Tag Archives: Mitch Macaphee

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!

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Twelve days of it.

2000 Years to Christmas

On the first day of something my something gave to me … something, something, something, blah, blah blah blah blah, five golden … things!

Arrgh. Leave us face it. For a band that began its recording career with what was ostensibly a Christmas album, we are terrible at remembering even the most oft-repeated holiday songs. Someone – I think it was Marvin (my personal robot assistant) – once suggested caroling around the neighborhood on Christmas eve, hoping for some charitable cast-offs and crusts of festive breads, but when you glom over too many lyrics, you lose credibility as a caroler and instead of handing foodstuffs to you, your audiences tend to throw them at you with some force. Personally, when it comes to seasonal pastimes, I prefer the ones that don’t involve serious festive injuries and having steaming vats of hot holiday cheer poured on us from second-story windows. Call me Scrooge.

We don’t have any really strong holiday traditions. Probably the most enduring one is our annual Christmas week sequestration, imposed on us by the local DPW, which views the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill as a handy place to dump tons of snow they’ve removed from more affluent and generously populated quarters. Sure, we can’t emerge from the mill for a stretch of days, but that gives us a reason to be innovative in our festive celebrations. It’s not about how many gifts you buy, or how much food you throw in the garbage disposal …. no no, Christmas is about the little things. Really little things, like nano particles. You see, when we’re snowed in over the holidays, our mad science advisor Mitch Macaphee takes it upon himself to show us slide presentations of particles he has utilized in his more depraved experiments. A four-hour powerpoint on sub atomic particles – now that’s the kind of Christmas I’m talking about.

Dull.

Speaking of Christmas, as I mentioned before, we are marking the 20th anniversary of our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas, this season. And when I say we’re “marking” it, I don’t mean urinating on it …. far from it! While 2000 Years To Christmas is not generally available in stores, there are umpteen different ways to hear it, download it, and even get your hands on the disc. If you want to know more, just visit our special Anniversary Page for details.

Otherwise, we’ll be posting a few things over the holidays, as always. Maybe not all twelve days … just the ones we know the lyrics to.

Usual Rubbish

Joy to it.

2000 Years to Christmas

No, we’re not doing that this year. Why? Because I said so, damn it. Last year it was a freaking disaster, and I’m not going through THAT again. Right, now … where were we?

Oh, right … penning another blog post. Yes, friends, our longtime companion here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, antimatter Lincoln, was making a crazy suggestion, and I just had to shut it down. Yes, we live with a mad scientist. Yes, he does turn the gravity on an off occasionally just for fun. Yes, I do have permanent injuries that resulted from that kind of horseplay, and rightfully so. But there’s a point at which even people as tolerant as the members of Big Green have to draw a line, and this is it. NO SECRET SANTA. PERIOD.

I mean, I don’t know why people do stuff like that, let alone why someone who is the anti-matter doppelganger of perhaps our greatest president would want to indulge in such a bankrupt and troubling holiday tradition. Now if Anti-Lincoln were Anti-Buchanan or Anti-Johnson (the first), I could understand. But jumping Christ, does the man not remember even one thin year ago? We drew names out of a hat one frigid afternoon … and it was all downhill from there. Our mad scientist Mitch Macaphee drew my name, as luck would have it, and so he gave me the gift for the man who has everything and doesn’t mind losing it all – weightlessness! (He’s had this thing about gravity over the last few months. It’s a little troubling.)

Time for a song!

Who did I draw? Anti-Lincoln. I found an old fashioned two-man saw and gave it to him. He proceeded to use it on our best shade tree. I guess I should have saw that coming. It’s a bit like buying beer for your neighbor without giving a thought as to whether he or she might have a drinking problem. (He does.) Then of course, all of our names were drawn by the city elders, who sought to evict us from this drafty old mill. We outsmarted them by coincidentally being out of town on the day they came to get us. But then came the nasty upstairs neighbors, and well … from there you know what came next. I won’t draw you a picture. (Unless that’s what you want for Christmas.)

Hey, suckers … our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas, is celebrating its 20th birthday this year. Great time to check it out, particularly if you’ve been cased in aspic since 1999. Give it a listen right now. Or not. Totally up to you, man.