All right – give it back. It’s my turn to use the gas mask. More than ten minutes counts as a “bogart”, right? Fifteen minutes? All right…
Yes, more strife here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, place of our birth, land of our fathers, and all the rest of it. What is Big Green up to this week? Gasping. Lots of gasping. As some of you may know (and many, I’m sure, don’t), May is the time of year when mad scientists tend to roll out all of their new world-destroying experiments. It’s in anticipation of the upcoming CrazyCom Mad Science Convention they hold in Madagascar every August. Everybody wants to show boat the new death ray, the improved zip gun, the killer robot, now with more sparks. Kind of a pissing match for high-tech cranks. Attend at your own risk. (The last one ended badly, I hear.)
Seriously, I hate this time of year. Mitch Macaphee always goes way over the top, trying to one-up the other mad scientists on the block (by “block”, they mean solar system… they’ve got a different name for everything). Last year it was an anti-gravity machine. I spent the better part of April sleeping on the ceiling. (And that was the better part.) The year before, some kind of trans-dimensional salad shooter, I believe – not his most ambitious endeavor, I must say. Close to ten years ago, he actually got 
an honorable mention for Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who Mitch built from odds and spares in his one-room lab back in old Jakarta.
It’s a bit hard to get into the spirit of this competition, especially when Mitch’s obsession is sucking all the air out of the room. That’s not a metaphor: he has invented a machine that sucks all the air out of a room. Don’t bother trying to work out the practical applications for such a device – he is a mad scientist. What part of mad scientist do you not understand? He’s cobbled together some kind of contraption that’s belching black smoke as we speak. John thought to tap our old militant neighbor, Gung-Ho, for some surplus gas masks, but he could only spare one. Hence, the ensuing competition.
Hmmmm… what do you think? Can we hold our breath until August? We shall see.
Oh, hi. Yeah, I was just in the process of dressing down the mansized tuber. Why? Well, it’s simple – he keeps making more work for us bipeds, signing us up for these aggregator sites like Reverbnation and the like. I can’t keep up with it, man! And my bandmates want nothing to do with it. I’m the janitor here in Big Green land. (My brother Matt is the cinematographer, I should mention.) But what the hell, I’m complaining again, aren’t I? I should be grateful to have a roof over my head, three square meals a day, two round ones, and a couple of hexagonal snacks. That’s more than most can say these days.
There are ways we can maximize our budget down here without the help of space aliens. One way is to eat less. I’ve been trying to get by on bread heels and brick fragments, but yesterday I broke down and got some Chinese food. Not that cutting back on nutrients is the best way to save money – far from it. We’ve been trying a host of innovations. Mitch Macaphee, for instance, came up with these little power generation gizmos he calls “Nano Mills” – tiny windmills that adhere to your clothing and generate enough power to … well … to make an LED glow dimly for a few seconds. Not much, but it’s a start. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is now covered with the little contraptions. 
Oh, hi. Just spitballing here in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. Nothing to get excited about. Between Big Green tours, as you may already know, we tend to blow a lot of time in contemplation and various other pointless activities. Not because we are perennial time-wasters, you understand. No, no – it’s the ascetic lifestyle we aspire to. I know most bands drown themselves in drink, cloud their minds with illicit drugs, and indulge in multifarious pleasures of the flesh. Not this crew, my little friend – not a bit of it. We are like monks. (Did I say monks? I meant monkeys. Or Monkees. You take your pick.) We sit about, scratch, toss things at one another… until somebody says, get up there and play.
That’s just one example. And yeah, we’re aiming that at both an Earthbound audience and those folks out there in spaceland. Got to name-check a few communities they’re likely to recognize – kind of like those pop songs that have place names in them (like Huey Lewis naming cities at the end of “Heart of Rock and Roll”, for instance). When we’re up in the Crab Nebula, they wait for this song. They start waving their tentacles and nodding their oddly misshapen heads. It’s a gas.
What’s happening around this place? Usual kind of stuff. We’re preparing for the warm weather, which typically comes around this time in the northern hemisphere (for those of you browsing in from Madagascar). That’s kind of an involved process. We have to put out the fire we started in the basement last November. No, we don’t have a furnace – that’s for bourgeois rock bands and… what do they call them? …. symphony orchestras. Hell, no – no furnace for Big Green. We just bust up a bunch of old furniture, baskets, hammer stocks (of which there are many lying around the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill), and other combustibles, chuck ’em down the basement stairs, light ’em up, and keep it going until March.
actual paint left is the stuff holding the windows closed.
Ah, got it. Scratched into my computer monitor, right about where the password field appears on the screen. Pretty clever, huh? No one would think of looking for it there! Let’s see… what is up at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill that might be of interest to you. Little inventory here. I think Mitch Macaphee is working on an experiment (either that or Qaddafi’s bombers are getting closer). Matt is either changing strings on a guitar, feeding animals, or transposing our heads with those of lunar astronauts. (A specialty of his.) Johnny White is catching up on his technical manuals, I believe. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has shut himself down for the weekend, taking a little break from his newly founded religious cult. I won’t get into what the Lincolns are up to.
“…most of the big green groups are loath to talk about economics and often don’t want to see themselves as being part of a left at all, see climate change as an issue that transcends politics entirely…. a lot of the big green groups, are also in a kind of denial.” 
Right. So, let’s see… what do we have in the old mail bag? Ah… here’s something…
I have entrusted it to my good friend, Big Zamboola, who will carry it straight over to you…. just as soon as he disengages himself from synchronous orbit over Aldebaran 7. (He is strangely attracted to that hideous little globe.) Give him a few thousand years or so. Orbits have decayed more slowly than that, to be sure.
That’s the song we’re singing here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, now that Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has been plying his new trade as preacher, flock-leader, and chief financial officer of the local diocese of the Space Hippie Sect. Yes, it’s a religion he made up using bits and pieces from Hulu reruns he watches in his ample spare time (contrary to common belief, robots are slothful creatures generally, their servos idle nearly 65% of the time). Turns out it was time well wasted, as the converts have been trudging in, eyes glazed, arms extended in front of them, hungry for spiritual guidance. Didn’t know Marvin was so good at getting money out of people. Must be new programming… for somebody.
constitutionally protected speech, not a Web-based confession of ill deeds. Nor is this claim a lame effort to keep you from breaking up this great little scam we’ve got going….. um… in the satire.)
Whoops, sorry. I didn’t know anyone was listening in. Well, this is kind of embarrassing. Actually, I was just giving a small piece of advice to Marvin (my personal robot assistant) with regard to what is acceptable and unacceptable when one is contemplating organizing a major religion. Not that I know all that much about it, but I think I know more than Marvin does, and I think that gives me “tell you something right now” rights and privileges. Especially with a bloody robot. (Don’t tell him I said that – he’ll start sulking again.)
Sheesh – now who’s the robot? (I guess that still would be Marvin.) Marvin was looking for a religious movement that would be, well, sticky enough to draw some fanatical adherents even in this forgotten backwater of Central New York. Kind of a back stoop movement, if you will. Marvin would do the organizing, with a little help from anti-Lincoln, who is himself a pretty effective fanatic. (Thing is, I don’t know if he can get the space-age guitar thing just right.) I am a bit skeptical, but even so… it could kind of work. Here you have a millennial movement whose goals – hijacking a fictitious space vessel and driving it to an equally fictitious planet – can never be realized, only hoped for – worshipped, if you will. Pretty much the stuff successful religions are made of. And hell, Marvin’s got his first converts: Lincoln, Big Zamboola, and the man-sized tuber.