Saints preserve us. Not that we’re saints, but then… if we were, wouldn’t we be preserving ourselves rather than asking others to do it for us? What’s with the look? Hey… you’ve got to think about these things when you’re an explorer, you know.

Right. Leaving matters of religion out of this (since, after all, we represent many faiths), avid readers of Big Green‘s putrid blog “Hammermill Days” will know that we have embarked upon an intrepid journey northward from the mysterious and little known island the inhabitants refer to in their obscure dialect as “manna-hat-un” and sometimes “nuu-yawk” or “nuu-yawk, gah-dammit.” (Several natives used an even more complex variant of the second term – I believe it’s pronounced, “nuu-yawk, yuhfuggin-nidiot”.) Whatever the name may be, we chose to leave this place behind, with its deep grimy canyons, overpriced lunches, and peculiar honking denizens, so northward we went, straight up fifth avenue and deep into the unknown. What sent us in this direction? Instinct mostly. And the coaxing of Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who has some kind of navigational device built into him that always makes him choose north when you ask him for directions. (He’s like a freaking compass with casters and a great big yap.)

All right, there was a better reason to head northward. The two Lincolns – posi and anti – who have plagued our existence since their arrival in this time period, jumped into a taxi and told the cab driver to take them to the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. The cabbie seemed to know what they were talking about, and he went north, so we’re following him. Not much to go on, I will admit, but that’s what we’ve got, okay, so get off my back… JUST CLIMB OFF, DAMMIT! Ahem… forgive me. It’s the pressure, that’s all. You can’t know what it’s like unless you’ve taken on an unknown continent with no one you can rely on for support or guidance – a sojourner cut off from civilization and condemned to find his way through the wilderness in the company of some very questionable associates, one of whom is, quite frankly, a vegetable. It sickens me to think of what Magellan must have gone through… or that guy who explored the Hudson Valley…. what the hell was his name?

I would be less than honest to suggest that we are experiencing anything like the hardships faced by the early exploiters… er…explorers of the North American continent. For instance, they did not have the New York State Thruway, though if they had, they probably would have been denied access for lack of negotiable currency (I doubt Henry Hudson had an EZ-Pass tacked onto the hull of this ship). Yea, I say unto you, our fortuitous discovery of the Thruway actually made our journey home a simple matter of following the expensive ribbon of asphalt through the remote valleys of upstate New York until the right exit sign appeared. I tell you, the gods of the State Department of Transportation were smiling down upon us (quite literally, from their enormous yellow vehicles) as we made our way along this magnificent causeway (’cause way up yonder, they’re ain’t a whole lot of other good roads). I can only wonder at what might have been the source of their amusement. (Perhaps the fact that we, unlike our fellow Thruway travelers, did not have a vehicle, and we’re trailing along behind Big Zamboola like mutant ducklings.)

Such was our journey home. (And as such, it sucked.) Can you believe it’s more than six bucks to get from New York to the Hammer Mill? Jesus Christ on a bike. (No doubt, Christ on a bike could have made it home faster.)

Got your bearings straight? Well, then, where the hell are we? What’s that? The Bering Strait? How the hell did we… oh, right. You’re just repeating the last two words of every sentence that comes out of my mouth. How helpful. Stop it!

Yes, friends… that’s right. We still haven’t found our way back to the Cheney Hammer Mill, which we now presume is no longer under the control of the dreaded space alien Gizmandiar since his ignominious defeat at the pseudo-pods of the equally dreaded (though beloved by us) space alien sFshzenKlyrn . (Long story, actually. If you’ve missed the last few installments, click that Usual Rubbish link and scroll down a bit.) Anyway, we spent several salty days at sea following our splashdown in the Atlantic (or was it the Pacific… because the Atlantic isn’t so terrific, though the Pacific, I hear, is not all it’s cracked up to be…) before Marvin (my personal robot assistant) caught sight of land. It was the first we’d actually heard so much as a squeak from Marvin since his collision with the alien drink dispenser last week, and though his exclamation was a bit of a non-sequitur, it was clear that he had seen our journey’s end up ahead.

Now, those of you who have been following the exploits of Big Green over the past few months (rudderless wretches though you may be) know that we spent a fair amount of time on a remote, uncharted island just recently. Needless to say, none of us was looking forward to this landfall – I can still feel those underripe plantains scraping my palate on the way down…. uuuhhhlllllggghh… Anyway, the strange, unknown island loomed before us, filling even the hardiest amongst us with dread. It was a dark and foreboding place, seemingly lifeless, with massive palisades of sheer rock reaching to the heavens like a confinement wall around a prison. Matt ordered the man-sized tuber to row a little harder so we could get a closer look. (Tubey isn’t good at a lot of things, but rowing he knows.) I think the root vegetable may have misunderstood Matt’s instructions somewhat, since he propelled us right up onto dry land without so much as a by your leave. (Can’t get good galley help these days…)

We got out and took a look around. Was this an island? Marvin said yes, but again, he still seemed a bit addled. So we worked our way northward through the deep canyons until, exhausted from the trials of the previous few days, we stopped to rest and collect our thoughts. Marvin did a little self lubrication, while Matt, John, and I ordered a half-carafe of merlot and a basket of bruschetta to bolster us for the long and arduous journey up Fifth Avenue towards terra incognita. Anticipating our plans (which we had largely kept to ourselves), the Lincolns (posi and anti) had hailed a cab while we were enjoying our provisions and sped off towards god only knows where. How many times do I have to tell these guys? This isn’t the 19th century anymore! All of the places they knew are now something else entirely. (I can picture poor anti-Lincoln scratching his fool head over the shoe factory they built on remains of his family home.)

Anyway, it’s northward bound for us, in hopes of finding a clue as to how to get back home. I’m thinking, though, we should at least try to take credit for discovering this previously unknown island, with its awful beauty and its overpriced luncheon options. How about Greenland? Taken? Then Greensfield. Greensboro. Keep thinking… we’ve got all night.

Every man is the captain of his soul, sure. But what about every robot? And every root vegetable? I mean, how many captains can this unseaworthy scow handle, eh? Cheeez.

Ahoy, mateys! Yes, it’s your old friends in the calamitous band Big Green shouting out to you from the high seas, somewhere east (or perhaps west) of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in sunny upstate New York. As you may have surmised, we…. um, excuse me… Hey Matt – ask one of the Lincolns to put his finger up in the air and get a check of our wind direction. No, no – not THAT finger! Mother of pearl…. As I was beginning to say, you have probably surmised that we made it through re-entry okay. A bit touch and go, though it helps to remember that we have had much, much more experience with the terrifying phenomenon of re-entry than practically any rock band in business. (Except perhaps Captured by Robots – they’ve got us beat, for sure.)

Yes, the strange craft we borrowed from Gizmandiar lacked comprehensible controls, having been designed by a strange anemic race from a distant solar system. In point of fact, we found the retro rocket switches through the process of elimination, having activated every accessory in the bloody vehicle (including all of the vanity mirror lights… and can you believe that Gizmandiar’s ship has electric sun visors?) We hit all of the banks at once, and the resulting shock threw Marvin (my personal robot assistant) across the cabin and into what turned out to be the space alien equivalent of a water cooler (assuming, of course, Gizmandiar’s planet finds toxic sludge somehow refreshing… like the rest of us). Despite this slight mishap, our bold action did in fact slow our descent and correct our attitude to the point where we could safely re-enter the earth’s atmosphere. (Who wants to come home with a bad attitude, right? People’d just as soon you’d stayed where you were.)

Okay, enough parenthetical asides, already! (I promise.) Our saucer-like craft rocketed down through the troposphere (forgive me – or what used to be called the troposphere) and ker-plunked into a rather large, salty body of water, quite probably an ocean… but damn, I’m just not sure. We asked Marvin to use his sensor array to try and determine where the hell we had ended up, but he was still loopy from his collision with the sludge-cooler. It occurred to me that the man-sized tuber might try behaving like a divining rod in reverse and find the closest land mass, but… well… that was just a…. dumb idea… So we put together some plastic insulation sheeting and hoisted it up on a makeshift mast to catch the wind so that we would start heading somewhere. John tried to raise someone with his cell phone, but it was no use. (Bloody Verizon!)

So here we are, bobbing away on the high seas (or ocean… whatever), issuing orders to one another, none of which ever get carried out. Someone out there, just do me a favor. Bring up Mapquest or something like it and key-in “Big Green” + “lost at sea”, then let me know what comes up. There’s a good chap.

Skin temperature 500 degrees Kelvin. 550 Kelvin. 600 Kelvin. Damage report! Skin temperature 750 Kelvin. Pilot to co-pilot – what the hell is “Kelvin” and why is it so damn hot?

Oh, yes… hello, blogospheric visitor. You’re catching your friends in Big Green at kind of a bad time, actually. I would ask you to come back in about half an hour, but we just may have all been burned to a cinder by that time. So… now’s better. You may ask yourself, why is this band always chin-deep in some kind of unlikely peril, rather than wired to a mixing console, turning the pots and making the record you’ve been promised for the last four years? I have an answer to that, I’m fairly sure, only it’s back on the surface of the Earth, where we are headed at approximately 575 miles per hour, through ever-thickening layers of atmosphere, like riding a matchhead over an enormous striker. Hot, baby, hot!

Not that you need a lot of back story (just look below, or click the “Usual Rubbish” link), but last week we rocketed into orbit in one of Gizmandiar’s abandoned space vehicles in order to escape the mindless wrath of our oversized Zenite friend sFshzenKlyrn on his flapjack-fueled rampage through the heart of our little city. Mind you, Gizmandiar and his crew are from a whole ‘nuther planet, so as you might imagine, the controls in this spacecraft were not exactly intuitive. It took me better than five hours to figure out which of these gizmos was a radio (during which time my imagination had gotten the better of me, filling my tiny brain with pictures of a devastated world below, devoid of life… a Rumsfeldian paradise, if you will). Luckily, the seriously unmoored sFshzenKlyrn had not reduced human civilization to ash – everything was still standing except the IHOP in our city center, which… I believe… the man from Zenon… devoured… whole…. (Cue timpani. I said, cue timpani! Damn it, man… you’ve killed the suspense!)

Anyway, his jones sated, his rampage disgorged, sFshzenKlyrn moved on to better things (somewhere in the Pleiades star cluster, I believe – check Entertainment Weekly – Galactic Edition). And with Gizmandiar presumably incinerated or dispatched to some other more tolerable realm of being, there seemed to be no point in bobbing around in orbit for very much longer. Loogit, we may all be indolent, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have work to do. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has to get back to his panhandling. (Once you cultivate a good corner, an absence of even two or three days can mean a serious loss of territory.) Besides, the two Lincolns are beginning to get on everyone’s nerves, even the man-sized tuber’s, who – being a root vegetable – can suck it up better than just about anyone in this organization. But for chrissake, first anti-Lincoln throws posi-Lincoln’s hat out into space, then posi-Lincoln steals anti-Lincoln’s juice box… I mean, how the fuck did either one of those guys win the Civil War, let alone establish the Republican party as a dominant force in American politics?

Okay, so… re-entry was decided upon, destination Cheney Hammer Mill. In the absence of a qualified pilot, it was down to John White, who has circumnavigated the globe many times in his virtual air crafts. Not a lot of difficulty here – just point the nose of the ship towards upstate New York, and down fast! (Though it is getting a bit warm in here…)

Auckland, do you read me. Come in, Brazzaville, come in. Are you receiving me, Des Moines? Is there anybody out there, for chrissake?

Well, now we’ve done it. Golsh dang-git. I mean, god damn it… I may as well swear again, since Gizmandiar and his entire extraterrestrial junta may well have been atomized by deadly keltone rays, fired at city hall by our somewhat intemperate sit-in guitarist from Zenon, sFshzenKlyrn. What the fuck… if only that were the end of it. As many of you know, we called sFshzenKlyrn in to help us deal with these foul usurpers, who had deprived of us squathouse, livelihood, and even language. And as I may have mentioned before, our Zenite friend is a little hard to stop once he gets going. And friends, old sFshzenKlyrn got going all right. He certainly hasn’t lost his touch with concentrated trans-dimensional matter disruption beams.

Okay, here’s what happened, judge. First the man from Zenon smashed city hall to smithereens. Gizmandiar had either returned to his home dimension or… well… gone to perdition, as he would have me put it. Anyway, to celebrate our liberation from this tyrant, we offered to take sFshzenKlyrn out for a hardy meal. Sadly, he chose the local IHOP and ordered about 17 consecutive half-stacks of buckwheat flapjacks with blueberry syrup and extra sweet butter. (Mmmmmm-boy.) I know what you’re going to say – why couldn’t you fuckers in Big Green stop him? Well… there’s no simple answer to that question. It was a matter of honor, you see. Also, we partook of a few half-stacks ourselves, and well… let’s say we soon found ourselves in a state of diminished responsibility. (Do I have to draw you a picture? I just got finished with a freaking breath test!)

Yeah, well anyway… what happened next. Like the last time, sFshzenKlyrn got big. I mean, really really big. He freaking broke through the roof of the IHOP and towered over our little city. Even worse, when he goes on a flapjack binge, his state of matter changes from gaseous to solid. It’s like a thunder cloud that suddenly turns to granite, only instead of just lying there, he starts tromping around the village emitting keltone rays left and right. Now, our little upstate town had never experienced anything like godzilla before – extraterrestrial mayors, yes, but no ten-story space monsters. The local constabulary was at a loss as to how to deal with sFshzenKlyrn, and so everybody just kind of closed their shutters and kept their fingers in their ears. This caused Marvin (my personal robot assistant) a certain amount of consternation. (When he can’t see your face, he thinks you’re gone forever.)

I have to confess, we of Big Green kind of panicked. In our flapjack-induced stupor, we commandeered one of Gizmandiar’s spacecrafts and launched ourselves into a super-wide orbit. Now I’m trying to raise someone down on planet earth, and not having a lot of luck. For fuck’s sake, if you’re reading this, contact us, damnit! We don’t know how to land this bloody thing! (And it’s chock full of lawn fertilizer.)

Don’t tell me – let me guess. It’s big. It’s dense. And it’s very, very attractive. Ummmmm… that could be almost anything that fits those criteria. Am I getting warmer? Well, am I?

Crikey. Sometimes Marvin (my personal robot assistant) takes his programming far too seriously. I’ve asked him to help me with a little problem I’m trying to work out… namely, what inhabitable planets can we sail off to in case the titanic struggle between sFshzenKlyrn (trans-physical etheric energy being from Zenon) and Gizmandiar (lawn-obsessed, power-mad space creature now occupying the seat of our local government) renders the earth uninhabitable for a brief time (perhaps six or seven million years… which passes quickly if you are made of feldspar). Matt heard recently that the astronomical community has identified another 28 planets circling distant stars they’ve observed, and I’m sure at least one of them has our name written on it. If I can just get Marvin to tell me which one! Focus, damn it… focus!

We’re almost certain that Gizmandiar and his turf-hugging minions came to us from the relatively proximate planet known as Earth 2. That certainty, of course, is not based on any scientific evidence, since the science complement of our party has long since departed the vicinity of the Cheney Hammer Mill (Mitch Macaphee, never fond of the alley, has other fish to fry, while Trevor James Constable has grown tired of fighting the sewer rats for discarded breadfruit rinds. Mmmmmm…) No, sir, we’re shooting from the hip here, scientifically speaking, and that’s plenty close enough for Big Green. Fact is, the discovery of Earth 2 was announced around the same time that these too-clever-by-half space creatures showed up and started bossing us around, so we made a major inductive leap on the basis of that. (Don’t try this at home!)

Anyway, last week we put out the call for sFshzenKlyrn and he responded with the usual dispatch, faithful cohort that he is. Of course, this hyper-powerful man from Zenon is as uncontrollable in normal life as he is on stage. And if you’ve heard one of his rip-snorting guitar solos, you have a pretty good idea of how sFshzenKlyrn conducts his affairs more generally. I suspect he and this Gizmandiar have some history – maybe a little bad blood, if that term can be said to apply to gaseous beings that exist in multiple dimensions at the same time. sFshzenKlyrn set about stalking city hall in a semi-menacing fashion, later bombarding it with keltone rays which caused the building to shift from its moorings and… well…. kind of disintegrate. (Sorry, folks. Unintended consequences, you know.) Then there was a slightly larger boom, followed by a smoky smell and what felt like a minor earthquake.

So yeah – it was at this point that I started asking Marvin about other hospitable planetary bodies. Just a little insurance, you understand – nothing to get worked up about. So far the best he’s come up with is one of those Magnetars – a neutron star with a tremendously powerful gravitational field. Of course, unless I learn to eat gamma rays for breakfast, that’s probably not much better than a trash-strewn alley on a condemned world… Care to join me? (Thought not.)

I know, I know. I shouldn’t-a dunit. But I dunit. They left me no alternative. Do I suck? Maybe. But at least you know where I stand. (Am I standing? Feels like sitting…)

Howdy, friends. Expect you recall last week’s tiresome debacle and the intolerable acts of our extraterrestrial overlords, as they came to occupy our humble city hall. Who could forget the arrogance of a certain Gizmandiar? A gentleman he is not. (Neither gentle, nor man… nor any other species I’ve ever come across.) I am not being ungenerous. Consider, if you will, the bill of particulars with regard to said Gizmandiar. He and his minions hath:

1. deliberately and wantonly, with malice aforethought, driven us from our ancestral (relax – that’s just the paint color) home and consigned us to a life of enhanced beggary (that’s like the beggary we enjoyed previously, only with 65% more cat’s pee);
2. issued the intolerable and wholly despicable decree known as “Special Order 14-2007” which directs us, on pain of prosecution, to “refrain from employing any foul, obscene, or abusive language commonly known as ‘swearing,'” thereby foreclosing our most immediate (and highly satisfying) remedy to item #1 (dag nab it!);
3. taken the foul and underhanded step of using his considerable resources to purchase our corporate record label (Loathsome Prick Records), subsequently employing that organization as yet another tool in our ongoing persecution (which is to say, well beyond the level of persecution we had experienced previously simply by being associated with Loathsome Prick Records);
4. heinously and relentlessly transformed the distressed brick courtyard of our beloved abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill into a carpet-like monoculture of lawn grass, later applying the same pernicious ground cover to other public and private spaces throughout our community.

Need I go on? I think not. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is pointing frantically to his watch, so… How do you battle a well-heeled cadre of space aliens who have taken over your town and evicted you from your squat house? Fight fire with fire, my friends. Oh, yes… Gizmandiar and company are not the only space aliens in the universe. And we of Big Green can name one space alien of long acquaintance who could easily mop the floor with these interlocutors, these usurpers, these…. gall-dangit, I wish I could fricking swear!!!

Ahem…. that space alien is, of course, sFshzenKlyrn, our occasional sit-in guitarist from the planet Zenon, located in the small Magellanic Cloud, quite a long ways from here. Didn’t want to do it, but with all that’s at stake, I put a call in to sFshzenKlyrn and asked for assistance. Are there risks? Oh, yes. Great risks. Remember what happened a few years back when our Zenite friend had a few too many flapjacks. (Suffice to say, they had to add a whole new chapter to Lost New York in the last edition.)

So, yeah… I know I may have acted rashly. But I think we can control the unpredictable force of nature that is sFshzenKlyrn this time. Or not….

Why, I’ll moiduhlize ’em! Dose lousy no-good s.o.b.’s! What duh “f” do those “a” holes think they’re doin’, handed us this pile of “s”? Dey got no “effin” principles, dat’s what.

What’s up with all this? Don’t ask! You insist? Rrrrrr…. okay, then. But you asked for it, friend. First of all, welcome once again to the general vicinity of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, where we have availed ourselves of those alleys not already occupied by creatures significantly more fierce than ourselves. (Mice? They tolerate us. Rats? We surrender. Simple rules of the unforgiving streets.) Dislocated and made homeless by that extraterrestrial usurper, Mayor Gizmandiar (formerly of the planet we know as “New Earth”), we have applied every legal remedy we can think of to reclaim our squat house. And all it has earned us is a gag order… and a bitter betrayal. Oh, yes…. betrayal!

First, the gag order. Actually, it’s not your usual variety. It’s more like a judicial parental filter, the “v” chip, if you will, of legal proscriptions. The local magistrate (also an extraterrestrial now, by the way… I think that was a case of transubstantiation, but I would need Mitch Macaphee here to confirm that) has ordered us to refrain from any “foul, profane, or abusive language that might ordinarily be considered ‘swearing’ or ‘speaking obscenely'”, an addendum to his writ helpfully listing words and phrases covered by the gag order. They include:

f**k

c**k

c**ksucker

*sshole

m*th*rf**k*r

sh*t

f**k*ng sh*t

f**k*ng c**k

g*dd*mn s*nuvab*tch

…and a few others I’d frankly never heard before. Well, as you can imagine, this has left us with very, very few options in normal conversation. I mean, how am I to properly communicate to Marvin (my personal robot assistant) exactly how fast I want him to perform some menial task, eh? How the heck am I supposed to compel that freaking man-sized tuber to get his butt out of my easy chair if I can’t use foul or abusive language. This is freaking killing me!

Okay, now as if that wasn’t bad enough, we have just learned that sometime over the course of the last few days, whilst we were seeking warmth in cellar window-wells and sifting through garbage for sustenance, Gizmandiar and his fellow lawn-obsessed space aliens got together enough scratch to buy out our corporate label, Loathsome Pr*ck Records. Under their new management, they have (of course) refused to intervene on our behalf and are now threatening to cancel our distribution deal if we don’t swear our allegiance to Gizmandiar. J*sus effin’ Christmas!

So, yeah… the ne’er-do-wells at our label have, in essence, sold us up the river (or down the alley) in exchange for gold bullion and stock options. Who woulda’ thunk it? Loathsome Pr*ck always seemed such a pleasant sort of company. Such is life. It may be necessary to take drastic measures. Next week: the sh*t hits the fan.

Whirl, whirl, twist and twirl… jump around like a flying squirrel. You pull my beard, I’ll pull your’n. Pick him up and hit ‘im in the head. Hit ‘im again, that critter ain’t dead!

Dang! (I mean, damn!) You learn the weirdest little songs living in the alley. With this heat, everybody’s got their windows open, and the fragrant tendrils of sweet country music waft out into the night and accost your unprotected eardrums. Right now I’m hearing some kind of a twangy ho-down emanating from about three stories up. Probably high time I show my appreciation – Oy! Oy! Toin it down, duh radio! That’s better. (At least I feel better about it – the freaking music is still there…)

Yes, well… if you guessed that the alien-mayor Gizmandiar has succeeded thus far in keeping us out of our adopted home (squat house) the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, then you are indeed correct. Matt, John, Marvin (my personal robot assistant), Mitch Macaphee (Marvin’s personal inventor), Trevor James Constable (keeper of the patented orgone generating device, as seen on T.V.), the man-sized tuber (no parenthetical comment can do him justice), Big Zamboola (former planet), Lincoln (our famous president), and anti-Lincoln (his evil twin) have all been released into the wild, there to do what nature commands. In my case, that’s sleeping in this alley. ‘Cause that’s the kind of fella that I am. (I’m biding my time….)

Others in our party – let’s face it – are more ambitious than me and the man-sized tuber (who’s in the next alley over). Mitch Macaphee is, after all, a man of relative means; a veritable Tarzan of mad science, swinging by vine from international conference to research fellowship to faculty posting. Right now he’s off to Madagascar on some kind of government research initiative (reinventing Lysol, I believe is what he said). In any case, Mitch has options. So has Trevor James, who spent a week in solidarity with us before lighting off to his ranch in California where comfort and plenty await. (Who can blame him, right? I said, am I right?? Is this bloody thing on?)

My apologies. You get cranky out in the alley – I’m sure I don’t have to explain. Anyway – that leaves us with Marvin, the two Lincolns, Big Zamboola, and of course, the tuber… none of whom has anywhere better to go (trust me on this). And as you know, Marvin has little choice, since he is an automated servo mechanism programmed to respond to my voice commands, however imperfectly. I have instructed him to negotiate our return to the Mill and, if necessary, to raise the money for any fines levied against our account. So far no progress – in fact, he’s been sputtering and clanging in the same spot since I issued that command about a week ago. (Personally, I doubt he’s even started the assignment….) Bloody servo mechanisms! When do I get a proper robot? And where’s my jet pack!

Yes, Marvin may be malfunctioning. And his repair man is – wait for it – Mitch Macaphee, now a temporary resident of distant Madagascar. Crikey – don’t tell me I’ll have to send the Lincolns to do our negotiating! Last time they agreed on something, the Confederacy fired on Fort Sumter. (Not the diplomatic type…)

That’s one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, now go, cat, go! Don’t you step on my… ah, what’s the use? Can’t do covers… even when I’m panhandling.

Welcome back. I almost said “to the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill,” but I caught myself in time. Actually, our august squat house is now, indeed, abandoned… in the sense that there is now no one in it. Yes, friends… our new extra-terrestrial mayor, Gizmandiar, has made good on his threat to evict us – call it a down payment on the opportunistic election campaign he’s planning for this fall. This fucker’s racking up empty promises so fast, you could swear he was born on the planet earth. (In fact, never having seen this creature, I can’t say for certain that he wasn’t.) Everywhere you turn in this town now, it’s Gizmandiar’s doing this, and Gizmandiar’s in favor of that…. and one of those things he’s doing is enforcing building codes and vagrancy laws, no matter how obscure. Hence, our homelessness. (He sent in the goons. And let me tell you, baby… they’re good at what they do.)

Matt, John, Mitch Macaphee, and the others (with the exception of the two Lincolns) think that the lawn-loving space people are just sticklers for the law, and when they took over the town government (by bribing our local officials all the way to Tahiti), they went on a good-government rampage. I personally think that this Gizmandiar character is taking revenge on us for complaining about the carpet-like lawn they established in our courtyard when they first arrived on this sorry planet. What the hell, I even cajoled Trevor James Constable into training his orgone generating device on their space craft. I’m sure even on their anemic planet, turnabout is fair play. (Though if they have negative gravitation, that may not be the case.) Whatever the truth may be, they have found an effective way to squelch criticism of their landscaping fetish…. and we’ve earned our one-way ticket to palookaville. (I coulda been a contender! I coulda been somebody… instead of a bum….)

Now, I don’t know about you, but I think it’s one hell of a coincidence that astronomers have discovered a strangely Earth-like planet a mere 20 light years away at precisely the same time that these odd space aliens showed up in our little town. We asked Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to calculate the odds of these two events happening at the same time, and the results were astounding – seventy-three trillion to one against. (Of course, those are the same odds Marvin gave me when I asked him if it was going to rain last weekend…. and it rained last weekend. So yes, he could certainly be a meteorologist in this town.) So… is it true? Are the local aliens really from the strange rocky world known as “New Earth?” Can discarded lawn darts really be repurposed as inexpensive bottle openers? Is guar gum a vegetable? Is our children learning?

Yes, friends…. the answers to these and other questions can be found right here next week. And for all those who wrote letters of sympathy and support for your friends in Big Green last week, all I can say is… something went wrong down at the post office, because we didn’t receive any letters of sympathy and support. (I haven’t checked the trash can today, to be fair.) Write us, damnit – we need scrap paper!