Everyone is so mean to the moon. When I was in school, all the other kids called me craterface because I had these deep pockmarks. And they were not comparing me to Scorpions gang leader and bad-boy heartthrob Leo Balmudo. I had no gang, I had no Cha-Cha, I had sadness! And then I got to thinking. The moon has no gang. The moon has no Cha-Cha. The moon, therefore, must be sad like me.
In ninth grade English class, when we did sonnets, six entire children wrote sonnets blaming the moon for their emotional dysregulation. Six entire children! No, children, that is not on the moon! That is on your broken homes and neglectful parentage and nu metal music and maybe a chemical imbalance and/or deep-seated, unresolved trauma. Put down the “Freak on a Leash,” put down the pen you use to write your cruel moon sonnets, and pick up a phone and schedule an appointment with a mental health professional. Ask them if you need Eskalith or if it’s just a puberty thing but leave the moon out of it!
In my senior year, a tsunami wiped out Fukuoka. The whole thing. And you know what they did? They blamed it on the moon! The moon does not cause tsunamis! The moon causes tidal waves! And the scientists, they tried to explain this, they tried to explain there was an underwater earthquake that was likely triggered by a rise in sea levels and that we were responsible for all the wet dead people, but no! Nobody wants to take responsibility. It’s so much easier to put it on the moon. It reminded me of the time Chet Mogmiser missed the game-winning shot at the regional basketball championship. He blamed it on being distracted by my pockmarks! Ridiculous! I was sitting at the back of the bleachers AND I covered my face with my hands! And then a whole thing of gossip telephone happened and it turned into this thing where I was on the basketball team but I got kicked off because I was a ball hog and I missed every shot in the championship game and everyone said I was a disgrace to the school and they threw lunch meat at me and Chet Mogmiser laughed and I cried and cried and cried.
One time I thought about how easy it would be to buy an assault rifle. I could set up a VPN and research how to kill everyone online and I could buy a gun and I could shoot everyone and I could steal the camera footage and I could frame Chet Mogmiser with the AI deepfake technology and I could scream HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE A CRATERFACE?! as the bullets punched holes into their smooth, smooth faces. But this is crazy. One, the AI deepfake technology, it could cause environmental things, it could do a catastrophe and the people would just blame this on the moon. Counterproductive. Two, they would call me/Chet a moon sympathizer, they would call me/Chet a crazy moon terrorist. Counterproductive.
But I had to do something! People were calling their congressmen, demanding they blow up the moon! Nobody calls their congressmen for anything, that’s how serious this was! And luckily congress is very slow because they wanted to do it! The scientists said no, no, no, please do not do this, it will cause apocalyptic weather events and the congressmen said it’s fine, Piccolo blew up the moon in Dragon Ball Z and it saved the earth from Gohan’s rampage and everything was fine and the scientists said it was confirmed in Dragon Ball: Kakarot that Piccolo didn’t actually blow up the moon but instead used a technique called Illusion and the congressmen said that is not a canon source, we are going to blow up the moon after a lot of meetings.
I had a plan but I had to raise a lot of money fast. I launched a cryptocurrency called $FUCCTHAMUUNCOIN$ (“moon” was used as a slur at this time) and everyone was so mad about the moon that they thought investing in my cryptocurrency was anti-moon activism. Ha! I became the world’s first trillionaire. While congress held their meetings, I took eighteen wives and formulated a plan to save the moon forever. I would build the world’s biggest rocket. I would pay scientists to build the world’s biggest rocket. And we would load the rocket with as many bottles of Neutrogena pink grapefruit oil-free acne moisturizer as possible and I would lather all the craters on the moon until the moon was smooth.
My eighteen wives, they said I was crazy. They said I was projecting. That I was so rich now, that I could spread skin care awareness, I could make dermal grafts a human right, that this wasn’t about the moon. It was about me. And I said I love you, babies, but I will divorce all eighteen of you before I give up on the moon. They said congress won’t blow up the moon, congress never does anything. I said you don’t understand, the moon is crying because everyone hates it. They said the moon can’t hear what everyone is saying about it. I said you can feel it. You can feel when everyone hates you. And I can hear it. And I don’t want to be here anymore. I want the moon to know that someone cares.
