When I launched this column two weeks ago, I wrote that I found politicians and trained monkeys to be entertaining, although sometimes I found it hard to tell them apart.

A week later, President Bush proposed colonizing the moon.

Eerie. It’s like he was reading my mind.

Never mind that 43 million Americans don’t have health insurance, never mind that our schools are old and crowded, never mind that we’re racking up the largest deficit in our nation’s history... A colony on the moon is flat-out funny.

When I first saw the headline on my homepage, I clicked along, sure I would find myself the butt of some elaborate prank, a merry little hoax, but the story proceeded with a straight face. My second thought was that Bush must be drinking again ... but that’s unkind, and I’m hardly one to cast stones at our nation’s quaffers. (Delusional quaffers, however, who dream up $500 billion vanity projects ...)

Still: a colony on the moon? I imagine it starts small, a homesteader’s shotgun shack at the edge of a primordial crater. It’s a lonely life, a cowboy life, but not without its perks: the earth shines down in its blue-green brilliance, there’s no mercury in the food supply, and Celebrity Mole can’t be beamed that far. For the right kind of settler, armed with an appreciation of solitude, an old six-string guitar, and a year’s supply of canned beans and oxygen, it could be right nice.

But nothing good lasts forever, and soon, a small cul-de-sac grows up, with tidy lots, barking schnauzers, and weekly trash service. Residents chafe over neighborhood covenants — no clotheslines, no purple shutters — but everyone realizes it’s best for property values. The colony grows — thanks in part to that four-lane from Betelgeuse, tacked on as a pork-barrel rider in a Byzantine appropriations bill — and before long there’s a nine-hole golf course, a Long John Silver’s, and Rotary meetings on third Tuesdays.

Next comes a nasty little fight over a planned Super Wal-Mart. Tired of working as roadside moon-rock vendors, locals say they want the jobs; what’s more, after years of eating freeze-dried beef stroganoff, they’re about ready for a big-ass canister of cheese puffs priced to move at 89 cents. All looks good until the hard-charging local weekly points out that the proposed site would disrupt the migratory patterns of the rare Martian spacefinch, and the whole thing gets tabled until the next meeting of the Lunar Planning Commission. By the time the danged thing finally gets built, the Bush plan has moved on; Mars is the hot planet, and the little lunar backwater is nothing more than a detention center for First Amendment renegades and suspicious-looking foreigners. Never trust a Venusian.

But the cheese puffs are still 89 cents.

Yes, folks, I like the idea. I support whatever it takes: a re-tooling of NASA, a blank check from Congress, and, who knows, maybe 20 million more Americans living in poverty. Because until we get to Mars, George W. can’t really get to work on his next big idea: a time machine.

Geronimo!

(Jay Hardwing is a free-lance writer based in Asheville. He can be reached at smardwig@charter.net.)