Flashlight. Anti-static wrist band. Screwdriver. Vise-grips. Oscillator. Got everything… except the part we’re installing. Mitch!
Oh, hello. I do apologize. Seems like every time you drop by, I’m hollering something at someone in our motley entourage, and typically that someone is Mitch Macaphee, our resident mad scientist. Sad that Big Green has fallen to such a base level of discourse. I remember the days when… when… excuse me… What the fuck is that noise? Can’t you fucking morons keep quiet for five seconds? Jesus jumping Christ on a bike!! Ahem. Yes… where was I? Ah, yeah. I’ve tried to keep us on a civil track here at the Cheney Hammer Mill, honestly I have. But it’s almost as though an evil spirit has taken hold — the spirit of Cheneys past. It’s nearly… just a minute… I’m telling our valued readers about how much we regret our recent resort to harsh words, you ass-munching dick-head!
All right. What is the bone of contention this week? Well, we’re back to maintenance on Marvin (my personal robot assistant). Mitch Macaphee, Marvin’s inventor, is still nominally on strike over our failure to, well, pay him for his efforts on our behalf. Ergo, we are forced to perform routine and extraordinary repairs on our automatonic cohort without adequate counsel from Marvin’s designer. Well, the shit has definitely hit the fan on this little dispute — Marvin is having serious issues (i.e. problems). I mentioned the thing about watering our mixing desk. Just lately, he’s taken to repointing the bricks on the north side of the mill. This wouldn’t be a problem, except that he thinks “repointing” means ripping the bricks out and filing them into spike-like objects with his atomic hand. Clearly, it was time to operate.
Left to our own devices, Matt, John, and I resorted to what we know best — stealth. We waited until nightfall yesterday, then broke into Mitch’s laboratory and turned up what appeared to be his 
notebook on the construction of Marvin. It was a little yellowed and dog-eared, but still readable. We paged through the sucker by candlelight, making rough sketches of his diagrams, then studying them at our leisure between mixing sessions. Even a blind man could see that Marvin was suffering from a dysfunctional framastatic conversion unit — it was right there in front of us! So we booked the conference room upstairs (no reservations necessary, since it’s abandoned like the rest of this dump) and prepared to open Marvin up like a pull-tab can of pacific salmon. (Actually, that’s sort of what he looks like inside. Strange. Very strange…)
Of course, now that we have our robot friend sedated, broken open, and laid out on a table, we are confronting our somewhat shameful failure to procure the replacement part necessary to perform this procedure successfully. You see… this is why we need scientists! We know no method! We have no skills! Mitch — get your sorry ass down here, you bugger!
There are headaches and then there are headaches. Some just come and go. Some move in with you and stay for weeks, months, years… The kind with legs and a mouth. You know what I’m talking about. Pour me another drink, mate.
I have to say, Mitch has been the biggest headache, pain in the ass, whatever extremity you prefer. Last week it was experiments with the weather — he invented something called the “thunder-quake” which has ruined our fence-mending efforts with the local constabulary (that and his dreaded “hurricanado”). Now he’s “on strike”, which means he refuses to maintain Marvin (my personal robot assistant) until we pony up some cash, luncheon vouchers, whatever. This is not good, because (as you know) we lean on Marvin to do just about everything around here so that we can maintain our slovenly musician-like lifestyles. When Marvin starts clunking in a serious way, his many chores fall to the next person on the duty list. And when I say “person”, I mean to include large, oddly misshapen root vegetables. That’s not a good thing. He’s got strong roots, that man-sized tuber, and a lot of pride to go with it. But as domestic help, he leaves much to be desired.
Don’t think our relationship with Mitch Macaphee is pure friendship — not at all. We have a service contract with him. Mitch is paid to find scientifically valid solutions to a variety of problems around the mill. Not that he always manages to find solutions. But what the hell — he built Marvin from bits and bobs lying around his laboratory. Only he can keep that man of tin on his rails. So when Marvin starts to cant a bit to the left, or his programming goes haywire and he starts watering the mixing console as if it were a fichus tree, I haven’t the slightest notion how to straighten the boy out. And though it pains me to give Mitch money for something he should gladly do for free… the tuber could never tell the difference between a fichus and a Soundcraft. It just ain’t in him.
After all that baking, this is what you come up with? Doesn’t even look edible. I’m telling you, I’ve never heard of an artichoke pie. That’s just plain deees-gusting. (Last night it was artichoke sorbet. Uuuulllgghh….)
on our mechanical friend? Wasn’t it me who said, let’s just be glad for our time together? (No, wait — that last one was Diana Ross. Sorry.) Right, right… but that was weeks ago. Marvin should be able to handle cooking. Mitch has programmed him with the latest recipes from Wolfgang Puck and Chef Guillame. Can we help it if the sauce gets ruined somewhere in the transcription process? Am I to be blamed for everything that goes wrong around here, huh? HUH?
It may well be true that Marvin can burn this coarse material in his ion reactor, but it certainly doesn’t constitute “food” to the rest of us. Christ in himmel, it’s not even a savory artichoke pie! It’s got brown freaking sugar in it. This robot is trying to make me spew in the worst way. (Though John White and Trevor James Constable seem to enjoy what they term the pie’s “delicate flavor.” I think it’s the result of food poisoning.) Oh, doctor!