Connect blue wire (A) to terminal (3). Check. Connect yellow wire (F) to terminal (48c). Check. Hit boot switch, but first, insert index fingers (K) and (M) into ears (7) and (8). Hmmm…. okay.
Oh, hi. Caught me in the middle of something, as usual. Always some task to perform here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted squat-house in lovely upstate New York. As you may recall from previous posts (or not), we are preparing for an upcoming interstellar tour to support extraterrestrial sales of our new album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. Fact is, we make most of our money on units sold outside the bounds of the known solar system. (The rest we make on Neptune and some of the smaller, rockier moons of Saturn.)
Anyhow, as you might suspect, we will be needing some means of transportation for ourselves, our hangers-on, our instruments and gear, our provisions, etc. We have an old 1954 GMC City Coach (or we at least have access to it in the junk yard across the street), but it’s seen better days and probably isn’t up to a journey of 1,000 light years across the trackless void of space. (The windows haven’t been caulked in a couple of decades, so I doubt it’s space-worthy.) We used to simply “rent” spacecraft from other fictional narratives, like Lost in Space or Here Come The Brides, but that option is walled off by lack of funds. Our mad science adviser Mitch Macaphee is still in Madagascar, enjoying the sun, so we’re left to our own devices.
Right, so … using Mitch’s credit card, I ordered a do-it-yourself space ship from Heathkit. (Yes, I know … they no longer exist. I had to go through Mitch’s time portal to place the order.) So here I am, perhaps the most technically challenged member of Big Green, a man without a smart phone (I still use that brick phone my dad lent me in 1989), assembling a deluxe interstellar space cruiser stick by stick, armed only with a soldering gun and a pair of superannuated pliers.
No need to back away. I haven’t gotten to the volatile rare earths part yet. Stay tuned.
doing an interplanetary tour within our own solar system as opposed to traveling into deep space and incurring some substantial logistical costs (not least of which are those damned tollbooths between here and Aldebaran – I’m almost certain they’re a scam!). He whirred and flashed and squeaked for about three hours, then emitted a slip of paper that bore a recipe for potato soup written in Mandarin. I beckoned to my translator.
Christ on a bike. Sloth has reached a new level of intensity here at the hammer mill, and it’s no surprise. We have been cooped up in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill for the better part of three years (the worse part, too … I remember those awful days…), not a hand’s turn of work. Sure, we produced and released an album, 
Greetings from the Mill of our discontent. Well, it’s mild discontent, let’s say. Been a long time since the book of love. Wait … why did I say that? Oh, right – I was listening to tapes from the 70s and 80s, so naturally my mind goes back to my neighbor’s Led Zepplin albums. (I didn’t have any; just Simon and Garfunkel, Josh White, and Mario Lanza. Oh, and some weird stuff.) We didn’t sound anything like them, of course. In fact, we sounded strangely like us in the 2010’s. It’s as if we’ve been playing the same tune for forty years. FOR FORTY YEARS…!