Tag Archives: mitch

Usual Rubbish

Proxima be damned.

Okay, we didn’t go on the boat trip up the Erie Canal. It was a stupid idea, I admit. Sounds like one of mine. I should remember where it came from, but I often forget the provenance of my worst ideas. Call it a self-defense mechanism … or call it “Lenny,” if you like. Whatever floats your boat.

As is always the case, life intrudes on the best-laid plans. We were all ready to load up our non-existent gondola with pick-a-nick baskets, life jackets, and a bunch of other stuff we don’t own, and then the news broke: Astronomers had discovered a small, Earth-like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star system to our own. As the story worked its way into newspapers, television and radio broadcasts, and web sites, it quickly reached the attention of our mad science adviser, Mitch Macaphee. His reaction? Let’s just say that there was a little mushroom cloud where his head used to be. I thought he was experimenting with some new anti-personnel weapon – a personal nuke, perhaps, like Edward Teller’s version of the personal pizza – but he was just mad. Hopping mad.

Why the anger? Well, Mitch has anger issues. I suspect you’ve gleaned that from previous postings. Zero patience, my friends. The guy just needs happy pills or something, but you can’t tell him anything. Anyway, it appears that Mitch has been using the newly discovered planet, Seems very, uh ... proximate.Proxima b, as a staging area for some of his experiments. Why pick that one and not, say, Wolf 1061c? Well, it’s closer, for one thing. Like I said, the fucker is impatient as hell – he doesn’t want to spend a lot of time in transit. And while he does do some of his mad science work in remote areas of our own planet, Proxima b (or “Sven Njordlosc’s planet” as Mitch strangely calls it) gives him the space to do fun stuff like change the composition of the atmosphere or switch the gravity on and off a couple of times in rapid succession. Great times!

In preparation for our last interstellar tour, we looked into doing a performance on Sven Njordlosc’s planet. No dice. The inhabitants only want to hear Norwegian Carpenter Songs. “Pleasures of the Dance” is their favorite record, even if it’s just a joke cooked up by Monty Python. We don’t play stuff like that, I think you know.

Oh well … I know what I’m getting Mitch for his birthday. Xanax. Lots of Xanax.

Usual Rubbish

Boat trip!

Got everything packed? Good, good. Don’t forget the picnic (pronounced pick-a-nick) basket. Then there’s the water supply, or at least that machine Mitch invented that makes water from thin air using something that looks like a spark plug. (I think the Robinsons used it on Lost In Space, right alongside the clothes washer that folded garments and wrapped them in plastic.)

Well, it’s been a long summer, and we have done absolutely NOTHING that can be considered recreational. Yes, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) rolled over to the hardware store once or twice to pick up some machine oil and batteries. Yes, the mansized tuber struck up a friendship with some ornamental plant outside the 7-11. Yes, Mitch Macaphee went to half a dozen mad science conferences, one held in an abandoned cement plant on the north end of town. (I told him to have it here, that one abandoned mill is just as good as another, but he wasn’t having any of that.) Still, none of this can be considered recreational in a summery kind of way. (You could say that none of them amounts to summery execution, but I really wouldn’t say that if I were you.)

So, what was it going to be? Road trip? Nah. Did that last summer. Sickening, frankly. How about a boat trip? We have the Erie Canal running practically right alongside our abandoned hammer mill. All we need is a cheap gondola and a couple of oars, then it’s off to wherever that canal goes. East or west, I reckon. Just like Life on the Mississippi, except less crackery. And no Mississippi. No?

That looks like fun, kidsYou see, THIS is why we never go on vacation. We can never freaking decide what we want to do or where we want to go. The only time we travel is when we’re on interstellar tour (or when we time travel, which is disorienting, frankly, and I have discouraged Mitch from dragging us along through the time/space portal he keeps in his office). It’s like we’re just visitors on this, our home planet. Though come to think of it, the weather has been ungodly hot just lately. And Louisiana is under water. And California is on fire. Maybe this ISN’T our home planet. It does seem kind of inhospitable. Hmmm…

Okay, well … boat trip it is. Pull the gondola up to the jetty … whatever any of those words mean.

 

Usual Rubbish

Toast terrific.

Damn it. Misplaced my breakfast again. Third time this morning. I definitely need more sleep. If anybody trips over some cold toast and a half-empty mug of tea, drop me a line.

We keep odd hours here in the cohort of collectivists known as Big Green. Matt, the naturalist in the group, is up at all hours chasing after critters, feeding them, changing their diapers, keeping them safe from the elements. That’s a slight exaggeration, but only slight – the guy is attempting to single-handedly make up for all of the injustices meted out by god and man. Kind of time-consuming. Me? I am the unnaturalist in the group. When I am outside, I think to myself … “This is too strange for us, Hanar. We are creatures of outer space. We long for the comforting closeness of walls.”

Okay, if I’m paraphrasing classic Star Trek, I must be a little groggy. (Too much grog, perhaps.) I’m up late at night in the lab, sometimes. Did I say lab? I meant studio. Cranking up the keyboard, jamming along with drum loops, listening to old recordings and occasionally committing something to disc. Then I’ll climb the stairs to my bedroom and get halfway through a decent night’s sleep before Mitch Macaphee detonates some weakly controlled “experiment” in his lab (yes, lab), shaking the walls of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill to their very foundations. We’re not so different, Mitch and me. Profoundly sleep-deprived. Trying to make loud noises using sophisticated instruments. Nearly bringing the house down on our heads.

Lincoln, did you steal my toast?One of my obsessions of late has been rebuilding our YouTube site. That’s my hobby, if you will, until Matt returns from Peregrine Falcon watch. (To catch up with him, see his Falcon Watch blog.) We don’t have a lot of video to post as of late, but we do have archival material that may be of interest to those who have limped along after Big Green for lo these many years. I will drop a note to all and sundry when I launch the new YouTube channel. There will be a few takes from an old video demo in there, most likely, along with our usual compliment of strange videos.

Okay, down goes the toast. Turn the keys up to eleven. And Mitch is back in the lab, so … boom goes the dynamite.