By Carol Van Strum
IWW transmit, Lunar Observation Lab, February 29: The U.S. space program, funded by reality television advertising since early days of the Greater Depression, received a major setback today, when sponsors pulled the plug on its popular, star-studded “LOL” series. Advertisers’ outrage was reportedly triggered by footage of Normandy Spears, the program’s First Granddaughter, bursting the seams of a canine space suit. The last words of the show, bleeped out on public airwaves, were Ms. Spears wailing, “But it was made for a damn bitch, it’s fucking got to fit me!”
Another victim of the cancellation is the Department of Defense lunar headquarters, which was also funded by advertising revenue from the reality show as well as from controversial laser billboards flashed across the moon’s surface nightly. Defense contractors are at a loss, literally. The collapse of the DoD’s Lunar Observation Laboratory will cost nearly three times as much to fix as it cost to build. Cosmonauts and stellar soldiers alike have been working around the clock to fix breaks and leaks in the airtight buildings that comprise the military complex, known popularly as LOL since its long-suppressed military purpose became known.
According to documents filed in ongoing litigation between the government and its contractors, the U.S. Space Construction and Command Center (USSCCC, commonly known as “U-Suck”) subcontracted with Keefer Enterprises for all maintenance and repair as well as more than half the original construction of the complex.  The subcontract was issued on a no-bid basis despite strict congressional and executive prohibitions against such practices. “This is a horrifying example of precisely the kind of thing our open-bid laws were designed to prevent,” says former U.S. Senator Bradley Walpole, speaking in voice-over against images of collapsing tunnels and frantic scientists in the chaotic final scenes before the show was abruptly blacked out.
Keefer Enterprises, a high profit, low profile company, built a marketing empire on rejected goods during the second millennium A.D., repackaging flawed merchandise and outdated or contaminated foodstuffs for the worldwide prison market. The company’s notoriety briefly spiked into public view with the deadly peanut butter scandal of 2008 in which thousands of prison inmates and two school children died. Once the limelight of that episode faded, Keefer continued to grow, eventually controlling more than ninety percent of the world’s metastasizing prisons.
As prison industries flourished, Keefer expanded into prison construction based on the same profitable use of discarded and rejected materials. Inevitably, however, inmates of Keefer-built prisons discovered their many construction flaws and began escaping en masse, as seen in the popular TV series “Inside-Outside.” Subsequently, Keefer’s collapsing business empire, a long-term beneficiary of the Corporate Welfare Act of 2010, revived overnight with its sudden aquisition of defense contracts for space construction and maintenance.
How USSCCC hired the company without adequate vetting is the subject of eight different government investigations.В Bidding for broadcasts of Senate investigative hearings, scheduled to replace LOL reality programming, is reported to be intense.В Meanwhile, 375 scientists, cosmonauts, stellar soldiers, and celebrity space cadets have been crowded into a small, non-Keefer-built section of the lunar complex, where fighting briefly broke out over the only functional space suits, which were made for livestock and not manufactured by Keefer.
“It’s a little big, but better than a duck,” an engineer reported to ground control from the depths of a horse suit. “And no, we’re not taking them from the animals. The Ark ship for bringing the livestock was Keefer-built and never got off the ground.”
The Defense Department, working with NASA, has launched rescue carriers bearing sponsors’ logos and emergency supplies. How many of the rescue ships are Keefer-built is not known, as such information is protected under national security and trade secrecy laws.
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Carol,
You make my head spin. i start to laugh and then (as i continue to read) am called to a long pause. Your lampooning of the prison-industrial complex is long overdue. Up to now, only a few others (such as Van Jones) have sought to sound the alarm on what you rightfully refer to as a cancer in our culture (and others). Your “Keefer Enterprises” is a brilliant metaphor for the loss of integrity and control in growth that cancer represents, resulting in a system colllapse. Thank you for helping wake us up to the fact that we are sliding down the slippery slope of becoming a nation where the economy is once again propped up by slave labor. And this does not even scratch the surface of this richly dense and brilliant piece of writing.
Your storytelling ability, humor and creative use of acronyms reminds me of my favorite contemporary author.
i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again, Carol. When i grow up i want to write as well as you do. You are truly an enrichment to the Planet Waves community.
Thank you so much.