Tag Archives: hammer mill

Usual Rubbish

Boom goes the dynamite.


No, Mitch… I’ve never been to Rome. Yes, I’ve seen pictures of the Coliseum, but I’m not sure where you’re going with this. It’s a nice thing in its place, but…

Oh, hi. Just having a word with Big Green’s mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee, professor of interstellar astro-geology ….and explosives, apparently. (He’s got tenure at the school of hard knocks.) It’s endearing to see a proud father try to help his son. In saying so, I don’t mean to suggest that what Mitch is engaged in right now in any way resembles that wholesome impulse. No, no… that would require some modicum of sanity. I’m afraid Mitch is both attempting to help his creation, Marvin (my personal robot assistant), and blow his ass to kingdom come. Unintentionally, perhaps, but nevertheless… this is what he is attempting.

Let me ‘splain you. (Damn… I’m starting to talk like Tom Coburn at a confirmation hearing!) Marvin got himself a little gig as a bomb-sniffing robot over at the local Homeland Security training center, where people in space suits pretend to decontaminate children’s birthday parties populated by life-size plastic kids and a genuine layer cake. How’s he doing? Good as can be expected for a novice. You know how it is – you get your claws singed once or twice and, hey – you know better, right? That’s been Marvin’s experience. Never an overachiever, you know. I like to encourage him, particularly when it means he’ll be bringing home a few bucks for the housekeeping. (See, he also does the housekeeping. We’ve convinced him he should pay us for that. Long story.)

Anyway, Mitch thinks Marvin should be moving a bit faster in his training. So he’s begun to devise little problems for him to solve right here at home. One such problem – an explosive device of frightening magnitude – was planted in a broom closet just downstairs from my bedroom. Marvin defused it, fortunately… though I think it was a lucky break, frankly. (He stepped on it while sweeping out the hall and apparently pulled the ignition wire loose.) Next it was dynamite in the oven – enough to blow a massive hole in the side of our beloved abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. This is what prompted Mitch’s reverie about the Coliseum. (He thinks we could turn the mill into a tourist destination if it looked more like ruins.)

Not sure how this is going to come out, but you’re likely to hear. Just listen for a distant boom. That’s us!

Usual Rubbish

Day job.


Did you hear that? Hmmmm…. no, neither did I, I guess. How about that? You too? No. No, I didn’t either. Okay, nevermind.

See, here’s the problem with trying something new – you just don’t know how the hell to do it. I keep telling my colleagues this all of the time, but do they listen? No. Oh no, Joe, they tell me, I know just what I’m doing. And besides, bungee jumping off the Eiger doesn’t seem all that challenging to me, at least from the comfort of my easy chair. You try to help a brother out, and that’s what you get – a load of attitude, special delivery. I am depressed.

I might have mentioned last week how, out of desperation, various members of the greater Big Green cohort have been ranging around this backwater town, looking for means of gainful employment, no matter how demeaning. Well, as you might expect, WAL*MART and Home Depot were not hiring our kind, so we’ve been forced to apply some creative thought to the problem. As it happens, some of us tend to be a bit overly creative. And so we encounter what might be described as distortions of normal reality, in which familiar actors become involved in highly unfamiliar undertakings. And, well, yes… I am talking about Marvin (my personal robot assistant); official bomb-sniffing robot of the Little Falls constabulary. Such an honor. NOT!

I don’t know why Mitch Macaphee programmed cluelessness into Marvin. Seems to me he could have done just as well without it. In any case, he made the simple calculation that a bomb-sniffing robot would have very little to do here in sleepy upstate New York. Under normal circumstances, that might be so. But we are at WAR, as you know, and any resources our local police organizations can bring to bear in support of that fight may be deployed without warning. That’s where Marvin comes in. We have a Homeland Security training center around here someplace, and they’ve roped Marvin into live-fire drills, climbing over concrete walls and pulling ticking bombs out of baby carriages. Not at all what he was expecting.

Hey, I warned him. What else can a mentor do? We try to direct our charges, but…. they have minds of their own. (Or at least half-minds of their own.)

Usual Rubbish

Hard times.


Where the hell is that banjo? What…. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is using it again? Jesus… how’s a brother supposed to sing the blues around here?

Have to resort to non-banjo alternatives, I guess. That’s the way things go here at the Cheney Hammer Mill. You got complaints? Stand in line for the pluck string instrument. You may call it annoying mountain music. We call it aural psychotherapy. (Of course, when Marvin’s doing it, I don’t know quite what to call it. ) Be that as it may, you need some kind of relief in these troubled times, when money is as rare as …. well … rare earths. We’ve got lots of common earths. My point is… we’re freaking broke again. Join the select club of 90% of Americans, eh? Busted!

Well, if we have a middle name, it’s innovation. Big Innovation Green, that’s us. (People often associate another middle name with us… I believe it begins with an “f”). We’re constantly thinking of ways to float the overloaded boat of our miserable lives and careers. Sometimes that thinking involves a lot of bad ideas, it’s true. The vegetable stand never worked out, for instance. Not enough profit in selling discarded carrots and onions that fell off the back of the turnip truck. (Not to mention the offense that enterprise gave to our companion, the man-sized tuber.)

Speaking of bad ideas, Marvin had one. The gears were spinning hard inside that brass noggin of his. Next thing we knew, he was wheeling off to the local constabulary, resume in claw, looking for a personnel officer. You see, he’d run across an article in the local paper about how the police we’re saving up for one of those bomb-fetching robots you see on T.V. once in a while. It occurred to Marvin that he should, perhaps, apply for the position – that the amount of money they would spend on a robot could constitute a salary of sorts. That’s the story we got from Anti-Lincoln, anyway. My guess is that he sold Marvin to the cops and invented that cock and bull story to cover his own sorry ass.

I’ll tell you something, Anti-Lincoln…. you’re going to need something larger than that pathetic little lie. Thanks to you, Marvin is sniffing out explosives. Shame, Abe, shame.