Okay, how about peanut butter cups? Yes? Good, good. And Fruit Loops? No? That’s weird… because we still have Puffa Puffa Rice…

Oh, hi there, you intrepid Web surfers and lovers of cheap music. Just caught me and my fellow Big Green principals in the midst of an exhaustive inventory of … well, just about everything you can name, friends. (That’s another thing to check…. friends…. ) It’s something in the way of a damage assessment. One of our less congenial cohorts (no, not Mitch Macaphee), as some of you may recall, leapt through a warp in the space-time continuum that conveniently presented itself outside the second floor washroom (just across from the north staircase – you can’t miss it). Yes, Anti-Lincoln, that scourge of all that is good and nice, antithetical to all that is Lincoln – he threw himself bodily into a worm-hole that sent him spinning back more than a century to… well, to the time of Lincoln. And hell, he being him, he couldn’t resist making a few changes while he was back there.

So… we’re trying to figure out exactly how he’s changed everything we know and love (and despise). That’s proving rather difficult, since we’re relying on the memory banks of Marvin (my personal robot assistant) rather than trusting our own fallible memories. And on the basis of our work thus far, it seems quite a bit is different. The South, for instance, is its own country. The North, frustrated by losing the south, invaded and occupied Canada. (Critics say it was to steal their maple syrup. Spoiler alert: Cars now run on maple syrup.) People appear to be driving on the left and taking lots of chances. Silly Putty was never invented, nor the Slinky, but the accordion is still a very popular instrument. (Or maybe that’s different… hmmm….) And instead of just talking to the people around them, everyone appears to be communicating with distant people via these tiny little communication devices – phones, I guess you would call them – that look like Star Trek communicators. (Okay… that might be the same as before. Now I’m not sure.)

I think the thing that is really disappointing about all this is the total lack of Ramen noodles in this new, Anti-Lincoln contrived reality. Not sure yet how that came to be, but something Anti-Lincoln did back in the 1860s started a chain of events that made the invention of packaged Ramen noodles impossible. In our almost completely cashless state (something that has, sadly, survived intact), we, like many others, depended on the low-cost nutrition afforded by these little bits of cardboard. Now we are reduced to…. well…. little bits of cardboard. (Cardboard does exist. Halle-freaking-luia.) I know what you’re thinking: that one of us is going to be tempted to do something rash and irresponsible, like jump into the time warp and apprehend Anti-Lincoln before he causes all this havoc. Well, have no fear…. none of us is insane enough to attempt such a bonehead play. No, sir. That’s why they invented the man-sized tuber.

Okay, tubey…. try to remember. Once you’re back there, don’t talk to anyone but Anti-Lincoln. Got that? Tubey? Right…. he’s non-verbal. Mitch – write the instructions on his husk, there’s a good chap.

Woke up this morning, my head was so bad. Worst hangover I ever had. What happened to me last….. Whoa, hold on there. Must have been singing in my sleep. My apologies.

Yeah, I was dreaming about some of the god-awful cover bands I’ve played in over the years. (Well I remember back in ’93… tar-nation, that was a time!) It’s like paying penance for a heinously miss-spent youth… Condemned forever to roam the catacombs of memory, warbling disposable rock-n-roll warhorses to myself. W.T.F. – I don’t think I ever even SANG “Double shot of my baby’s love” or whatever it’s called! I must be reliving the lives of other ex-lounge lizards. Uhhlllll…. That’s a grisly thought. Anyway, welcome back to the Cheney Hammer Mill, where the roofs are sagging, the floors are heaving, and the space in-between is getting narrower and narrower all the time. (The man-sized tuber has scrounged up a 4X8 post from somewhere and propped it up next to his terrarium, just in case. Forward-thinking, I thought.) We make the best of things (and, occasionally, the worst of things) over here.

Don’t know if you remember, but last week I reported on Anti-Lincoln’s recent disappearance into what seemed to be a hole into another dimension. (How do I know it was Anti- and not Posi-Lincoln? The spiraling shape in the interdimensional wormhole was rotating in a counter-clockwise direction.) Before you ask, the answer is no – no, none of us jumped in there after him. Quite frankly, Anti-Lincoln has a tendency to get on everyone’s nerves. Matt just threw a sandwich at him last week in frustration. (This may not seem all that serious, but let me tell you… it was one mean sandwich.) Even Marvin (my personal robot assistant) doesn’t care for the man (or anti-man), and he never had the property of dislike programmed into him. Posi-Lincoln – the actual 16th president of the United States, plucked from the past by virtue of Trevor James Constable’s orgone generating machine (read all about it in our archives) – seems totally unconcerned over the disappearance of his evil doppelganger, even though this could lead to trouble for the great emancipator.

How? Glad you asked, actually. Well, think about it, now. What if, by pure chance, Anti-Lincoln lands in Washington D.C. in, say, 1863, and is mistaken for the genuine article. Why… the outcome of the Civil War might well be altered. The South might actually succeed in its secessionary ambitions and become a North American apartheid South Africa, while the North might morph into a somewhat crispier version of Canada – Canadian bacon, if you will. Where would we be then, eh? I’ll tell you where…. right here in the Cheney Hammer Mill, that’s where. As I said, this would be bad news for Lincoln, since his reputation might be negatively affected…. but for the rest of us, well, it could be very much the same deal. Just weirder, if that can be imagined. So before you say it, yes, I should have stopped that fuzz-faced goon from leaping through the time warp towards eons and eras unknown. But I failed. I FAILED.

Whoof. Glad I got that out of my system. Now we can proceed with our day, right? Hey…. where is everyone? And what happened to my map of the United States? It seems much shorter now….

So, as I was saying…. What was I saying again? Can’t keep track, frankly. Give me a moment to page back through my previous utterances. Ah, yes. A day in the life.

5:30 p.m. Sifting through the mountain of complaints I’ve received after posting the last blog. Seems like people don’t like hearing blow-by-blow descriptions of how we spend our time. Strange… because even though it seems that way, I remain convinced that they do care. Maybe it’s the Zenite snuff sFshzenKlyrn plied me with earlier, I don’t know.

6:47 p.m. A noise begins drifting up from the basement. At first I think it may be some kind of diseased creature, wandered in through the sewer lines in search of sweet revenge. As I move closer to the stairwell, however, I realize it’s just my comrades tuning up for another rehearsal. Why don’t they ever tell me about these rehearsals? (Perhaps they announce them at the band meetings that… I never… attend…. oh, yeah.)

7:01 p.m. Rehearsal’s over. Man, that was taxing! Almost as much so as that new tax on beer and wine. Oh my God – those madmen in Albany…. what are they doing to us?!? How am I EVER going to come up with another 1-1/2 cents to spend on a six pack? It’s MADNESS!!!

9:50 p.m. There’s a hole in the living room wall. Not an ordinary hole, mind you – a hole into another dimension. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) ran across it while he was doing the tidying up. (He doubles as one of those robotic vacuum cleaners – pretty versatile.) Don’t know how it got there, but my guess is that this is the result of some experiment Mitch Macaphee, our mad science adviser, has been working on. Lot of racket, noxious fumes, and heavy vibrations coming from his makeshift lab, just lately. Must have landed himself a grant somewhere.

10:15 p.m. This just in – Anti-Lincoln has wandered into the trans-dimensional wormhole in the living room. God, I hate when he does that!

That’s one Lincoln out the door. Good thing we’ve got a spare.