Raise the spirit temperature 17 degrees. Good. Now, engage the magneto drive. Switching… switching… got it. Got the diamond drill ready? No? Just the cubic zirconium drill? That will have to do.
Ah, hello. Wasn’t aware there was anyone within eyeshot of our little corner on the Web. One never knows, does one? Caught us all in the middle of an experiment, or as our Italian scientist friend Dr. Hump calls it, an experimento. (My Italian is a little rusty.) Actually, the experiment is being conducted not only by the good doctor, but also on the good doctor. Does that sound unethical? I certainly hope so, or your moral compass is way out of alignment. Better get that sucker looked at, little fella. But I digress… As I’ve mentioned earlier in these pages, we’ve been on a bit of a science kick here at the Cheney Hammer Mill. I’m not just talking about the esoteric stuff, like “how much does the moon weigh?” I’m talking practical, too, as in, “how do you keep the rain out of my bedroom?” The science of roofing, as it were.
Anyway, the redoubtable Dr. Hump — a brain in a jar, as you may be aware — has talked us into helping him acquire something akin to super-powers. Granted, he has no body with which to leap tall buildings in a single bound. He’s concentrating more on mental agility and parapsychological powers of the kind that our friend Trevor James Constable masters through various contrivances, like his patented orgone generating device. In fact, Trevor James is acting as an expert consultant on this 
procedure… though the actual bull work is being done with great precision by Marvin (my personal robot assistant). Why Marvin? Well, Mitch Macaphee did not want to get directly involved — something to do with professional ethics, I believe — so he asked his invention to serve as a stand-in. (Mitch took the trouble to program the requisite skills into Marvin before the procedure began. Good thinking. Good thinking.)
How does this bear on our ongoing recording / mixing / mastering project, now in its fourth glorious goddamned fucking year? Well, I’m gon’ tell yuh. If we can help Dr. Hump (the brain) to acquire fantastic para-
psychological powers, he can be of enormous help in marketing whatever finished product comes out of the other end of our endless recording / mastering sessions. The way I figure it, the good doctor can project an irresistible impulse into millions of people the world over to buy or download our album. Oh, then the money will come rolling in like hay bales in September. By that time, of course, we will need telekinesis just to get the CDs into the shops, as none of us will have the energy to do it ourselves (and, of course, our distributors have long since abandoned us). Good things come to those who wait… and to those who are particularly receptive to telekinetic suggestion. Pass it along, will you? There’s a good chap.
Rest assured, we are drawing closer and closer to the day when our new album will be released into the wild. And you will know it has arrived when you see a strange image of a disembodied brain in your mind’s eye… and hear a sound that goes WOOoooWOOOOoooWOOOooo. That’s called marketing, friends. Ear muffs won’t help you. Neither will Rice Crispies.
this sorry blog know, I am no fan of the death penalty, even when it comes to war criminals like Saddam and, well, George Bush. This goes beyond the question of basic humanity, though. If you’re going to execute someone, that should be punishment enough without making a circus of it. As it was, they (i.e. the American idiots who decided on this policy) made Hussein seem dignified by comparison and, in so doing, further inflamed the Sunni community in Iraq and throughout the Middle East by allowing the deed to be performed on the day Sunnis celebrate Eid. I can’t entirely blame the Shi’a execution squad for behaving as they did — that’s to be expected. But don’t tell me no one in the Green Zone knew that particular detail wouldn’t be shot through with militia people.
Such are the fortunes of those who benefit from U.S. covert operations — some retire to Florida (Orlando Bosch); others dangle from the end of a rope. The CIA apparently fostered Saddam’s early career as a torturer and assassin, quietly supporting his participation in 1959 in a notorious attempt on the life of the Iraqi president (who was a communist). After he became Iraq’s leader (something like Lee Harvey Oswald becoming president), he received crucial support from the U.S., particularly during the Reagan / Bush I administrations, who unfailingly portrayed him as a “moderating influence” in Middle Eastern affairs right up until his invasion of Kuwait. While they turned against Saddam at that point, it was in such a way as to allow him to carry out one of the greatest atrocities of his career — putting down the Kurdish and Shi’a uprisings George Bush Sr. had actively encouraged, as the army of “Stormin’ Norman” Schwartzkopf looked on just a few miles away. Aside from resulting in probably half a million deaths, the Clinton era sanctions only strengthened Saddam’s grip on his nation, forcing ordinary Iraqis to rely on the central government for subsistence. Now, of course, we are busily compounding the heinous errors of past administrations with even more heinous errors, including a Bush surge strategy that will focus on targeting the denizens of Baghdad’s poorest neighborhoods and the most vulnerable portions of Iraq’s majority Shi’a community.
Yeah, that’s right — I’m complaining again. So what’s new, right? Hey… you lock yourself into an abandoned hammer mill with an assortment of mad scientists, musicians, automatons, root vegetables, and extraterrestrials, and see where your head ends up. (On a pike, quite possibly.) You’ll be glad to know I’ve given up on the idea of pressing our own CD’s. (Too depressing.) But the spirit of scientific experimentation (sans animals) lives on here at the Cheney Hammer Mill. Unfortunately, where Mitch Macaphee is concerned, this usually involves some kind of explosion, whether intentional or not. Actually, most times not. It’s just that when you haphazardly drop a little of the blue liquid from beaker C into the 60 ml of yellow liquid in test tube 9, you may get a new kind of hair gel… or you may get a big kaboom (which can give you a new “do” just as quickly).
musician, it goes with the territory. Don’t believe me? Talk to Marvin (my personal robot assistant). He’s got that kind of honest, open face that people tend to trust. What’s more, he’s hip, fly, keen, blah-zono, and can really talk to the young. Where was I going with this? Ah yes — he knows the scientific / technological hazards of the rock industry because he himself is the product of an experiment… a creature of Mitch Macaphee, a.k.a. Mr. Explosion.
device and using it as a slide projector. Next thing we know, the son of a bitch lights a bonfire in the street right in front of the freaking mill, and starts handing out hotdogs and marshmallows on a stick. You would think that such irresponsible behavior as this might only draw the attention of the local fire brigade, but in fact, there were some gawkers. I’m a bit ashamed to say that Marvin was prominent among them (though, in all fairness, he was only there for the marshmallows). Suffice to say it took several hours to clear the sidewalk and drag the orgone generating device back into its cubby hole.