We've created a... !

Lesson one: if you find yourself staked out in an abandoned hammer mill with your bandmates, never... never let your resident mad scientist work unattended. Negative consequences will be had.

What do I mean, specifically? Just try it and find out! Yes, you aspiring bands out there... get yourself a mill and a madman, shake vigorously, and wait until it starts to fizz. Then you will have your answer. In our case, we didn't even need the vigorous shaking. Our resident mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee, sort of shakes himself up. You may recall that last week he had taken up a new hobby - sculpting. We of Big Green thought little of this... our cohorts are always trying new things, starting new trends, discovering new interests. (Like the man-sized tuber and his harmonica playing. Or John and his anti-matter bicycle collection. Or me and my cucumber sandwich juggling.) But soon we noticed some disturbing signs that Mitch was perhaps taking his new thing (or "thang") a little too far.

Sure, this sort of thing is bound to happen with a creative mind, right? Our Mitch is always throwing something together. Marvin (my personal robot assistant), after all, is one of his greatest inventions (and, not coincidentally, one of the greatest pains in my ass). Trouble is, unlike other idle hobbies and casual interests, what Mitch creates tends to have a mind of its own. That's why I became a bit concerned when he chipped his Frankenstone sculpture free of its moorings. My colleagues tried to reassure me. "Relax, Joe," they would say, "Mitch obviously prefers freestanding three-dimensional art." This surprised me. (Not because of what they were telling me, but because they had not addressed me with my usual nickname "fucker.") So I tried to put my concerns out of mind.

Then sometime last week, don't recall which night exactly, I heard something clomping around downstairs. I assumed it was anti-Lincoln looking for his goat cheese, as usual, kicking up a fuss because someone had walked off with it yet again. (Sometimes I think there's a bit of the pirate in that old man.) But the footfalls were heavier than that. Sounded like they were breaking through the floorboards. Shortly thereafter, I saw a sinister shadow in the hall. Totally unrelated to the stomping, as it happens. (Just a bit of water damage on the drywall - nothing to get worked up about.) Nonetheless, those steps were strange, unnerving. And when I rose the next morning, the Frankenstone statue was gone. That's right - GONE! Just a faint trail of stone dust leading out into the hall.

Yeah, you're right - I should talk to Mitch Macaphee about this. But he's been busy, and I've been busy. Just haven't had time to deal with it, in all honesty. That Frankenstone statue - I'm sure it'll turn up. And if not, we'll just have Mitch sculpt a private investigator.