Six-eleven. Hell, that’s 9-11 turned upside-down, isn’t it? Spooky. Strange coincidences abound in the land of the paranoid – a foggy and foreboding place if ever there was one… and there WAS one. Six-eleven. Our fodder who art in heaven.

Guess we’ve got that old travelin’ blues. Ain’t that how the song goes? (There seem to be a lot of old songs on my mind these days, I must admit. Please forgive me.) Anyway, you’d have them too if somebody blew a big hole in YOUR squat-house. Crikey, the whole place smells like charcoal and old hammer-stock splinters. Old anti-Lincoln can’t even make himself a plate of anti-matter toaster waffles without nearly yakking all over his stew. Intolerable, I tell you. Just the sort of situation that would drive normally reasonable derelicts such as ourselves to thoughts of the road… of performing before throngs of adoring fans (many of which have two or even THREE heads)… of visiting exotic ports of call in undiscovered galaxies. Of… of…. of escape, damn it, escape!

Turns out that Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is
not all that keen on the idea of being left behind to handle little tasks like… oh…. rebuilding the mill, buying off the constables, dodging any stray shells from Gung-Ho’s proving grounds (I believe the Cheney Hammer Mill may now be listed as a legitimate practice target). Minor stuff, but he’s balking… at least to the extent that his programming will allow. Robots of Marvin’s general classification don’t frown, exactly, but they do have subtle ways of letting you know that they are not too pleased with what you’re demanding of them. Lookit — when professor Mitch Macaphee builds a robot, it’s bound to be more than just a soulless servo-mechanism. Our Marvin has feelings, you know? And opinions, lots of opinions. Only thing is, he’s programmed to be somewhat reticent, in an automatonic sort of way. (I keep thinking one of these days he’s just going to EXPLODE. Or join “Captured By Robots” for real.

Hey, you can’t make everybody happy. Neither should you try, in my book. (I have a book? News to me.) Still, Marvin is an important part of our ludicrous entourage, and as such, he is due more than a minimum of consideration. Truth be told, he has a substantial fan base in his own right. It certainly rivals our own, particularly in those out-of-the-way corners of the galaxy run entirely by robots, cyborgs, or the like. I don’t think it’s entirely clear to them that Marvin is not a musician, as such, though he does pick up an instrument every once in a while – banjos, guitars, drums, the occasional bagpipes, etc. As you might imagine, out in the great beyond there isn’t always a whole lot of difference between holding an instrument and actually doing something with it. (Yeah, that’s right. It’s a lot like planet Earth.)

Anyway, so once we’ve got the rent-a-spacecraft in shape, we can start thinking about little details like, where the hell are we going? and what the hell are we going to do for money? One thing at a time. Don’t ask more than that of us, my friends. Too damn taxing.

Tell me what I say, right now. Or rather, I’ll tell you what I say right now. And do it right now. See how much meaning there is in even the simplest, most emotive pop lyrics? Just dripping with meaning… like Crimson and Clover… the song that, I believe, could have more logically inspired the Manson rampage than Helter Skelter (which is just a raucous song about a carnival ride). I’ve mentioned this before — think about it. “Crimson”… blood! “Clover”…. on the graves of the dead! “Over and over”… many dead

So I say unto you – beware those who read too deeply
into pop lyrics.

Anyway, what the hell, things are a little disheveled here in Big Green land (so what’s new?). Seems we’ve gained a Hammer Mill but lost a … well… lost a wall of the Hammer Mill. A major supporting wall. Not a good thing from a structural engineering perspective, no sir. Our overzealous neighbor Gung-Ho really knows how to put a hole in something. (And if we hadn’t been in the midst of our eviction order, that something might have been us.) With a daunting clean-up and repair job ahead of us — to say nothing of the effort we will need to expend staying ahead of the legal consequences of Gung-Ho’s bombing run — we are giving serious thought to another interplanetary romp, spreading our message of love throughout the galaxy through the universal language of song. You know, on the lamb again.

What about the album? Well, we’re close to finished with that sucker. Just doing some backing vocals, incidental instrumental parts… then it’s mixing time. So I think we can afford to take the old mastering deck on the road with us. Only trouble is, Mixmaster Marvin (my personal robot assistant) will probably be staying behind on this trip to oversee the reconstruction work at the Cheney Hammer Mill (and to soak up all the love from the local constabulary as they arrive with torches, hoping to put our heads on pikes). Don’t know how that’s going to work, exactly. We may need to have the man-sized tuber sit in for some of the mixing. He can actually push those faders pretty well with his larger roots. (It’s the ears I’m a little worried about. Namely, he ain’t got any.)

Hey, we’re used to just feeling our way along around here, anyway. You know that, right? That’s what drives us creatively… grim happenstance and the usual assortment of animal needs. For Matt and I, that means assorted vegetables and a hard roll. For John, a carton of cottage cheese (or “cowboy food” as it’s known in this manor). For Mitch Macaphee, a bottle of Riesling and a live circuit board, or one of those Frankenstein-era arc generators with a big spark flying off the end. See? It’s a little different for everyone.

So next week, expect to see us packing our belongings into the battered spacecraft we use as an interstellar RV. Something to look forward to, eh? Let’s just hope the local constables are a little slow on the uptake. (It usually takes a week or two for them to get around to discovering that we’re responsible for some disaster.) ‘Nuff said. 

There it is – the magic word. Little mishap or major catastrophe, doesn’t matter. One word covers it all. Call it an apologia, a mea culpa, a universal admission of human failing… that’s the word of the day. Then there’s that other little word: FUCK!

Fair warning to all: Be careful what you ask for! Yes, friends, in an effort to restore our squatter’s status at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, we have managed to blow a big hole in our beloved squat house – a major breach in the street-side wall, courtesy of neighbor Gung-Ho and his squadron of bombers-for-hire. Of course, we had asked the good fellow to drop a few intimidating shells on the offices of the developer-bloodsuckers that turned us out onto the streets. This he did – actually, a bit more emphatically than we had expected. In fact, much of the town is in ruins, including the local magistrate’s courthouse. (Our plea for leniency was vacated, as was the courthouse itself… just ahead of a wall of fire.  But as is his wont, he got a little carried away and… well…. ka-boom. That’s right — ka. boom.

When we headed back towards the mill to claim what was rightfully ours and saw a yawning gap with black smoke rising to the heavens, we knew something was awry. Though I was inclined to send Marvin (my personal robot assistant) in first to assess the damage (and perhaps extinguish the fires before secondary explosions ensue), I took it upon myself to walk through the front door ahead of him. What happened then? Well… I can only tell you in the form of a popular song:

I fell in through a burnin’ ring of fire!

Down, down, down, and the flames a-gettin’ higher!

Yes indeed — Gung-Ho had opted for the heavier ordinance. I think he may have had one or two of those mini-MOAB’s in his arsenal, I don’t know. Earth penetrators, perhaps. Either way, there was a gaping hole in the Earth’s crust just inside the front entrance, the walls of which were alight with an unearthly flame – Saint Elmo’s Fire, perhaps. (Saint somebody’s fire…) In any case, I was imploring Saint Getmethehelloutahere in as loud a voice as possible, grabbing uselessly at the air as I hurtled downward through a newly drilled chimney of living rock that appeared to stretch straight to the chewy center of the “oit”, already. And I would have encountered that great ball of molten caramel, had it not been for the diligence of our own Trevor James Constable, who quickly surmised my perilous circumstance and trained his orgone generating device down the bomb crater, grabbing me like a science fiction tractor beam and pulling me back from the very jaws of oblivion. Close shave, big mister.

I would rather not go through the trauma of describing the rubble-strewn mess that confronted us within the bowels of our beloved squat-mill. Suffice to say that we (i.e. Marvin) have a very large clean-up job ahead of us. Probably a good time to go back on the road, especially since the local constabulary will be after our collective ass, once they discover who is responsible for the surprise attack… and once they’ve dug themselves out of their collapsed building. Spaceward ho!