What the….? Marvin (my personal robot assistant), is that you? No, wait… you’re over there. Well then, what the fuck is causing that glow if not your power-on indicator? Why it’s… well… unearthly.

This started to be just another week here at the Cheney Hammer Mill. Giving rudimentary philosophy lessons to the man-sized tuber. Producing anvil-shaped holograms with Trevor James Constable’s orgone generating machine. Playing Stratego with Lincoln and his evil anti-matter counterpart, anti-Lincoln. Mixing (at a snail’s pace) our sophomore album. Nothing out of the ordinary. Then, out of nowhere, an unanticipated wrinkle in our otherwise smooth existence. It happened early yesterday morning, in fact. Matt heard it first – something that sounded like a laundromat dryer winding down. The power went out… and there was this… strange…. glow….. emanating…. from…. the… courtyard……

(*whew*) Are you sitting down? Okay, good. Clearly, someone needed to see what was up outside. And just as clearly, that wasn’t going to be me. Or Matt. Now John, maybe, but he was otherwise occupied, so really… not him either. My vote was for Marvin to do the recon, which of course he more or less willingly acceded to, being a soulless machine with no overriding inclination towards self-preservation. Yes, he did need a brisk push out the door, but I attribute that to my laziness about oiling his foot-casters. (The yodeling and frantic arm waving might have been the result of some kind of computer error – I’m having Mitch Macaphee look into that now.) In any case, the intrepid Marvin cantered out into the cobbled courtyard, while we watched on his chest-mounted Web cam. (The view was momentarily obscured by one of his robotic fingers… I think it was the middle one… but pretty soon we had a look at what was happening.)

What did we see? Well…. I’d have to say it looks a bit like a large football. An enormous, glowing football, with windows on the upper flank. Stranger still was the racket it was emitting – sounded like a lawn mower more than anything. We tried to get Marvin to circle around, but there appeared to be something wrong with his audio receiver – he turned on his heel and sprung through one of the mill’s cellar windows. (Definitely a software glitch – gotta be a patch available online somewhere….) Well, it took about an hour and a half to convince him, but we eventually got Big Zamboola to float himself up above the mill and get some pictures. And what we saw… astounded us. (Well… me, anyway. I admit, I’m easily astounded.)

Okay, so let me tell you what those fuckers in the football are up to. They rolled out some turf onto our courtyard, set up a little fence, built a swing-set, and now one of those freaks is mowing the lawn…. in our squat yard! Bad enough we have to fight the locals to live here for free – now people are horning in from other planets. What’s this world coming to?

Listen carefully, tubey. These deer are very small. These deer… are far away. These, very small. These… far away! Get the idea? No? Hoo, boy. Let’s start again…

Ah, it is you, my friend. Welcome to the Cheney Hammer Mill one-room school house, here in the hinterlands (or, more properly speaking, the hinder-lands, since you can do nothing here). Just trying, in my own sorry way, to give the denser among us some semblance of an education. Why? Simple… they’re simple. And they live with creatures of quite enormous intellect. I refer not to myself, of course, nor to brother Matt or Johnny White – we’re all thick as posts compared to Big Green‘s scientific contingent. You know who I mean… your Mitch Macaphees, your Trevor James Constables… your doctors Hump. The brain guys. Stubborn as hell, they may be. One is mean as a snake (Mitch). But intellectually, they outpace us by leagues.

So here I am, trying to explain complex spatial relationships to an overgrown sweet potato. (I can hardly wait to show him two-point perspective!) Like most potatoes, the man-sized tuber has eyes, but he cannot see the difference between a porcelain miniature and an 800-pound buck. That will likely be a problem for him as he moves through the world of men. Sadly, there are other dead spots in his noggin, as well. The whole math thing is a big mystery to tubey. He can count the hairs on his tap-root up to the lower double digits, but that’s about his limit. And even with the full support of Marvin (my personal robot assistant) as a teacher’s aide, I can’t get him to recall the six major continents by name. (He calls Australia “Big Zamboola”. I mean, that’s like calling the Chrysler Building “Fred McMurray”.)

Is there anything more depressing than a cruciferous vegetable that will not learn? Of course there is. But that’s not the point here. Think of all that the man-sized tuber is missing as a result of his ignorance. Think of the ridicule and degradation he must endure from his more learned colleagues. And anti-Lincoln – what about him? He’s as dense as the rest of us. Where the hell is he going in this hyper-competitive world of ours? When society demands success, all he can offer is failure. Like the tuber, he’ll be a nothing, a nobody. (Arrogant as he is, of course, he will insist on Mister Nobody.) Hell, don’t even get me started on Big Zamboola. He isn’t even allowed on public buses, let alone elevators. (Though he can defy gravity, so that’s not as much of an issue…)

Back to the books. Damnit, Marvin – what did you do with my third grade primer? Holding up a hot plate? But it’s flammable, you imbecile! That’s it – take that open seat in the third row. Christ on a bike – we’re moving backwards.