Down and down and down we go, round and round and round we go… Ah, I forgot what comes next. Oh yeah – it’s either “ker-splash!” or “crunch!”
Hi, friends. If you’re just tuning in (or browsing over), we’re working on a little under ground expedition. That crevice that opened up in the foundation of the Cheney Hammer Mill (our adopted home) apparently goes down to the core of our humble planet, and we’ve taken it upon ourselves to determine just how goddamned deep that actually is. First we sent Marvin (my personal robot assistant) down there, with less than his full cooperation (we had Big Zamboola give him a shove of encouragement). Our latest foray is actually tasked with finding out what happened to Marvin. This consists of the man-sized tuber with a flashlight and a web cam attached to his… well… head (or anterior protuberance, whichever you prefer).
Dropping him into the crevice is like dropping a potato down a well. In fact, I don’t know why I’m using a simile – it IS dropping a potato down a well, waiting to hear the splash. I know what you’re thinking, but just remember… the man-sized tuber did nothing but oppress us as mayor of our little town, and so he owes us, in our estimation. (No, I don’t have a mouse in my pocket. I’m referring to the entire Big Green entourage.)
There are better ways to spend our time, to be sure, and we’ve been trying to find them (blindfolded, with oven mitts on both hands). Like managing to record, rehearse, etc. – and yes, we’ve been doing both, between our little house projects. Still working on that live project concentrating on audio-visual explanations of all of our songs. This came out of playing, listening, and realizing that, w.t.f., we’ve got 
some ‘splainin’ to do, as Tom Coburn said to Justice Sotamayor. Take, for instance, this little number by Matt called “Edward Teller”:
You’re Edward Teller
Direct your lampshade to number fun
Those hidden equations are all pleasures to solve
Bless your huge genius
Now we all thank the son of a bitch
He’s tapped out our life support
And all he wanted was some swell friends
Threadbare daddy
Now, whereas some of us consider that entirely self-explanatory, others may wonder – rightfully – whether or not we have some mental issues. That’s not in question. (We DO.) We just want people to get the most out of our music, and that can’t be bad. (Or…. can it?)
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to join Mitch Macaphee in hauling that tuber out of the hole. More later…
raising taxes, cutting popular programs, etc. That is, however, the main reason why they have been sent to Washington D.C. – to decide where the money for the federal government comes from and where it goes. If they are unable to grapple with these issues, they might consider applying for jobs at the corporations that paid for their campaigns. What irks me about the deficit reduction commission, aside from the participation of paleocons like Alan Simpson, is that they are not directly accountable to the electorate. Even more than that, commissions are usually mustered to do particularly dirty work, like cutting or privatizing Social Security to save a few bucks.
Death and Texas. Jesus christmas. No one likes paying taxes, or going to the dentist, or taking exams, or eating their Maypo (well…. almost nobody), but this software executive in Texas who flew his plane into an IRS building should have taken an anger management seminar or something stronger.
Oh, hi out there in TV land. Just attempting to plumb the depths of what has become a rather large rend in the garment of our adoptive home, the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill here in upstate New York. We’re just getting a preliminary read here, but I’d say this sucker goes down pretty far. Maybe to the center of the Earth (or, to use the term New York-based geoscientists commonly employ, the “oit”). In fact, I have some pretty good evidence that this crack goes straight through the nougat to the chewy center of our lively little planet. What evidence, you ask? The first-hand kind… as in robot hand… as in Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who volunteered to, well, dive down there and take a look.
technician – Marvin’s creator, Mitch Macaphee – and asked him to program into Marvin the willingness to volunteer for such a dangerous task, which Mitch did in a trice. No problem for an experience mad scientist. There were a few glitches, of course – in essence, Marvin’s mouth was saying “I volunteer” but his legs were pedaling in the other direction. (Those magnetic-drive casters produce some torque, let me tell you.) That aside, we managed to get a rope around him, strap a flashlight to his forehead, put a cell phone in his claw, and lower him down into the abyss. Fortunately, Marvin’s eyes double as web cams, so we were able to see the underground landscape unfold before him – fascinating journey, as that Australian interior designer might say in a totally different context. Care for a Foster’s? (Product placement – hey, got to keep the lights on somehow, right?)
seventy-five, or even one hundred miles below us. But as far as I’m concerned, anything down there belongs to US. That’s right… a pie-slice shaped vector of earth stretching from the perimeter of the hammer mill down to the core of this planet – a colossal spike of mineral wealth – belongs to us, at least as far as our new legal advisor Anti-Lincoln can tell. Yes, I know what you’re going to say… why, WHY would we consult someone as untrustworthy and disreputable as anti-Lincoln, the literal antithesis of our most revered president? A man with no scruples, no ethics… what kind of a lawyer could he possibly be? OUR kind.