Don’t suppose I ever thanked you for that, right? Well … thanks, man. Thanks a heap. Now get the hell out of my sight.
Oh, hi. Hey … no worries. Just practicing. This, as you know, is the time of year when you show gratitude to all and sundry, even your worst enemy. I was just practicing what that would look like in real life. Say, for instance, my worst enemy (whoever that may turn out to be) should pound on the hammer mill door one cold morning, maybe the day after a long, hard gig on the planet Aldebaran 12, where the bars are open until #$@ o’clock (which, for the record, is pretty late). After dragging myself out of bed, limping downstairs, and pulling the door open wide, how would I properly express my thankfulness for the many gifts of microaggression my worst enemy has bestowed upon me? Suffice to say, it takes thought and practice.
That said, I am thankful for many things. For the leaky hammer mill roof over our heads, for one. I’m thankful for the fact that vacuum tubes are still being manufactured (without those, Marvin’s metronome and inertial guidance system would cease to function). On behalf of the mansized tuber (because he can’t speak for himself), we’re all thankful for plant food. And I wouldn’t want to run through this litany without thanking Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, for not blowing us sky-high this year (third year in a row!). Thanks, also, to anti-Lincoln, whose Gettysburg Address is even more inspiring recited backwards.
But more than anything else, we are thankful to you, our listeners and readers. (That includes all you little Russian bots – I see you!) And that’s why we have chosen to express our gratitude by posting a warmed-over installment of Ned Trek entitled “Ned Trek 29: Error of Mercy”. Check it out at NedTrek.com. This originally ran on our podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN back in August of 2016, in the thick of the presidential election. Highlights include the usual assortment of bad imitations, such as Matt doing James Carville and me doing Bill Clinton. Fun fact: our first read of the script was done in a hospital examination room, waiting for test results. (We were cackling so loudly I think the staff considered declaring a code red and breaking out the restraints.)
So … thanks for the laughs, and for listening to us laugh like idiots.
Right, so …. I realize this isn’t a technical blog. That’s not what you come here for. You come here for pithy observations and gripping tales of pointless adventures. For instance, I could tell you all about the festive autumnal arrangement in the hammer mill courtyard contrived by the mansized tuber in his spare time, but then this would seem like a gardening blog, and it’s anything but that. Or I could tell you about all the lawn signs that were dumped in our driveway following the mid-term elections, but then you’d think this was a political blog, and well …. sometimes it is, but … not just now!
There are a lot of things a grown man can do in his spare time, particularly someone with so many half-baked hobbies such as myself. Why I spend even five minutes with this hunk of junk is beyond me. And then there’s the radio. (Sorry Marvin – that was low hanging fruit.) I suppose I could become an inventor like Mitch Macaphee, or an antimatter president like Anti-Lincoln, or a large sweet potato like the mansized tuber, but there are individuals already filling those vital roles in society. Perhaps wisdom, in part, is recognizing your place in the world and trying to make the best of it. Or perhaps not … perhaps wisdom is something else entirely … in part. (And perhaps my favorite hobby is sophistry.)
Okay, so …. that guy’s crazy. And, as Mr. Spock once observed, madness has no reason … but it can have a goal. That’s what Mitch’s anti-gravity machine was all about. The device attracts gravitons like a bug zapper, apparently, though it doesn’t zap them … it just keeps them busy so that they can’t hold the rest of us down. (You always thought it was THE MAN that was holding you down, but no, says Mitch, it’s the gravitons!) Anyhow, it kind of worked for about a week, then something went bust. That happens a lot with mad science tinkerers like Mitch. Hell, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has dozens of glitches, but hell … he’s family.
Right, so … Mitch Macaphee has his own theories. And his theories usually lead to some nameless device that looks like a ham radio rig from the 1960s, with dials and meters and knobs and blinking lights. It makes a “woo-woo” sound. Sometimes he puts arms and legs on it and calls it Marvin (my personal robot assistant). Sometimes he throws a switch and things disappear … or appear. This time around, he adjusted the right combination of buttons, switches, lanyards, etc., to suspend gravity in the hammer mill. An anti-gravity machine, as it were. And that means more than floating hammers, my friends. Suffice to say, I haven’t had to use the stairs all week. If this keeps up, we may be battling obesity before long.
What was the results of my regression analysis? Well, it looks like I should have put more effort into eliminating relationships between variables. And I should have kept my focus on the relationship between a dependent variable and one or more independent variables. It’s all about co-dependency, you see? You don’t? Right. Neither do I. And apparently my rent-a-shrink is actually a statistician by trade. I don’t understand a word he says, mostly because he just talks so fast, but partly because his comments are so unbearably dull I just can’t keep my eyes open. And you’re not supposed to fall asleep on that stereotypical therapy couch, but I did. So maybe I’m on TV, now.
Well, I’ve wandered a bit. But the point I’m trying to get to is this: we tend to write happy little songs about big nasty things. This month we appear to be back on the fascist beat again. Next month, who knows? Some other grave subject matter that can be turned into a nursery rhyme or a mambo. That’s the way it works round these parts. Those are our principles. And if you don’t like them … we have other principles. (Yes, I’m a Marxist. My favorite is Groucho, but it’s not a strong preference.)
Sit out here long enough and your mind starts to light on all kinds of things. Random stuff, like … why didn’t I get some handyman to fix the roof on this shed? It leaks like a sieve! Then there are thoughts of what might have been, the kind that creep around the corner when you’re sitting idle, then climb in through your ear and squat down on your brain. Why didn’t I call that handyman? Finally, you get the occasional flash of inspiration, like you’re seeing the world for the first time. Stuff like, I want to join the Space Force! or I want Marvin to join the Space Force! One or the other of those might be workable.
While he’s been busy with that and Matt’s been busy with falcons, I’ve been woodshedding a bit, trying to teach my arms to play the piano again. (It’s faster than teaching your legs.) The archiving project is nearly complete, at least the part about digitizing songs from analog tapes. I still need to clean them up, sort them, etc. Some of them are pretty spare; others come with a vest and a second pair of pants. The whole nine yards, as they say. (I don’t know why they say these things.)
Then there’s the interstellar tour idea we were kicking around. What happened to that? Well, apparently someone kicked it into next week, figuratively speaking. I’m not ruling it out, but no one aside from Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and his inventor, our mad science advisor Mitch Macaphee has any inclination towards doing the fucker. And frankly, neither one of them can play an instrument (though Mitch can use instruments in his work … and Marvin sometimes makes a noise like a fire whistle). That’s not the kind of band I can bring to Neptune! Those crystalline ice creatures would laugh us out of orbit, and THEN where would we be.