’t heat up the earth in winter because it’s too far away or something. Like, it backs up. Or maybe the Earth swings a bit wide? Whatever. The point is, we need to bring the sun in close and hold it in place.
The first thing we need is one of those sweet grappling hook guns to swing the rope up and over the sun. Our target is a little shy of 93 million miles away, but if we shoot the grappling hook hard enough to escape our planet’s gravity well, inertia will keep it going until it approaches the sun. If my repeated viewings of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home are correct, the grappling hook will slingshot around the sun and return to Earth, whereupon we can secure it in place.
I know what you’re asking yourselves: what if the hook approaches the speed of light on its way around the sun and ends up returning to Earth in the far future, which will result in a bizarre paradox in which a piece of rope, 186 million miles long, originates in 2015 but terminates in 2265? What if someone in the future gets bonked in the head or whatever they’re using for heads by then? What if those future people travel back along the rope and wage a war against their own past?
I’ve spent many nights wondering about this problem, and all I can say is this: in the event of a Transtemporal Solar Rope Slinging Event, we will put up a warning sign for the people of the future.
But just to be on the safe side, we will climb the rope to raid the future for its advanced technologies and establish 2265 in 2015. It’s the only way to be sure.
Dr. A.G. Sohnejaeger can’t possibly have a degree.