Call out the marines. Get the cops down here. Somebody plugged our money hole… and this could be a problem.
Yeah, I know … all good things come to an end, right? We were just starting to get traction as the next big-box store. Our theme is that of an abandoned mill… all of our stores look like abandoned mills. (Note: we only have one store, and it’s in an abandoned mill.) We have a mascot, Marvin (my personal robot assistant), and a jokey spokes vegetable, the mansized tuber, who we were thinking would wheel his way through quirky television commercials, speaking in a British… no, Aussie accent. Perhaps German accent. We haven’t worked out that part yet. He would show up in board rooms and on cruise ships … at least the ones that don’t tip over or catch on fire.
And hell, with the help of our marketing advisor, Noname, on loan from the A and R representative at our corporate label, Loathsome Prick Records, we even had an expansion plan on the board, with a big map and hexagonal icons representing new store locations in Boise, Idaho, Keokuk, Iowa, Redmond, Washington, and about a thousand other locations. Big Green was even planning to go global, with 
outlets in Spain, Qatar, Estonia, Sri Lanka (of course), and down under somewhere (or something). It was a bold, ambitious plan … one that made our militant cartoon neighbor, Gung-Ho, fairly salivate with envy. All of the lands HE wanted to conquer, spread out invitingly before him on a topographical map. Oh, the envy!
But… that was then, this is … OWW! (Forgive me. Marvin just rolled over my right foot.) One day this past week, the free consumer goods, once so plentiful, simply stopped flying out of that hole in the floor Mitch Macaphee burned with Trevor James Constable’s Orgone Generating Machine. (I know… that’s a little hard to parse. Just look back a few weeks, you’ll get it.) We just sold the last programmable toaster yesterday. All out of custom! Even worse, the hole emitted a parting gift of sorts – namely, a bill of lading for everything that had flown out over the past three weeks. And it’s considerable. I didn’t know a number could have that many zeroes behind it. (A google-plex, perhaps?)
So there you have it. The once mighty Green-mart empire, brought low by an interloper on the other side of this wretched globe. Curses! (Ahem…. hurt my throat, there.)
Okay, truth is… I don’t know for certain that Jim Bob is responsible. It may well have been Marvin (my personal robot assistant) who knocked the lamp post down during the first snow storm of the year. Here it is, the week after Christmas, and people are still driving like it’s July. Spoiled by global warming, I suppose. In any case, I only have myself to blame. It was I who suggested that Marvin serve as our chauffeur until a suitable replacement might be found. What? You didn’t know we had people driving us around? Well, that’s because we haven’t up until now. We’ve just recently adopted the Bowie-esque doctrine of acting successful to become successful. It’s like priming the pump, man.
I know, I know – I shouldn’t complain, what with this being the season of kindness and gratitude. (Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, sees it more as the season of mindlessness and attitude, but that’s how he rolls.) We’re still recording, still flailing away at the canon, committing item after item from the seemingly bottomless vat of unrecorded material to virtual tape. You can hear the results of these sessions on our podcast, 
Oh, hiya. Geezus, you’d think being idle and ensconced in an abandoned hammer mill would offer endless opportunities to rehearse, jam, arrange, etc. Seems like every time we try to do it, something comes up. For instance, this week I’ve got custody of the mansized tuber. (Matt had him last week. Hey – that’s the terms of the adoption agreement, what do you want from me?) I guess I never realized what a handful he can be. He’s at a difficult age for tubers; you know, that time when they either become a full-fledged plant or get mashed up into some kind of traditional dish. I have to think that, for tubey, it’s going to be the former outcome, but he doesn’t seem convinced. Now he jumps at every noise. And as you might expect, rehearsal generates a lot of noises.