What the hell is that? Sounds like the howl of the wind in a box canyon. No, wait … I know that sound. I think it’s a distant didgeridoo. That’s it, fellows – we have dug ourselves a tunnel to Australia.

Well, barely a day goes by here in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill without some kind of discovery. Last week it was a new source of precious reverb – a commodity rare as hen’s teeth up here in central New York. Now we’re looking at (or staring down into, I should say) a superhighway to down under. And when I say “down under”, I don’t mean merely down underground. Nay, sir … I mean the actual land “Down Under”, meaning the continent of Australia.

What luck, eh? Here I thought this elevator shaft to the center of the Earth would yield only another string of unsuccessful and unsatisfying performances in front of restive gaggles of Morlocks or some other troglodytic denizens of the dark. But now it seems the tunnel is a bit deeper than we thought … like maybe twice as deep. Because you can just about see some light coming though from the other end, and it looks like Aussie sunlight. There’s also a vague scent of flat beer. (Though I think that might be coming from Anti-Lincoln. He’s been hitting the cache lately, and it shows.)

We could be wrong, of course. After all, one random strain of didgeridoo music does not a continent make. The only way to be certain is to send a emissary down there. It’s a highly dangerous mission, so there’s no way in hell that’s going to be me. Matt’s no stranger to danger, of course, but only in the context of helping birds, animals, and other living things. (Snowflake!) Then there’s Marvin (my personal robot assistant). If he’d been around in 1969, NBC might have done a show about him called “Then came Marvin.” He could have played a disillusioned android who starts riding a scooter around Minneapolis, then got canceled after two seasons.

Anywho, if we send Marvin down there and he comes up with an Aussie hat and a kangaroo’s footprint on his brass, we’ll know we hit Aussie paydirt. Sounds like a plan. Ish.