Lesson one: if you find yourself staked out in an abandoned hammer mill with your bandmates, never… never let your resident mad scientist work unattended. Negative consequences will be had.
What do I mean, specifically? Just try it and find out! Yes, you aspiring bands out there… get yourself a mill and a madman, shake vigorously, and wait until it starts to fizz. Then you will have your answer. In our case, we didn’t even need the vigorous shaking. Our resident mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee, sort of shakes himself up. You may recall that last week he had taken up a new hobby – sculpting. We of Big Green thought little of this… our cohorts are always trying new things, starting new trends, discovering new interests. (Like the man-sized tuber and his harmonica playing. Or John and his anti-matter bicycle collection. Or me and my cucumber sandwich juggling.) But soon we noticed some disturbing signs that Mitch was perhaps taking his new thing (or “thang“) a little too far.
Sure, this sort of thing is bound to happen with a creative mind, right? Our Mitch is always throwing something together. Marvin (my personal robot assistant), after all, is one of his greatest inventions (and, not coincidentally, one of the greatest pains in my ass). Trouble is, unlike other idle hobbies and casual interests, what Mitch creates tends to have a mind of its own. That’s why I became a bit concerned when he chipped his Frankenstone sculpture free of its moorings. My colleagues tried to reassure me. “Relax, Joe,” they would say, “Mitch obviously prefers freestanding three-dimensional art.” This surprised me. (Not because of what they were telling me, but because they had not addressed me with my usual nickname “fucker.”) So I tried to put my concerns out of mind.
Then sometime last week, don’t recall which night exactly, I heard something clomping around downstairs. I assumed it was anti-Lincoln looking for his goat cheese, as usual, 
kicking up a fuss because someone had walked off with it yet again. (Sometimes I think there’s a bit of the pirate in that old man.) But the footfalls were heavier than that. Sounded like they were breaking through the floorboards. Shortly thereafter, I saw a sinister shadow in the hall. Totally unrelated to the stomping, as it happens. (Just a bit of water damage on the drywall – nothing to get worked up about.) Nonetheless, those steps were strange, unnerving. And when I rose the next morning, the Frankenstone statue was gone. That’s right – GONE! Just a faint trail of stone dust leading out into the hall.
Yeah, you’re right – I should talk to Mitch Macaphee about this. But he’s been busy, and I’ve been busy. Just haven’t had time to deal with it, in all honesty. That Frankenstone statue – I’m sure it’ll turn up. And if not, we’ll just have Mitch sculpt a private investigator.
sight of my mom pulling the Kennedy bumper sticker off my bedroom door, her grave expression rendering the news superfluous. A sliver of the sticker remained on that door for some time. Nasty days indeed.
We need to fix this – this tendency we have to sit on our hands while outrageous crimes are committed in our names. We need to stand up when we’re being ripped off by the pirates and speculators whose representatives currently occupy the White House and halls of Congress. Failure to do so only encourages them to continue doing the same thing. Even now they’re talking about Iran almost constantly; even now they’re blackmailing the Iraqi government into allowing permanent U.S. bases in that country. They feel confident in doing all this (and more) because, aside from a little harmless unpopularity, their crimes have cost them nothing.
Look at that. Chip off the old block, eh, Mitch? You should be proud, very proud. You are? Good, good. (Arrogant sonofabitch…)
into the fields where they belong. That’s right, friends – the potato head family is gone, gone, gone. And it was Mitch who came up with the solution. Foolishly simple, really. He just phoned up our mutual friend Trevor James Constable and asked him to focus the full strength of his patented orgone generating machine towards the Hammer Mill. Let me tell you, that got a rise out of those little suckers. They started rolling out the door the minute Trevor James flipped the switch. Of course, there were some side effects. My fillings, for instance, began emitting easy listening music. Also, the fireplace implements took on an unearthly glow. But it was well worth the trouble.
place.) The only real downside here is that Mitch is insufferably pleased with himself for having solved this thing so quickly, so elegantly, so…. so enough, already! Even I’m singing his praises. The fact is, he doesn’t react very well to success. Now he thinks he can do anything. He’s inserted himself into my mixing and mastering sessions (which at least gives me someone else to blame for the positively geological pace of this project). He’s taken up cooking (using the same tools he uses to work with micro-organisms… uuuhhhlllll….). And, even worse, Mitch now thinks he can sculpt figures out of living rock. He chipped a crude Frankenstein’s monster out of the side of a cliff – looks ridiculous. Today I saw him looking discerningly at one of the mill’s courtyard wall – the one that makes up the north side of my room!