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ASTRONAUTS ATTACH ARMS OF HELPER ROBOT From Wire Reports 3/17/08

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As some of you may know the space shuttle went back into space recently and one of its prime goals is to work on Dextre the one hundred foot tall robot who is standing on top of the space station at this moment and waving to us all. If you go outside tonight with your child’s telescope and point it towards the space station you will see Dextre waving and you can wave back at him.

He will enjoy that. He has been lonely up there.

But at least he can wave and do other things now since two astronauts attached a fifty foot arm to his body yesterday preparing Dextre for his new job as handyman in outer space.

Here are some of Dextre’s new duties as outlined by NASA in an official news release:

1/ Dextre shall wave at earth’s citizens when they wave at him and be a good ambassador in space.

2/ Dextre shall wave at other passing spacecraft including UFO’s from distant galaxies. However if one of the unknown variety should get within one hundred feet of the space station he will take a swing at it and hopefully expose the strange looking beings inside to the harsh environment of outer space. Hahaha. Let’s see how they like some of them apples.

3/ Dextre shall fix things that fall off the space station. First he will grab them when they fall off and then he will reattach them using his robot skills learned from watching Bill Gates here on earth.

4/ Dextre shall welcome all astronauts who approach the space station in the space shuttle. He will call out their names and help them dock in a safe and timely manner. However, if any of them start to act crazy and want to take the space shuttle to Texas while they are wearing diapers he will restrain them until they can be arrested and taken back to Florida for a speedy trial.

5/ Dextre will under no circumstances ever be allowed to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey.

6/ If the space station ever starts rapidly going around in circles so that Dextre is flung off into outer space every attempt will be made to find him and return him to his new home. Under no circumstances will robot jokes ever be made while he is listening or after he has been flung off into outer space.

7/ Dextre has been designed to lug around the big replacement parts that now require an astronaut to do some heavy lifting. Under no circumstances will Dextre be used for things that are not part of his job description. Specifically at no time will Dextre be allowed to clean the windows on the space shuttle or take out the trash.

8/ And finally if any space station resident should notice Dextre looking in the window at him/her and smiling please refrain from shouting or acting surprised. It’s lonely in outer space as Elton John has been telling us for decades. Don’t hurt Dextre’s feelings. Treat him well and he will treat you well.

Frankly, we don’t even want to think about the alternative.

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I really don’t know too much about what is happening in the world these days. So much of it is just awful and there isn’t much space left in my brain drive for this type of thing. But it’s important to know what is happening.

So I was surprised to learn this morning as I read the National Briefs in the newspaper that there are astronauts walking around in space. When did they get up there? They spent over seven hours attaching a box to the outside of the space station. It has a flag on it and the only thing you can put in there is stamped mail.

But it also measures space radiation and micrometeorite strikes because NASA is trying to consolidate and save money. No word on whether it will report sitings of asteroids, meteorite babies or Brad and Angelina.

The US Government now says in response to a lawsuit that you can become a US diplomat even if you are HIV-positive. For how many years have they been telling us that you can’t catch this awful disease from ordinary contact with other people? What is it that US diplomats are required to do anyway? Oh wait. Nevermind.

Or maybe it has something to do with meeting diplomats from other countries. Maybe THEY are the ones who are complaining. I don’t know. Sometimes when you read the news you end up with more questions than when you began.

Most of the time in fact.

The Coast Guard has called off the search for a Japanese hot air balloonist who was trying to fly from Japan to Oregon. That’s too bad. He has been missing since January 31st. But he was carrying a lot of survival gear with him. And he has some video tapes of Martha Stewart making little hot air balloons that you can hang in your kitchen if he gets bored.

And finally there was an explosion that sent flames shooting four hundred feet in the air near the US and Mexican border. No one was hurt except for the guy who was holding a lighter and his friend who apparently had just eaten one too many tacos. Oh wait. There was an oil pipeline nearby. Man I hope that thing didn’t catch on fire.

Let’s make a rule that you can’t smoke and go near an oil pipeline for at least an hour after lunch.

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