Yeah sure fancy plans but how do you implement them? Just grabbing the earth to stop it is hard, and thats just half the acceleration. It turns out the planet is distressingly blobby for such geoengineering projects.
Just strap a bunch of rockets and point them to the horizon... until you realize that the earths crust isn't that deep and your rockets just end up ripping a scab of earth off and flying off into space. I guess that would be one way to make a local volcano.
[Mom pops down to the basement to say Hi and see what you're up to] ;-)