After all that baking, this is what you come up with? Doesn’t even look edible. I’m telling you, I’ve never heard of an artichoke pie. That’s just plain deees-gusting. (Last night it was artichoke sorbet. Uuuulllgghh….)
What the hell does a guy have to do to get a decent meal around here, eh? Christ, I sound like Robert Young on “Father Knows Best.” Can’t a guy get a little attention around this place? Geeeeezzzz. Next I’ll be going around in corduroy jackets with patches on the elbows. (If you see me like that, just shoot me, okay? Do me a kindness.) Honestly, though, the menu around this ludicrous hammer mill is almost too revolting to describe. No, we don’t have a proper chef… unless Boy-Ar-Dee counts. (And it doesn’t, Mitch, so settle down.) We can’t even afford the utensils these days. I’ve been reduced to spooning my dinner with creased slips of construction paper. Pretty soon we’ll be down to shirt cardboards. And then what? Unsold CD’s? Brick fragments? I shudder to think.
Never mind how I get the grub to my mandible. Who prepares our meals? I’ll give you one guess. Hint: His name starts with an “M” and ends with a “(my personal robot assistant)”. Those of you who guessed Marvin (my personal robot assistant) can help yourself to some artichoke pie. (Uuuuuulllgggh….) Sure, I know — wasn’t it me who said we’ve been leaning far too heavily 
on our mechanical friend? Wasn’t it me who said, let’s just be glad for our time together? (No, wait — that last one was Diana Ross. Sorry.) Right, right… but that was weeks ago. Marvin should be able to handle cooking. Mitch has programmed him with the latest recipes from Wolfgang Puck and Chef Guillame. Can we help it if the sauce gets ruined somewhere in the transcription process? Am I to be blamed for everything that goes wrong around here, huh? HUH?
Sorry again, friends. Just a bit on edge. It isn’t that I don’t like artichokes. It’s that, well, Marvin is a little confused about which part of the vegetable is edible. You see, being a mechanical creature without a soul or any identifiable animal needs, Marvin seems to think that the spiny, crunchy part that tastes like chicken feathers is some kind of delicacy. Fact is, it reminds me of something someone described as a “delicacy” whilst standing on a bridge over a pond just outside my girlfriend’s residence hall at SUNY New Paltz in 1980. (I won’t elaborate any further, just in case some of you are reading this over dinner.) 
It may well be true that Marvin can burn this coarse material in his ion reactor, but it certainly doesn’t constitute “food” to the rest of us. Christ in himmel, it’s not even a savory artichoke pie! It’s got brown freaking sugar in it. This robot is trying to make me spew in the worst way. (Though John White and Trevor James Constable seem to enjoy what they term the pie’s “delicate flavor.” I think it’s the result of food poisoning.) Oh, doctor!
Okay. Now I sound like Red Barber. That means it’s time to sign off, for sure. (I hate baseball… honest!) Put in a good word for us over at the cheap lunch counter. As soon as we can hock a few pipe fittings from the mill’s plumbing system, we should be getting some take out. Keep working that monkey wrench, boys — daddy’s hungry.
