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A really, really bad week for a camping holiday

2000 Years to Christmas

Did you pack the sleeping bags? Good, good. How about the hurricane lamps? Excellent. Now there was something else we were planning to bring along. What the hell was it? Oh, right. Marshmallows.

Well, it is August, and as you know, most of the world goes on vacation during the course of this high summer month. (I mean most of the northern hemisphere, of course. Below the equator it’s freaking winter.) Big Green is no exception. While the French bug out on August 1, we typically wait until August 21st just to give them a head start. Not that they have anything to worry about – we seldom get beyond the stage of packing our stuff before the wheels come off.

Faulty transport technologies

Okay, so, that wasn’t a metaphor. The wheels actually came off of our rented vehicle. Not surprising, given the liberal terms they offered us. Faced with the prospect of embarking on a walking vacation, we obviously started looking into other options. Now, not everyone has access to a mad scientist, and while it’s tempting to just ask the dude to whip together some kind of land rover hover craft, we don’t want to take the easy way out. (Besides, Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, is in Madagascar for a conference.)

My first thought was to press-gang Marvin (my personal robot assistant) into hitching himself up to a donkey cart and pulling us along. He has solar batteries and motorized feet, so it’s not as far-fetched as it seems. Well, when he refused, we were left with few good options. The only ones worth considering were, hitch anti-Lincoln up to a donkey cart, or settle for a stay-cation in the Cheney Hammer Mill courtyard.

Face it, man. It's too tough to toast 'em.

Free water from the sky-gods

I hate to say that the wheels came off of our stay-cation plans, but they kind of did, even though technically speaking, wheels were not required. As soon as we pitched our tent in the courtyard, it started coming down … in buckets. Again – not a metaphor. It was literally raining buckets! Now I know that rain is a blessing in many parts of the world. But too much of a good thing is, well … not a good thing.

You couldn’t describe what happened next as anything like a vacation. I’m basing that on firm metrics. For instance, there was no recurring campfire. No s’mores were made. (Marvin tried to make the s’mores work, but water and graham crackers don’t mix.) No one carved a birch bark canoe. I know these aren’t universally recognized benchmarks, but they give you a rough picture. Bloody weather!

You can’t go home again

The fact is, when you’re home, you can’t go home again. Though, interestingly, when you open a door, you can close it … again. In any case, slinking back home from a failed stay-cation took about two minutes. Hardly a walk of shame. (I think the minimum length for a walk of shame is five minutes, but don’t quote me.)

Usual Rubbish

Someone put a crimp in Lincoln’s style

2000 Years to Christmas

Ring the bell tower. We don’t have one? Well, then pull the fire alarm. What? No fire alarm? Are you telling me we’ve been squatting here for twenty years and there’s no freaking fire alarm? I am depressed.

Hello and welcome to the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. I’m afraid you find us in crisis mode this week. We’ve just received a ransom message from the former King of the Catskills (or so they claim) saying that they’ve kidnapped Anti-matter Lincoln and are demanding a considerable forfeit for his safer return.

My lack of god! Will these scoundrels stop at nothing? They abduct an obvious senior citizen – Anti Lincoln is 196 if he’s a day – and cart him off like a sack of grain in hopes of squeezing riches out of his squat-mates. He went off to take his constitutional this morning (he always takes the constitution for a little walk first thing) and when he didn’t return, we knew something was up.

Crimped like a sea dog

Now, this would be bad enough if Anti-Lincoln were just being held somewhere against his will. That, sadly, is not the case. The nefarious King of the Catskills has informed us that Anti-Lincoln has been consigned to a chain gang. They’re sending him to work the butterscotch mines outside of St. Johnsville. In other words, they crimped the bastard!

Look …. I’ve seen what butterscotch mining can do to a man. That’s hard labor. Someone of Anti-Lincoln’s age and temperament won’t last a week. We’re sending Marvin (my personal robot assistant) with a jug of water and a flashlight to see if he can help. Chances are good, though, that they’ll just crimp Marvin as well and put him on the automation detail.

This could work.

Go fund my ass

What can we do? Well …. the kidnappers want crypto currency, so we were thinking maybe a fundraiser – setting up crowdfunding to bail Anti-Lincoln out. Either that or busking on the corner for bit coin. Of course, we’re terrible at raising money under any circumstances, so that seems kind of like a non-starter.

We could also try to beam him out of there using Trevor James Constable’s patented Orgone Generating Device. Of course, that would require knowing his precise location. A few feet off and we could be beaming a Lincoln-shaped column of molten butterscotch into our living room. (Something I don’t want to even contemplate.)

Wait a minute …. Anti Lincoln just walked in through the front door. And apparently he knows nothing of this kidnapping business. It’s almost as if the King of the Catskills made it all up. Sheesh …. can’t trust anyone these days.

Usual Rubbish

Daddy took the t-bird away (Damn him!)

2000 Years to Christmas

Yes, yes …. I know it’s warm out. It’s hot as all hell in here, for crying out loud. Go ahead and open a few windows in the foundry room. You’ll need a ladder and a hook. And if anything catches fire, best call the hook and ladder.

Well, it’s predictable that as soon as the warm weather settles in, members of the Big Green entourage start getting restless. These long winters in an abandoned hammer mill can really take it out of you. But I have to say, summers are no better. It gets hot enough in here to melt all those discarded hammer heads. (I see claw-head hammers bubbling.) Who can blame the crew for wanting a little fresh air, right?

Of course, some of their notions about recreational activities are a little, let’s say, non-standard and unrealistic. Just to be clear, we don’t have an entertainment budget. We also don’t have a transportation budget. Not to put too fine a point on it, but we don’t have any kind of budget, period. We scratch and scrape for every morsel, but because we are a collectivist institution, we all share the workload. This morning I was on scratch duty. Tomorrow it will be scraping.

Surf’s Up On The Erie!

Marvin (my personal robot assistant) spent too much of the winter months watching beach movies. He’s got it into his little brass noggin that he wants to go water skiing on the New York State Barge Canal, which runs right by our mill. I keep telling him the damn thing isn’t deep enough or … well … watery enough to water ski on, but he’s insisting.

He thinks if he gets enough speed, he’ll be able to do some jumps even, but dude, there isn’t enough speed in the world for you to manage that.

Looks a little too placid to me, man.

But You’re Not Ben, Abe

For his own part, Anti-Lincoln has decided to fly a kite in the middle of Little Falls, on the busiest street in this tiny city. He obviously thinks his status as an antimatter former president is going to keep him from having his ass hauled to jail like the other miscreants. I’m not so sure.

I reminded him that it was Ben Franklin, not Abe Lincoln, that was the historical American personage who flew kites in the cartoon shows of my youth. (That was how he invented electricity.) His rejoinder? “What part of anti-Lincoln do you not understand?” Fair cop.

Mitch Macaphee, on the other hand, considers true recreation to be curling up with a bottle of Thunderbird. Until daddy takes it away, of course.