Tag Archives: Cheney Hammer Mill

Usual Rubbish

Agro-botics.

2000 Years to Christmas

It think there’s room. Absolutely. We’ve got plenty of space on the shop floor. Just sweep those old discarded hammer parts out of there and we’re in business.

Oh, hi. Welcome to Big Green’s Cheney Hammer Mill headquarters, the innovation center of northeastern central New York! Sure, I know you folks all think we’re a bunch of layabout deadbeat motherfuckers, and, well, you’re mostly right about that, but I’m here to tell you that we’re on the verge of turning over a new leaf. And that leaf will be turned by the claw of a hired robot.

What am I talking about? Trends, my dear listeners, trends. Take a look at your non-existent newspaper. You don’t have to look very far at all to find stories about robots increasingly being used in agriculture. That’s right – robots plowing, robots planting, robots fertilizing, robots picking, etc., etc. Now look at us. (No, really …. look at us.) We are an independent band, planted in the middle of an agricultural community – a musical ficus plant, dying of thirst in a creative desert. Year after year, we seek something our community cannot give us: money delivered to our door in easy to negotiate, small denomination bills. After all this time, we’ve decided, why fight it? Let’s join the agricultural sector. Now … how can we do this without breaking a sweat?

Well, now there’s an answer to that age-old question: Robots! Robots are doing all the work these days, cultivating cash crops all across the country. Now you may say, “But Joe, you don’t have any land? Where will you grow the crops?” Well, nameless interlocutor, first, thanks for calling me Joe. Second, we’ve got all the growing space we need, right here in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. We can set up a hydroponic garden on the shop floor. Hell, we won’t even need dirt! Just millions of gallons of water and … well, we’ll work that out.

And you may ask, “But Joe, where are you gonna get the robots?” My reply: Thanks for your question! In fact, we have robots. Well … at least one robot. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) will be patient zero in our agricultural revolution. He will be the prototype, the one-bot vanguard for a future army of agro-matons. Right, Marvin? …. Marvin??

Marvin? Anyone seen Marvin today? It’s planting time, damn it!

Usual Rubbish

Tune down.

2000 Years to Christmas

What’s to celebrate? Well … a lot of things, Mr. anti-President. Like, I don’t know … the lack of snow? Ummmm …. mail delivery? The persistence of our life-giving sun? Okay … I got nothing.

Hey, what the hell, we appear to settling into a bit of a post-holiday funk here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted home. Like most bands of our generation, we like to get funky, and there’s not time like the post-holidays for a little funk-a-delic framming. Why not, right? Matt’s got a Fender Stratocaster for the first time in his life (sure, he’s had it for three years, but still … ). I’ve got my Korg SV-1 with funky clav sounds and something that sounds like a 70s Farfisa organ. So when it comes to post-holiday funk, we’re loaded for bear.

It’s fair to say that we don’t have a reputation as a jam band. That doesn’t mean we haven’t done it a whole lot. Big Green rehearsals were usually just jam sessions, interrupted periodically by some swearing and hand waving. Our gigs were kind of ragged back in the day, and I’m not at all sure what we would sound like live right now, on planet Earth, with its normal gravity and its oxygen-rich air. Not the same as playing on the semi-molten surface of Neptune. Nothing like the venues on Henson’s Planet. (What are those like? Well, I guess you’ll just have to ask Henson.)

Okay, our rehearsals were weird, but never THIS weird.

I guess what brought this to mind was listening back to some old live recordings we have kicking around the mill. They’re all on analog audio cassettes, so I have to plug them into Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who helpfully has a cassette deck built into his abdomen, and a couple of mini stereo speakers on either side of his oddly misshapen brass head. (He’s like a walking ’80s boombox … except for the walking part.) Anyway, we would extend cover songs to keep people dancing or milling about or doing whatever they were doing that didn’t involve chucking things at us. That typically entailed some longish guitar solo by whoever was working with us at that time – either the amazing Jeremy Shaw or the astonishing Tony “Ace” Butera, either one of whom could shred hard enough to peel the paint off the walls. (Though, in all honesty, most of the venues we played in those days didn’t have a lot of paint left on the walls.)

So … here’s to the funky jam. Kick out the jams, motherfuckers. Let me hear you say “yeah.” Now let me hear you say “Madagascar”. Now … uh … I got nothing.

Usual Rubbish

Robo-mill.

2000 Years to Christmas

Yes, I know the clothes washer is running. I was trying not to speak too loudly, but it appears to have overheard what I was saying earlier. This is a fine kettle of soup. Wait … what’s happening in the kitchen?

Arrgh. Hi, out there in web land. Hope all is well with you. Over here in Big Green – land (not to be confused with big Greenland, the island), the year is getting off to a rocky start. Nothing too surprising in our world. It gets a bit annoying having to tip toe around this place, but we have to be more careful than usual, now that Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, has finally delivered the big-ass Christmas present he warned us about late last year. We all thought he was just winding us up, but there actually was a rabbit in the hat, as it turns out, and well …. now it’s out.

Now, I know what you’re all thinking: “Joe, Joe! What did Mitch get you? What’s the present? Tell us NOW!” Just calm down children, and I’ll tell you. You’ve heard of the Internet of Things (IoT)? How about smart home technology? Well, if you haven’t, good for you … that means you’ve managed to avoid listening to National Public Radio for the last five years. Interactive houses are all around us these days, and while they are the product of other people’s inventive imaginations, that fact doesn’t preclude the possibility that someone else might re-invent that stuff for his or her own nefarious purposes. What I’m trying to tell you is, Mitch gave us a Smart Mill for Christmas this year. Yes … he wired up the Abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill so that it responds to our every command. Isn’t that something?

Well, yes, it is something. But nothing good, I assure you. For one thing, Mitch has everything set so that it hears every word you say and takes each one as some kind of command. It kind of works like this: Instead of saying some corporate-determined name like “Alexa!” or “Gladys!”, you trigger the “Smart Mill” by saying, “Cheney Hammer Mill!” And just saying “Cheney” won’t work – that will get you a hologram of the former Vice President. And trust me … nobody wants that.

Actually, we’ve had to curtail our euphemisms to a ridiculous degree … one time this week, Anti-Lincoln misplaced his keys and shouted, “Give me a break!” in frustration. Suddenly, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) came wheeling in like an automaton possessed and attempted to break the antimatter emancipator’s right arm. Fortunately Marvin lacks the strength to do such a thing, but still … he could just as easily been a competent robot, compelled to violence via wi-fi by a malevolent electronic brain hidden in the bowels of the Hammer Mill. And then there’s the song lyrics. Damn!

Suffice to say that we are not enjoying the mad science version of IoT, It’s a lot like the mad science version of everything else, frankly. The only upside I can see is that it can do mundane stuff like this: “Cheney Hammer Mill: Publish this blog post!” Zing!