Tag Archives: Marvin

Usual Rubbish

Reading me?

CQ, CQ … come in, Rangoon. This is ground station Hammermill calling all ships at sea. If you read me, come in. Ahoy, ship! Damn it. Turn the crank a little harder, Marvin. There’s a good chap.

Yeah, well … just trying something a little different this week, since our latest episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN is still under construction and I’m too freaking lazy to post any songs or other media files. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) dug up an old radio transmitter down in the basement of the mill, and we’ve been trying to fire the thing up ever since. This should come naturally to us, as Matt’s and my father was a Ham radio operator, but alas … I spent my childhood assiduously avoiding the acquisition of any useful knowledge or skills, and if I do say so myself, I was remarkably successful at that endeavor.

Anyway, the old radio works like this. I pick up the microphone, put on the metal headphones, and tell Marvin to start turning the crank in the side of the big old metal box, which apparently turns some kind of generator inside. Now, I’m not a scientist, but (and this is a big but) it seems to me that a few turns of the crank would be enough to power this antique for a few minutes, but no. The little on-air light blinks off almost as soon as Marvin stops turning the crank. Looks like Rangoon will have to stay out for a while longer.

Where's the ham?There are a lot of things a grown man can do in his spare time, particularly someone with so many half-baked hobbies such as myself.   Why I spend even five minutes with this hunk of junk is beyond me. And then there’s the radio. (Sorry Marvin – that was low hanging fruit.) I suppose I could become an inventor like Mitch Macaphee, or an antimatter president like Anti-Lincoln, or a large sweet potato like the mansized tuber, but there are individuals already filling those vital roles in society. Perhaps wisdom, in part, is recognizing your place in the world and trying to make the best of it. Or perhaps not … perhaps wisdom is something else entirely … in part. (And perhaps my favorite hobby is sophistry.)

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to try to make contact with someone – anyone – in Madagascar. CQ … CQ ….. Come in, Madagascar!

Usual Rubbish

Grounded.

Hmmm … leaving kind of a big footprint there, aren’t you, Anti-Lincoln? Seems like you’ve been feeding on a pretty good pasture lately, am I right? No? Ah, okay.

Well, the gravity’s back. Isn’t that good new?. And now all of us weigh about twenty pounds more than before. Just a little side benefit of Mitch’s latest project. (YEAH, MITCH … THANKS A LOT. Turn that gravity thing down a little, willya?) Something tells me we will need to replace the floor joists in this crumbling old ruin of a hammer mill … except that I don’t know how to do that and I wouldn’t know a floor joist if it hit me upside of the head.

Mitch has got this whole gravity thing figured out. He describes swarms of little invisible magnet-like  particles he calls “gravitons”. Apparently these little critters swarm around you by the thousands, holding you down as the world spins out of control. Without their persistent intercession, we would all fly off into space, the earth shaking us off as it rotates on its axis. Mitch thinks of them as the quantum mechanical equivalent of guardian angels … which is the reason why he hates them with a mad man’s passion. He went into a bit of a rage last night about gravitons, swiping at the invisible particles like he was shooing away mosquitoes. At one point, he appeared to have caught one between his thumb and forefinger, but his triumph was short-lived – the little specter slipped away, eliciting a yelp from the mad scientist as if he had touched a hot stove.

Here they come again, Mitch.Okay, so …. that guy’s crazy. And, as Mr. Spock once observed, madness has no reason … but it can have a goal. That’s what Mitch’s anti-gravity machine was all about. The device attracts gravitons like a bug zapper, apparently, though it doesn’t zap them … it just keeps them busy so that they can’t hold the rest of us down. (You always thought it was THE MAN that was holding you down, but no, says Mitch, it’s the gravitons!) Anyhow, it kind of worked for about a week, then something went bust. That happens a lot with mad science tinkerers like Mitch. Hell, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has dozens of glitches, but hell … he’s family.

So we’re back on the ground, for the nonce. We’ll see what the weekend brings. I’ve got my bike helmet on, just in case.

 

Usual Rubbish

Pro-gravity.

We’re fresh out of duct tape, man. All gone. And no,  I don’t have any large magnets. That wouldn’t work anyway – the floors aren’t made of metal, fool. Geez.

Yeah, I’m getting asked a bunch of dumb-ass questions by my house-mates, bandmates, mill-mates, etc. again. Everybody’s all worked up about our mad science advisor Mitch Macaphee and his latest raft of experiments. (Why he keeps them on a raft, I cannot say.) Mitch has been working on selectively negating gravitation, which really should be impossible … I mean, we all wish it was impossible, but apparently it’s not. Naturally, his experimental subject was the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, Big Green’s longtime squathouse, and a place where gravity has always reigned supreme … until now.

Now, most people have a sense of how gravity works, but for those of you unfamiliar with the ways of this mysterious unseen power, here’s a primer: it holds you down. That’s it. When people talk about being held down in life, they’re talking about gravity. When Bruce Springsteen sings “I’m goin’ down, down, down, down,” he’s singing about gravity. When some politician is making a speech, imploring his audience to understand the gravity of a given situation, that politician is … well … you get where I’m going with that. How does it work? That’s complicated. Einstein had his ideas about this. More recent work has detected gravitational waves. My personal view is that there is a enormous horseshoe magnet buried deep in the earth. Next time we do a subterranean tour, I’m going to check that theory out.

YikesRight, so … Mitch Macaphee has his own theories. And his theories usually lead to some nameless device that looks like a ham radio rig from the 1960s, with dials and meters and knobs and blinking lights. It makes a “woo-woo” sound. Sometimes he puts arms and legs on it and calls it Marvin (my personal robot assistant). Sometimes he throws a switch and things disappear … or appear. This time around, he adjusted the right combination of buttons, switches, lanyards, etc., to suspend gravity in the hammer mill. An anti-gravity machine, as it were. And that means more than floating hammers, my friends. Suffice to say, I haven’t had to use the stairs all week. If this keeps up, we may be battling obesity before long.

Thing is, most of us are pro-gravity. Hence the search for duct tape, glue, velcro, etc. Or maybe we should just pull the plug on Mitch’s gizmo. Worth a go, right?