Can you talk any faster? Me thinkst not. Even if you could, I can’t type any faster, so it wouldn’t do any good. That’s what I’ve become, after seven years of this. Stenographer to assorted denizens of cyberspace. Can I stand the strain? Well, no.
I’m sitting on the landing gear of our rent-a-spacecraft, killing time as my cohorts continue their preparations for the upcoming Big Green GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE interstellar tour. Yes, we did change the name — thought better of it. I think this is a bit more descriptive than the last one, wouldn’t you agree? There’s a greater urgency, a more definite sense of momentum. Just wait a momentum, please. WATCH THAT CRATE! THOSE COMMEMORATIVE VASES COST A FORTUNE! Okay, sorry. Hard to get good help these days — very hard… especially when you don’t have any money with which to pay them. We just hope to bugger off before they expect compensation. (Hey… I told you the new name was more appropriate.) JUST LET ME KNOW IF YOU NEED A HAND, GUYS!
As I mentioned last week, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) will accompany us this time out, as he has so many times before. This decision was taken by popular demand on the part of Marvin’s enormous cyborg fan 
base out yonder. (So if you’re listening out there… he’s coming, damn it! Stop e-mailing me, you obsessive cyborgs!) Yes, we will have the full complement on board the imitation J-2 space cruiser; a regular who’s who of Notes From Sri Lanka lore. We got your man sized tuber, your sFshzenKlyrn, your Trevor James Constable (complete with orgone generating device; additional T.J. Constable accessories sold separately), your Mitch Macaphee, your posi Lincoln and anti-Lincoln, and even your Dr. Hump right here. I’ve seen each one of their crates being carried on board whilst I’ve been sitting here, relaxing. (Yes, we’re keeping them all in crates. Why not, eh?)
Who will be keeping an eye on the mill while we’re gone? Well, this is where the clever part comes in. Frankly, I didn’t have the heart to leave tubey or any of the others behind to face the hostility of an entire community, still bent out of shape from the bombing run that Gung-Ho treated them to on our behalf. (Well… they all flatly refused, for one thing, and let’s face it — there are more of them than there are of me.) So we commissioned our scientific cohort Mitch Macaphee to rig up the equivalent of a baby monitor system… our “eye from the sky”, as it were. That’s the more clever half. The slightly less clever half involves cardboard cut-outs of ourselves strategically positioned at all the windows. This will give the mill the appearance of occupancy. What purpose does that serve? 
Not sure. Fact is, we set them up before really thinking through what the effect of doing so would be. So rather than let all that good work go to waste…. we left them there. And we mounted one outside the front viewing port of our space craft. Call it a hood ornament… or a baby monitor.
Anywho, Mitch set it up so that we can talk back through those monitors and, hopefully, intimidate any intruders into abandoning their nefarious designs. I thought that was a nice touch. And as I sit here watching people work, I can only applaud Mitch’s initiative in devising this “solution”, as they say in the corporate world (where thesauruses are as rare as hen’s teeth).
Hopefully when you hear from me again, it will be from somewhere in outer spaaaaaace. Somewhere with breathable air and a positive gravity. (Hey… we wrote it into the contracts this year, so no surprises, right?)
