Ready, steady...

What's this one for? Cabin pressure? Kool. And this one? Get out! What the fuck, this thing is like something out of... I don't know... fantastic voyage or something.

Oh, hiya. Hope all is well out there in monitor land. Things are going okay over at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, more or less. We're getting our ducks in a row, for sure. (It's hard to get ducks in a row, actually... kind of like herding cats.) Tubey seems all psyched up for his new customer service job. (He's never without that headset. Haven't the heart to tell him it isn't plugged into anything.) Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has been doing a prolonged inventory of our supplies, starting with anvils, atlases, and a few other things that start with "a". (Last I looked, he was counting paper clips... could mean good progress, unless he's inventorying them under "clips, paper"). So hell, everybody's got something to do.

Mitch Macaphee (the temperamental mad scientist) has plugged together an elaborate-looking contraption that he claims is the most sophisticated space elevator yet devised by the mind of man. We were just having a look around inside, and I must say... it's sweet. Very sweet by our standards, certainly. Usually we're pock-pock-pocking around the galaxy in some rent-a-wreck or a distressed piece of interstellar transportation history borrowed from a cheap sci-fi television show. This sucker is different. All that plush furniture, a working refrigerator, gauges and levers galore.... I half expected Captain Nemo himself to come striding in disapprovingly. (John could play the Kirk Douglas part... I'll take Peter Lorre.) In fact, at one point, I turned to Mitch and asked him if perhaps he thought we were playing our first promotional gig in Atlantis.

Okay, do me a favor - remind me never to joke around with a mad scientist. He got a little hot under the collar and repaired to his study, where he spent the rest of the evening fiddling with something that looked a hell of a lot like a Rigelian Death Ray Generator. (Not that I'm an expert in these things.... it was Matt who pointed out the similarity.) Mitch is a little sensitive, no doubt about it, so we took it upon ourselves to order take out from his favorite restaurant, the Bavarian Castle (big fan of.... uhhhhlll... sauerbraten....). That did lift his mood a bit, though I think I may have hit a particularly sore spot. Turns out that the space elevator he devised was built from remnants of an undersea vessel of some kind. Where did the parts come from, specifically? He wouldn't say. And with his twitchy hands on that death ray, I wouldn't ask him. (They were someone else's, now they're ours. End of story.)

Well, however we get there, Aldebaran has no idea what's in store for it. Spoiler alert: a diving bell full of freaks, and a boatload of new songs from planet weird.