The other day I was giving one of my comedy cave tours at Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park. I average one joke every 30 seconds on my tours.

I pointed to a gaggle of stalactites on the ceiling and said, “Take a picture of these, save the photo, and turn it upside down. You will see a city on Mars.”

As I stood back and observed, the “ooohs” and “aaahs” erupted with timed precision.

When they died down, I said, “Now I want you to email your photos to NASA, and have their marketing department overlay them on those boring pictures of Barstow, California they keep sending out.”

Laughter.

Apparently, one little girl did just that.

NASA took the photo and did the overlay.

Then NASA set up a press conference, and announced to the world that they had discovered signs of past life on Mars.

“Speaking on condition of anonymity,” one NASA official said that they even found an empty Starbucks coffee shop in every building.

In a genius publicity move, NASA did what they learned from National Geographic. Remember when National Geographic had a picture of a fossil “lizard-bird” on their front cover a few years ago?

The “lizard-bird” fossil turned out to be a fake from China, and they had a small retraction later on. But by then it was too late. Millions of museums around the world will refer to that photo as a proof of evolutionary transition.

So NASA has proof of past life on Mars even though it was retracted in a small statement on page 7 of the Wakarusa Tribune’s annual “Best of Hog Prices” edition.

Intelligent life in outer space.

NASA is raking in the bucks now that it is piquing the interest of the public. The federal budget for NASA has increased 380% per year, compounded daily, for the next 50 years.

The Space Program can breathe easy and coast for a while.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I gotta go screw some loose stalactites back onto the ceiling.