Whirl, whirl, twist and twirl… jump around like a flying squirrel. You pull my beard, I’ll pull your’n. Pick him up and hit ‘im in the head. Hit ‘im again, that critter ain’t dead!

Dang! (I mean, damn!) You learn the weirdest little songs living in the alley. With this heat, everybody’s got their windows open, and the fragrant tendrils of sweet country music waft out into the night and accost your unprotected eardrums. Right now I’m hearing some kind of a twangy ho-down emanating from about three stories up. Probably high time I show my appreciation – Oy! Oy! Toin it down, duh radio! That’s better. (At least I feel better about it – the freaking music is still there…)

Yes, well… if you guessed that the alien-mayor Gizmandiar has succeeded thus far in keeping us out of our adopted home (squat house) the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, then you are indeed correct. Matt, John, Marvin (my personal robot assistant), Mitch Macaphee (Marvin’s personal inventor), Trevor James Constable (keeper of the patented orgone generating device, as seen on T.V.), the man-sized tuber (no parenthetical comment can do him justice), Big Zamboola (former planet), Lincoln (our famous president), and anti-Lincoln (his evil twin) have all been released into the wild, there to do what nature commands. In my case, that’s sleeping in this alley. ‘Cause that’s the kind of fella that I am. (I’m biding my time….)

Others in our party – let’s face it – are more ambitious than me and the man-sized tuber (who’s in the next alley over). Mitch Macaphee is, after all, a man of relative means; a veritable Tarzan of mad science, swinging by vine from international conference to research fellowship to faculty posting. Right now he’s off to Madagascar on some kind of government research initiative (reinventing Lysol, I believe is what he said). In any case, Mitch has options. So has Trevor James, who spent a week in solidarity with us before lighting off to his ranch in California where comfort and plenty await. (Who can blame him, right? I said, am I right?? Is this bloody thing on?)

My apologies. You get cranky out in the alley – I’m sure I don’t have to explain. Anyway – that leaves us with Marvin, the two Lincolns, Big Zamboola, and of course, the tuber… none of whom has anywhere better to go (trust me on this). And as you know, Marvin has little choice, since he is an automated servo mechanism programmed to respond to my voice commands, however imperfectly. I have instructed him to negotiate our return to the Mill and, if necessary, to raise the money for any fines levied against our account. So far no progress – in fact, he’s been sputtering and clanging in the same spot since I issued that command about a week ago. (Personally, I doubt he’s even started the assignment….) Bloody servo mechanisms! When do I get a proper robot? And where’s my jet pack!

Yes, Marvin may be malfunctioning. And his repair man is – wait for it – Mitch Macaphee, now a temporary resident of distant Madagascar. Crikey – don’t tell me I’ll have to send the Lincolns to do our negotiating! Last time they agreed on something, the Confederacy fired on Fort Sumter. (Not the diplomatic type…)

That’s one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, now go, cat, go! Don’t you step on my… ah, what’s the use? Can’t do covers… even when I’m panhandling.

Welcome back. I almost said “to the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill,” but I caught myself in time. Actually, our august squat house is now, indeed, abandoned… in the sense that there is now no one in it. Yes, friends… our new extra-terrestrial mayor, Gizmandiar, has made good on his threat to evict us – call it a down payment on the opportunistic election campaign he’s planning for this fall. This fucker’s racking up empty promises so fast, you could swear he was born on the planet earth. (In fact, never having seen this creature, I can’t say for certain that he wasn’t.) Everywhere you turn in this town now, it’s Gizmandiar’s doing this, and Gizmandiar’s in favor of that…. and one of those things he’s doing is enforcing building codes and vagrancy laws, no matter how obscure. Hence, our homelessness. (He sent in the goons. And let me tell you, baby… they’re good at what they do.)

Matt, John, Mitch Macaphee, and the others (with the exception of the two Lincolns) think that the lawn-loving space people are just sticklers for the law, and when they took over the town government (by bribing our local officials all the way to Tahiti), they went on a good-government rampage. I personally think that this Gizmandiar character is taking revenge on us for complaining about the carpet-like lawn they established in our courtyard when they first arrived on this sorry planet. What the hell, I even cajoled Trevor James Constable into training his orgone generating device on their space craft. I’m sure even on their anemic planet, turnabout is fair play. (Though if they have negative gravitation, that may not be the case.) Whatever the truth may be, they have found an effective way to squelch criticism of their landscaping fetish…. and we’ve earned our one-way ticket to palookaville. (I coulda been a contender! I coulda been somebody… instead of a bum….)

Now, I don’t know about you, but I think it’s one hell of a coincidence that astronomers have discovered a strangely Earth-like planet a mere 20 light years away at precisely the same time that these odd space aliens showed up in our little town. We asked Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to calculate the odds of these two events happening at the same time, and the results were astounding – seventy-three trillion to one against. (Of course, those are the same odds Marvin gave me when I asked him if it was going to rain last weekend…. and it rained last weekend. So yes, he could certainly be a meteorologist in this town.) So… is it true? Are the local aliens really from the strange rocky world known as “New Earth?” Can discarded lawn darts really be repurposed as inexpensive bottle openers? Is guar gum a vegetable? Is our children learning?

Yes, friends…. the answers to these and other questions can be found right here next week. And for all those who wrote letters of sympathy and support for your friends in Big Green last week, all I can say is… something went wrong down at the post office, because we didn’t receive any letters of sympathy and support. (I haven’t checked the trash can today, to be fair.) Write us, damnit – we need scrap paper!