First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is. Om naman shavaya. Ooooommmm…. OooooHooommmm… ahem! ahem! gack!
Whoops – sorry there, folks. Got a frog in my throat. Just trying to catch up on a little relaxation, eastern-style. Yep – transcendental meditation, as practiced by the now-late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who passed away just this week. Didn’t know we were into this arcane trend of many decades past? Well…. truth is, not. Just thought that, hell, if it worked for The Beatles and other somewhat more popular pop groups, perhaps it might work for us. So I started meditating, thinking if I did it hard enough, it would make us enormously famous and successful retroactively. Then we could retire to our lonely mountaintop redoubts and play the plastic banjo until doomsday. (Which might be right around the corner…. REPENT!!) Anywho… it hasn’t worked so far. Not sure, but I think I may have coughed up my fifth vertebra. (Whatever it was, it sure seemed crunchy…)
Okay, well, there are other reasons for my resort to distinctly metaphysical sources of comfort here in the bowels of the Cheney Hammer Mill. One biggy is the continuing madness of 
Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who has persisted in the bizarre practices I described in last week’s entry (if you missed it, scroll down and you’ll see why I’m so discomfited). And as if that isn’t bad enough, he’s added a few more strange things to his repertory – stuff like, well, bouncing around on his head while reciting the acknowledgments page in his owner’s manual. Like putting a tambourine in the blender and drawing question marks on the outside with axle grease from the local garage. I could go on, but I’ll spare you. (You might start meditating, as well… and we can’t have that.)
As you may recall, Marvin’s inventor, the unredoubtable Mitch Macaphee, is far to busy doing nothing in 
Buenos Aires to come out here and straighten his creation out. This is not good. We’re in the closing phase – yes, friends, the closing phase – of production on our new album. Just today, Matt and I were editing a piece of some ambient sound we recorded on Cancri 55 into one of the songs on the new album – a little number called “Volcano Man”. (There’s this strange interlude about halfway through – you’ll hear it.) Yes, we’re sprinting to the finish line like overheated sloths… but this mad Marvin business is seriously getting in our way. No, seriously…. if he doesn’t get a grip, we may have to pull his power supply. Yes. Oh, yes.
Whoa… wait a minute, hold on. Can’t get too worked up, now. Must relax. Ooooommmm. Namaaaaaann. Shhhharayaaaaa. OooooomyGod, he’s doing it again! Put that blender down, Marvin!
