I wrote this about the same time as the voting story, maybe '93. This was before the movies Armegeddon and Deep Impact came out and when they did I was pissed. I guess I thought it was original or something. I read some newspaper story about a comet being named after some amateur who discovered it and it just came out of that.

The writing isn't particularly good, it's dated and I haven't changed anything except a quick spellcheck, but I thought the story was something you'd enjoy.

THE COMET FABIO



Along the verdant swell of the summer valley, somewhere in the dark, on a lawn in the middle of America, a young boy lies on his back in the cool wet grass, staring into a blue domed sky, lit by a million brilliant pinpricks. There is a sound in the air, an ascending chitter of cicadas fixed to the tree trunks like climbers and farther away behind that the dull crump of the launch tubes firing off, sending their shells hissing through the air in an arc. This is the best part, he thinks to himself. Before the fireworks go off watching the tail of fire racing in a zig-zag upward through the sky waiting for the explosion.
He watches the fireworks as they go off, singly at first and then in clusters like flaming blossoms of red and blue and silver, the report of their explosions, ghosts thundering down the empty streets beneath them. The other kids in the neighborhood were down by the river with their folks watching the fireworks and their reflections as they appear, like heat lightning, along the surface of the rippling waters before they vanish again. The finale approaches and a cascade of sparkling bursts light up the sky above them: the crowds along the river, the boys on their lawns and the dead in their graves, casting a glow outward into the greedy darkness before disappearing into the half blackness of a sky filled with twinkling stars. He would like to ride out there one day, on a fiery rocket into space, he thinks. He really would.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff stared back at the Chairman of the Department of Space, his mouth agape.
"What are you trying to say?" He asks at last.
"Just what I said." There is a pause that hangs in the sterile air around them. "I don't know what else to tell you. The numbers don't lie." He said pointing at the printout, his voice cracking from the strain.
"How much time does that give us?" The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff asked.
"Five days, eleven hours and..." He paused, eyes focused dully on his watch dully at his watch. "...Nine minutes."
The room grew quieter still as the chairmen stared first at the floor then back up at the huge celestial tracking board. The entire Milky Way Galaxy lay spread before them, pixilated in a chalky blue glow. In the center a blurry red streak nearly six inches long, was marked by a hasty square of masking tape. To the casual observer it may have looked like a work of modern art. The casual observer had no way of knowing, however, that what that streak represented, that single rusty red smudge, was the rapidly approaching end of all mankind. Several white coated astronomers huddled near a series of computer consoles, staring glumly at the blinking cursors and the series of figures that spilled out across the glowing green screens behind them. The calculations had been checked over a thousand times and there was no doubt that what the Chairman had told the Chairman was true. Intractably, inalterably factual. In less than six days a comet nearly twice the size of Rhode Island would crash into the Earth somewhere near the Azores sending a spume of vaporized rock and ash a thousand miles into orbit, creating a darkness that would last a decade, in turn wiping out life on the planet. At that very moment only the ten men standing in that room were aware of that fact. And now it would be the Chairman’s' job to pass that information on to the President.
"Is there anything that we can do? Any ideas at all?" The Chairman asked no one in particular.
"I believe that's the reason that we called you in. It's your concern now. There's nothing more we can do."
"I don't know how I'm going to break this to the old man." Behind him the smudge moved imperceptibly.
"What are you worried about? What difference does it make now?"
There was a pause.
"You're right. Unless we come up with something. What about nuking the son of a bitch?" He asked. "Could that work?"
"You don't have anything accurate enough to knock it out of orbit if that's what you mean, it’s coming in for a glancing blow as it is. If you miss it even slightly you might alter its course, but you might send it straight at the Earth. A kind of cosmic head on collision."
They all stood frozen staring downward, their hands planted like trees on the surface of the table, their fingers spread like roots.
"Fuck." said the Chairman Of The Joint Chiefs.

The President took the news like a champ. He was sitting on his desk looking out at the rose garden with his back towards the Chairman, smoking a cigar. He blew several rings and they floated out drunkenly, languidly into the motionless air of the oval office.
"Well, I guess I ought to get to bed. I'm going to have to look rested and confident when I address the good folks of this great nation in the morning,” He paused looking back over his shoulder at the General with a smile, turning on the charm. "Let 'em in on the news."
"Mr. President...I...I don't think you under---"
"Understand? What? That this is the end of it all?" He smiled, his white teeth sparkling. "This ain't the end. What you told me is that we don't have an existing delivery system? Is that correct?"
"Yes."
"Delivery being the key word. What about the shuttle?"
"That's a manned craft Mr. President." He paused. "We have no way..."
"A manned craft could do it though? You can steer a manned craft? Am I right?" The President asked in a whisper.
"Sir, there is no way we could ever order some one..."
"Order? Come on Paul, may I call you Paul?" he asked rhetorically.
"Mr. President?"
"Paul, nobody needs to order anybody to do anything. We're talking about asking for a volunteer. A patriot, no, even more than that, a hero. One, single individual willing to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to save the entire world. Order? You've got to be kidding. They'll be climbing all over each other to be given a chance like this. Don't you see? This story will be the greatest one ever told in the history of man since Jesus mounted the cross at Cavalry. A sacrifice made for the world. It's brilliant. I only wish that I was the one who could stand up there on the steps of the Lincoln monument tomorrow with the adoring faces of the world gazing up at me in awe and admiration. Christ, it makes me get a little teary just thinking about it."
"Tomorrow?" the Chairman asked, dumbfounded.
"You ask a lot of questions Paul. Time is of the essence here. We only have...?" The President indicated the clock on the wall.
"One hundred and thirty hours. Give or take"
"Well then, set the wheels in motion, Paul. I've got a press conference to attend to."
At that the Chairman scuttled furtively through a paneled side door into the War Room, his arms bulging with briefs and charts and maps. The President remained on the edge of the desk in the dark, the dead stub of his cigar clenched between his whitened knuckles.
"Fuck." he said under his breath and the silent whir of the recorders.

The Comet Fabio. That's what it was called. It was discovered by an amateur astronomer named Elydia Hewlett Hodges who lived in Encino. It was an accident, pure and simple. She had spotted the slight fluctuation in movement in a sector of the sky that she liked to frequently stare off into. She had a severe case of insomnia and a passion for romance novels. When NASA confirmed its existence, it was, by rights, her comet to name. Which she did. Hence the name.
Fabio.
The headlines screamed and the talking heads talked and everyone was on the edge of their seats all around the world when the news finally broke. At exactly 9:01 EST NASA officials confirmed that a large comet was hurtling towards the Earth from the direction of the constellation Pyxidis. It was expected to cause massive damage, perhaps cataclysmic. Five days was all that stood between being and nothingness. There was a silence that swept across the surface of the globe, a worldwide intake of breath and then a pause that could be felt by every living being within earshot of the news. It was said that those who were removed from the world at the farthest extremes of the planet; Sherpa herdsmen, deep sea divers and Arctic climbers, had all become aware of a sound, a nearly human sigh mixed with the wind and it moved through their senses at that self-same moment, a subdued burp in the shared consciousness of all mankind. The faces of the newsmen blanched when they read the copy that unrolled before them on the tele-prompters. There was a silence on the radio waves that left the empty sound of space to crackle and hiss in the interim, and the image of that frozen, rocky satellite spinning toward them all.
And then the President's face loomed into view, serene, controlled and infinitely calm.
"My fellow Americans," the President began, his eyes fixed on the camera lens and beyond. "We face today news of great misfortune. As many of you already know there exists the distinct and awful possibility of a collision between a comet and our beloved earth. I cannot tell you how I felt when I first received this terrible news. I thought, as all of you must have, of my loving family. I wondered what I could do to protect them from the unexpected cataclysm that would soon confront us all, yet I knew that I was helpless.
"Last night I walked the floors of the White House as other Presidents have in times of great trouble. I found my way to the study, a room in which I have always sensed a great peace within my heart. Last night, however, I did not. The words of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs rang in my ears and a sense of helplessness supplanted my resolve. The dire consequence of a mere accident of space and time would, within days, erase all that we had built through time and industry and all that we had cherished through love and inspiration. I stood in the darkness of that room thinking of all the other fathers in all the other rooms across the broad sweep of this Earth, powerless in the face of this apocalypse that so rapidly approached. I stood there staring at a portrait of the Late President Lincoln, a common man not unused to the trials of leadership in times of great strife, a wise man with an abiding trust in the common acts, which lead some men to greatness. I felt as if he were trying to let me know that where there are no answers available, there is sometimes more than that in our faith alone.
"I felt as if I had been struck by lightning and I raced to the room where the sleeping form of my wife lay unaware beneath the covers. From the bedside table I picked up our well-worn bible and hoping for a message to sooth my ragged heart, I opened it gently to the first page that flickered apart and I began to read. And I would like to share you now those words.
The President cleared his throat, and then began.
"According to the Word, in the book of Ecclesiastes;
"One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth forever." Here he paused.
"I felt as a sailor must, who has weathered a storm and finds himself on deck awash in twisted coils and broken mast, only to see the sun break through at last. An answer came to me from those words that I read as surely as they must have to Lincoln during the darkest days of the Republic. He knew that shortly he would pay a price with his own life, as we all must in time, only to be assured of the glory that awaits us all in eternal salvation.
"To all my fellow men and women who hear my words today, though they may in short order fade from memory: I tell you now that such an offering has been made at no cost beyond our sincerest gratitude. The approaching threat of which I have spoken will soon be no more. The price is not the sacrifice of all mankind, but rather the life of one heroic individual." The President took a beat and slowly turned his head to the side with a smile of supplicant spread across his face.
The sleepless eyes of a billion souls stared at the glowing tube, fixed and unblinking.
The President stared back at them all, his face set in righteousness.
The Earth spun upon its axis and followed its path around the sun as it had from the beginning, while the world itself hung in precipitous anticipation.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, it is with profound pleasure and unbounded gratitude that I present to you..." and as the President spoke the huge American flag that hung behind him lifted slowly and the cameras of a thousand stations covering the greatest story of all time dollied backward to get the shot.
"...The man that has volunteered for each and everyone of us living on this Earth, to give that last full measure of his devotion for his neighbors, for his country and for every living being, to fly into space and meet destiny head on.
"Major... Lincoln... Capstick!"
The President turned slowly his arms spread wide to the figure that appeared behind him on the white marble steps of the Lincoln Monument. A man emerged slowly from it's darkened interior. He was dressed in full astronauts regalia, cradling his helmet in his huge arm as if he were about to climb aboard a spacecraft that sat somewhere out of view of the cameras on the manicured lawn, waiting for liftoff.
The crowd went wild. The cheers that went up around the globe seemed to go on forever. A plangent éclat in Farsi and Pidgin, Dagomba and Urdu, a roar unheard since the fall of Babel. Computer terminals jittered and buzzed with the sound of information exchanging itself, a single byte at a time. A sudden sense of relief washed over the masses as they hugged each other and wept and laughed, a single family of mankind, soothingly reassured that everything was going to be O.K. By the image of a huge and handsome man in a pressurized suit, his sleeves emblazoned with flags and crests and patches, each a testament to his qualifications, his competence and his selflessness. Champagne corks popped and confetti fell and parade organizers spun into frenzied preparations. It was almost fifteen minutes before the man introduced by the President was able to calm the assembled crowds in Washington to a point where he could speak. The humbled crowds grew silent and the tear streaked face of Mike Wallace, lips aquiver said with bloodshot eyes,
"SSSHHH... He's about to speak."
There was a brief moment of feedback as Major Lincoln Capstick took hold of the podium with his gauntleted hands, his visored helmet set to the side. The soundmen scrambled as if for their lives and the sound level came back into range. Behind him the President stood, as proud as a parent at graduation, wiping away a stray tear or two with his presidential handkerchief, the secret service men weeping openly behind their Ray bans.
The Major spoke.
"I want to take this opportunity..."
At this the crowd went off again in a mix of adoration and near hysteria. This lasted another three and a half minutes by the watch on his space-gloved wrist. If he was uncomfortable with the response, his steely blue eyes gave no indication. He stood there immobile and tall in the sunlight, his stubble blackened jaw set defiantly as he surveyed the throng spread out before him. And he waited. When the tumult soothed to a whisper he continued exactly where he left off.
"...To let each and every one of you know how much I appreciate you allowing me to fly out there..." and at this he half turned and gestured with a sweep of his massive patch bedecked arm to the very sky above, his hand slowly closing into a fist, his index finger pointing accusingly at the unseen menace that headed towards them yet.
At this the crowd went into a frenzy. If the last ovation was loud, this one was deafening. Women fainted and grown men sobbed like babies while the rich and the homeless hugged each other for dear life. There was no black or white or young or old. The world was for one shining moment, in the words of an old Coca-Cola commercial, in perfect harmony. Major Capstick stood like a leviathan above them, bigger than other men, bigger than life itself, his broad chiseled features carved from stone already. It wasn't until their throats were raw and the mass of them lay spread upon the ground, prostrate as if in worship, that he finally finished what it was that he had begun to say nearly an hour ago.
"I want you all to know that you can count on me to go out there without regret; not only to face our destiny, but to live out my own." His smile was sincere and his eyes glistened. "God bless America!" he shouted, his arms rose in the clean blue air.
Without the slightest pause the Army band broke into a rousing brassy version of The Star Spangled Banner. The Major and the President and all the assembled underlings who surrounded him like children, snapped to sharp attention and turned a half turn saluting the flag behind them while the crowd struggled to it's feet. Before the band had finished every American within earshot was standing upright, singing along with the final chorus. Grandmothers watching black and white Magnavox's in their living rooms and ham operators on Johnson Atoll swooned to the haunting bleats and blats of the brass. Of course by then more than half of the people around the rest of the world had switched off their TV's and their short waves and gone back to their tasks at hand; planting rice, beating the poor into submission and working on terrorist bombs. After all, America had the situation in hand, as it always did, so it was back to business as usual.

Four days is not much time. Not much time at all. In four days Major Lincoln Capstick became the most recognized being on the face of the Earth. He had volunteered to carry aloft the largest payload of nuclear warheads ever assembled on a single delivery system, and steer to it into the frozen metallic heart of the comet Fabio. He would never return. He had volunteered to give his own life so that the rest of humanity could go on. He knew that going in.
The facts concerning Major Capstick were different from the realities as presented by the Air Force press department in only the most minor of details, starting with his name. He was not, as the President alluded to in his speech, the namesake of the sixteenth president of the United States. His father, a Kirby salesman from Nebraska, named him. He told his son that he was named after the place of his conception: the back seat of a 1968 Lincoln Continental. Not long after his birth he was left with an aged aunt, his diapers and booties and baby shirts all stuffed into a Hefty cinch sack. His mother vanished that night and was never heard from again while his father made only an occasional visit after that, stopping by near Christmas as a rule. But as time went on and Lincoln grew tall, even those few visits dropped off to nothing. When his aunt passed away not long after his eighteenth birthday, he became, for all intents and purposes, an orphan in this world. With only the clothes on his back and a Lincoln Continental hood ornament as a good luck charm, hanging from a chain around his muscular neck, Lincoln joined the Air force. Since childhood he had envisioned himself soaring through the deep azure void above the planet, escaping it all by trying to slip the bonds of gravity, as his craft pushed against the darkening vault of space. He remembered the evenings in the summers of his youth, laying on the dewy grass behind Aunt Ginny’s barn, watching the sprawl of the stars whirling above him, wishing that he could be out there in the cold blue light of creation. And as fate would have it, he got his chance.
The summer after he gradated from the Air force Academy, Lincoln qualified for the Astronaut Training Program. He was considered by some to be too large for the close confines of space travel, yet he amazed them by compacting himself into niches too tight for even those smaller than himself. He excelled in his studies and remained undaunted by the rigors of training: the G-forces and the weightlessness of the test chamber. He never socialized with his counterparts and never dated the local girls, shapely beauties who threw themselves at the rugged cut of his muscle bound form.
He didn't want distractions or attachments.
And what he wanted to go into space.
And that chance came riding in with the comet Fabio.
He had been lying on his bunk, thinking of space, when general quarters was sounded. He bounded down the hallway, boots slapping and shirttails flapping behind him. When he reached the company area in front of the training barracks, he was shocked and astonished to see the rain coated form of the Secretary of Defense and the Vice President standing grim faced on the quad, surround by a crowd of edgy soldiers. The assembled group of astronauts and instructors stood rigid in the near dark waiting for the command.
"AH-Ten-Shun! At Ease!" barked the senior instructor.
There was a momentary shuffle and then silence again.
"The Vice President has come to address a matter of strategic importance this evening gentleman... and lady." the instructor said, making grudging reference to the sole female trainee, Allison Runs Like Wolf.
"Mr. Vice President." the instructor said, stepping aside.
The Vice President looked haggard and worn. His tie was loosened and there were bags, suspended like gray hammocks beneath his eyes. He held a printout that had been folded and unfolded a hundred times in his thin, girlish hands. Without looking up he began to read.
"On the fifth of June an object was discovered in the quadrant of Pyxidis.."
At the mention of the constellation, Lincoln's mind drew from memory the star chart of that segment of space; it's dominant stars light years from Earth.
"This object..." the Vice President continued, "...has been identified as a class I comet, approximately 50 times larger than Halley's. It is, according to sources at NASA, on a collision course with the Earth."
There was a silence within the ranks, save for a subtle shifting of feet on gravel and a nodding of shaven heads. Lincoln alone remained transfixed, not by the news, but what he knew it meant to him. In the cool night air lightning bugs flashed, then wavered and dimmed as the Vice President cleared his throat.
"According to the estimates made available to us from the fine folks in Houston, we have at most, five days before impact. Hardly enough time for SAC to set up a launch with even the slightest chance of striking that object..."
"I'll go!" boomed the voice of Flight Lieutenant Capstick. Even as he spoke he began to move through the crowd, pushing the others aside, gently like children on a playground. The Vice President tried to continue, could not believe that anyone would offer themselves up for a mission that meant certain death, without hearing the deal through. The Vice President pressed on spastically.
"...head on. We need a volun...?" he stopped once again then looked up as the towering form of Flight Lieutenant Capstick carefully slipped the printout from his waifish fingers taking his hand like a bride.
"I'll go." he said softly, looking down on the Vice President's shiny, tonsured dome. "It's okay."
Behind them the rest of the assembled stared transfixed as the Vice President gushed, Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you young man. Thank-you so much.
The rest, as they say, is history. He was promoted on the spot to the rank of Major then flown by Air Force Two into Dulles. He was quickly fitted with a space suit for his appearance, which he would later make with the President to the thrill and the relief of the population of the planet.
While serious crews of technicians and soldiers readied the shuttle, Challenger II, while the other astronaut trainees grumbled in their dorms over the luck of it, he being an orphan and all, Major Lincoln Capstick went on tour. The morning following his Washington speech, he appeared on Good Morning, America, The Today Show and Live! With Regis And Kathy Lee. He wowed them all. Favorite cereal? Wheaties. Who will all the money go to, your national reward? Underprivileged kids. Do you have any last words for the grateful people of the world? Thanks again! He waved. That night he went on Late Show with David Letterman and killed by doing a stupid human trick of his own, throwing a dart into the center of an apple perched atop Paul Schaeffer’s head. Nice shot! Dave gushed. It's nothing. He replied, meaning it. In the chair next to him a young starlet jiggled and moaned, her full, red lips parted and wet, her eyes never once leaving his muscular form.
There was no place that he could go where he wasn't mobbed by throngs of adoring fans, young and old alike. A new fad sprung up overnight when young women in their teens and early twenties "married" Major Capstick in mock wedding ceremonies held in parking lots and super malls all over the country. They felt sorry that a man as rugged and handsome and brave as the twenty four year old Major would go to his death never having had a wife and if he could be believed, according to the Barbara Walters interview, also a virgin. Neva? She asked, leaning almost into his lap. No Ma'am, I'm not married. He responded deadpan. The women said that they would be available to him at his command, wherever and whenever before his fatal liftoff. New brides for their beloved groom. Huge funds were set up in his name and the money flowed, like a river, into them. On the outside he remained cool and aloof, the perfect picture of the perfect hero. The Senate rushed a resolution through that declared the date of his ultimate sacrifice as Capstick Day, a national holiday to be celebrated with fireworks. I like fireworks. He thought.
Within two days the factories had all been retooled and his likeness could be found not only on the news but also on soda cans, bedspreads and lunchboxes. He sat back from the vantage of the podium or the penthouse suite or the deck of the yacht that Donald Trump had thrown in and he watched his time come to end. Today he was everything and tomorrow, he'd be nothing at all.
A panic began to set in. There was for the first time in his life a sense of dread. He'd meant what he said when he first volunteered, but he thought in the back of his mind that they would be wrong, about the comet itself, it's path and it's speed. He thought that perhaps they'd come up with some way to shoot it down with lasers or to nail it without him after all. He didn't know that all they counted on from the moment that he said yes was the fact that he'd do what he said he would do. All night long on the eve of his launch he sat in the darkened Lincoln bedroom in the White House while the crowds outside sang hymns and stared at the dark outside and nervously fingered the Continental symbol that hung from his neck on a chain. Just as the sky began to turn to a slighter shade of gray and he decided to call the whole thing off, the door to the room opened slowly. It was the President in his pajamas and robe and he said softly to Lincoln,
"Son, it's time to go."
His words hung like weights in the air. A moment passed and then two as the President rocked back and forth on the balls of his slippered feet.
"Let's do it." Lincoln said and he meant it.

By the time the sun was up in the middle of the sky, the shuttle was ready. It was as quiet as a funeral despite the hundreds of thousands of well-wishers that had gathered around the edges of the Space Center. No one spoke at all. They couldn't help but notice the glowing smudge of dirty light above them at nine o'clock, just below the sun. The light of The Comet Fabio.
The gantry door swung open and the helmeted form of the Major stepped into the sunlight. He looked through his visor at his enemy above and took a deep breath of canister air.
Two technicians had escorted him up from the first floor where the president stood with his wife and their twenty-year old daughter Megan, herself dressed in black and smiling like a Gioconda. His last words to a live human being were to the technician who handed him his life support kit.
"Guess I won't be needing this much longer, huh?
And the cabin door clunked safe behind him, shutting out the world.
The countdown wound down as the coolant lines dropped and before the final toll of liftoff, the Major was fast asleep.
The shuttle ascended on a plume of white smoke, scattering woodpeckers and shards of ice and paint. The craft, bloated and full slowly began its rise to the heavens containing its powerful charge. In the control rooms of Houston and Canaveral engineers hovered in clusters above their glowing screens, their breath caught in their throats as they watched the blip from Earth approach the blip from space. In the sky above Florida the shuttle thundered skyward, dropping stages like cigarette butts behind it.
If you were able to float above the world and cast your gaze earthward, you would have seen a generation of mankind with their faces turned towards the heavens. In places like London and Rio, Eylat and Bahrain, crowds had gathered in streets and fields and in the playas and trenches all with the common purpose of watching, watching, watching. People bit their lips and wiped the sweat from their brows as the radios and televisions fell silent and dead.
Inside the shuttle the Major awoke in the icy cold of his own atmosphere. He held the controls as firmly as possible and peered through his visor at nothing.
Lost. All is lost at last. He thought.
There would never be a wedding for the Major or a home with wife and a child. He'd never see his father again or smell the cleansing breeze as it whispered through the night. There would never be another rocket to carry him into space nor a memory of this one he flew. Never and nothing at all. There was only this moment, frozen and thick and filled with the brilliant pinpricks of a billion stars.
His eyes were clenched with salty tears and his face was hot when the comet sped by to his left.
For a second in time, while the world stood unaware, two ships passed in space. The scientists and the technicians on Earth stood rigid at their posts, wide eyed in horror, unable to speak. They watched as the ship plunged deep into space and the comet came home to roost. The ship itself, useless and unknowing carried its cargo away from its home and headed off into the void. Onboard the Major howled at himself and at no one, his mission a failure, the end of it all. It took him a second to find the control located on the instrument cluster. He lifted the cowling that covered the toggle that lit the fuse and with a ragged sigh he flipped it forward.

From the ground it appeared like a spark in the daylight sky. There was, for an instant, a glowing mote that flared with such intensity the crowded fields of mankind hid their eyes from the sight of that radiant blossom. It was, according to those who witnessed it, a second sun in the summer sky before it collapsed on itself. And in that moment, behind it all, the comet passed the planet nearly two hundred miles wide.
In the control room the technicians and Chairmen fell back in their chairs from exhaustion, or slumped onto the cold tiled floor. The blip from space continued on its course and passed off the screen, while the blip from Earth was no more. The President, deep underground with his wife and his daughter, took the news like a champ and scheduled a press conference for the following day. The figures, it seemed, were all just a little bit off, the result of solving for x or a faulty Pentium chip, but it hardly mattered to anyone by then anyway, so no one ever mentioned it again.

Not much really changed in the course of life after that. Not much at all. Around the world street crews took down signs that read Mao Tse Tung Blvd. and Martin Luther King Jr. Expressway and Playa de Che Guevara, replacing them with signs that read Lincoln Capstick this and Lincoln Capstick that. Sculptures of that brave astronaut went up in thousands of parks for the benefit of a million pigeons and around the country 'Space Widows' wore nothing but black, day and night until the following spring when pastels came back into style.

for Lincoln Capstick

I thought with your talent for OHenry endings



that Lincoln would just let that comet slip on by and say


"Take that, mom, where ever the fuck you are"





MUHAHAHAHAHAHA

Comet Fabio

http://sky4us.com/naming.htm

"This comet was named Bappu - Newkirk - Whipple."

Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real

JULES VERNE
French novelist
(1828 - 1905)

Shameless bump.

You need the distraction. Politics is getting old about now.

Give me something Beth, I haven't read that since Dewey was a child and re-reading it I thought it was a good story. It was stiff in the writing, but I liked the overall picture.
Especially the President's speech.

Yes, I will give you something.
As usual, I enjoyed the story a great deal.
There were a few things that caught my eye earlier but I'm finding it difficult to see right now. My eyes are buggered and I've removed my glasses, so it may take me a bit to go over it again.

Good story, FPY, thanks for posting this...

Nope, I just can't see well enough to properly comment tonight.
I thought that I could note some things now, but I can't.


<------------me trying to see

Ten butt squeezies and three kegels. Thanks!

Well then, alrighty.

Loved it!

That's great, it starts with an earthquake, Clear Eyes shake and bake, an aeroplane,
Don-a-Moose is not afraid
Eye of a hurricane, listen to Alpha churn - world
Serves its own needs, dont misserve Leia’s needs. Feed
Not another Milo speak, grunt, no, Glitter, turn, ladder
Start to clatter with fear fight, Frank’s Right? . Wire
In a fire, representing Server games, in a government
For hire and a chat brat site. Left of west and coming in
A hurry with Pithy breathing down your neck. Team
By team Scooby baffled, trumped, Heywood’s hopped up,
Look at that low playing! Fine, then. Uh oh,
Monthly flow, posts are slow, cyber’s good, but it'll do. Save
Yourself, serve yourself. Slacker serves his own needs,
Listen to your head bleed dummy with the rapture and
The revered and the right, right. You vitriolic,
Patriotic, slam, fight, bright light, feeling pretty
Psyched-Loki

It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world don’t you blow it
It's the end of the world as we Ho it….. and I feel fine

Six o'clock – Cassandra hour. Don't get caught in twin
Towers. Slash and burn, return, listen to Natasha
Churn. Logging in, un-informing, and MaM burning, blood
Letting. Every motive escalate. Museline incinerate
Light a candle, light a motive. Step down, step down
Watch Squeeze have a crush, crushed, uh-oh, this means no
Fear Flea my dear. Renegade steer queer! A tournament,
a Tournament, a tournament of lies. Offer me solutions,
Offer me alternatives and I decline

It's the end of the world as we know it (it's time I had some time alone)
It's the end of the world don’t you blow it (it's time I had some time alone)
It's the end of the world as we Ho it …and I feel fine (it's time I had some
time alone)

I feel fine

The other night she dreamt of lives, Hari Kari Butter knives.
Sock Puppets in a line, Leonard Bernstein. Leonid Brezhnev, Lenny Bruce and Lester
Bangs. Birthday party, cheesecake, butter bean, boom! Simple Logic, patriotic, slam book neck, right? Right

It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world don’t you blow it!
It's the end of the world as we Ho it …and I feel fine (it's time I had some
time alone)

It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world don’t you blow it!
It's the end of the world as we Ho it …and I feel fine (it's time I had some
time alone)

It's the end of the world as we know it
It's the end of the world don’t you blow it!
It's the end of the world as we Ho it …and I feel fine (it's time I had some
time alone)

Fine
It's the end of the world as we know it….. (it's time I had some time alone)

TY other side of the world lady.

*hangs head*

I'm not really a woo-woo

I just like hanging around them to feel normal

Awesome spoof lyrics, nively done...