Tag Archives: Mitch Macaphee

Usual Rubbish

Where’s my jetpack?

Ridiculous. It’s the 21st Century and we’re still moving about like gorillas, feet peddling the ground in a manner similar to our shrew-like remote ancestors. Mitch: get working on that little problem, will you? There’s a good chap. What’s that? Ummmm … I believe that would be a physical impossibility. Got any other suggestions?

Like many of his frothy colleagues, our mad science advisor Mitch Macaphee doesn’t take direction real well. I’ve rambled on more than a few times in this blog about how sensitive he is, so I probably shouldn’t bait him with idle requests about revolutionizing human locomotion or swapping meiosis with mitosis. The man’s busy, god damn it! He cranks out inventions like brother Matt puts out songs. And when I say “like”, I don’t mean exactly like it. Mitch’s battles are fought in the laboratory, not the prize ring … I mean, not the wildlife sanctuary. But I digress.

I don’t know how my mind gets stuck on these issues. Maybe it’s living in this abandoned mill for the better part of twenty years. After a decade or two, you start rattling around like bird shot in an oil drum. Your mind gets going, then you trudge around the mill, singing dirges. Next thing you know, you’re contemplating your very footsteps. Then it hits you – This is the twenty first century? Where the fuck is my jetpack? John Robinson had one back in fictional 1997! This is real-ass 2017 and I’m still stomping around like an ape. How is that fair?

Finally!Sure, you might say I have a distorted view of the future; that I’m stuck in a 1966 notion of what 1987 should look like. Be that as it may, jet packs would be a real step up from our current modes of transportation. And not any more impractical than some of the suggestions I’ve heard bandied about lately, like ski-resort type gondolas carrying people between a post-industrial mill town and what’s breezily described as a “harbor” that’s really just a wide spot in the Barge Canal. And yes, I know that jet packs have their challenges – all back-mounted rocket boosters do. But where would be without challenges, right? Where?

You’re right. I’ve been bumping around this mill waaaaay too long.

Usual Rubbish

Seven up.

Oh, Jesus …. I think I’m going to sleep over at the neighbor’s house for a few nights, guys. At least until the radioactivity dies down a bit after Mitch’s head explodes like an atom bomb.

Yes, you guessed it – it’s another one of those weeks, folks. Started out just fine. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was vacuuming the drapes. Anti-Lincoln was out walking his imaginary dog and insulting the mail carrier. Matt and I were cloistered in the studio, digging through mountains of unpublished material. Everything was going just swimmingly …  and then NASA has to go an discover seven new Earth-like planets around a sun named Trappist-1. And no, not just any seven Earth-like planets, but the same freaking seven planets Mitch has been secreting away for the last decade. And he is going to bum, people.

This planetary search has simply got to stop. Not because it isn’t highly productive and stimulating from a scientific point of view – quite the opposite! I speak entirely from the perspective of narrow self-interest. Every time NASA finds new planets, it puts Mitch Macaphee into a funk. Often times they are worlds he has previously discovered – and even visited, in some cases. A true capitalist inventor, he has a decidedly proprietary approach to space exploration. Whatever he finds, he keeps. “Finders/Keepers” kind of cuts against the grain of NASA’s philosophy, so there’s bound to be conflicts. And it’s not such a good thing when both sides of a conflict have rockets at their disposal.

Mitch ... they're ALL yours?Now before you get alarmed, let me qualify this. Mitch is not … repeat, NOT … at the point of launching any rockets. He is principally an electrical engineer, so he’s always cooking up gadgets that bend time/space or generate black holes – that along with a lot of buzzing, whirring, and flashing. (Remember that he invented Marvin, who does a fair bit of buzzing, whirring, and flashing of his own.) In fact, I’m not convinced that Mitch hasn’t found a non-spacecraft method for traveling to other planets. And I am not talking about soul travel here, brother (though that would be an excellent name for a travel agency). There’s the time he hooked up that surplus department store revolving door to Trevor James Constable’s orgone generating device. That’s how we got Antimatter Lincoln. That was awesome.

So, hey …. seven new planets, seven new problems. That’s the story here at the mill.

Usual Rubbish

Rough draft.

I’m sure I put that window putty around here someplace. And no, I’m not using masking tape again. You think tape is the answer to everything! Look at your clothes – they’re all taped together, for chrissake!

Whoa, damn it. Sorry for all the shouting. Not the best way to start out a new year. Tempers wear thin when you get extremes of temperature – I don’t think that’s a coincidence. It’s been decades since the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill has had anything like climate control technology, and back then it just amounted to an enormous, octopus-like boiler in the basement. In the summer, they opened a few windows. (With all of the broken windows in this old barn, we don’t need to do that anymore.) But now, when the mercury dips below zero, well …. we have to innovate.

Now, you would think that we would benefit from having a mad scientist on retainer (no, really … his dentist had him fitted for one last week), even if his advanced knowledge is somewhat tainted by the sound of wild cackling in the night. I took it upon myself this past week to ask Mitch Macaphee if he had some solution to the cold; you know, move the earth a few million miles closer to the sun, or laser open a magma vent … stuff like that. He pretty much ignored me. I was picturing some kind of atomic solution – the equivalent of a neutrino space heater, but no luck.

Well, that's ONE way to stay warm.Even so, Mitch seemed not too bothered by the sub-zero cold. I got curious, so I sent Marvin (my personal robot assistant) into his mad-science lair to take some web cam video. Turns out, Mitch has been holding out on us. Apparently, he’s been using the Orgone Generating Device left behind nearly a decade ago by our old friend Trevor James Constable. He switches on the OGD and creates a curved time-space anomaly that amounts to a portal to Miami. Well, that’s the rough equivalent of having the windows open on a summer day, right? So it’s nice and toasty in his study; meanwhile, we’re burning the furniture out here in the not-so-great room. Christ on a bike. If you’ve got a cure for leaky mill windows, send them our way.