Counting.

No coins? Hmmm... check my other pants. I was sure I had some silver in there. Valuable, precious silver. No? Oh well. There's always the jar on my nightstand. What do you mean you knocked it over?!

Yes, yes, my friends - it's just as it sounds. Broke again, fighting the mice for scraps of cheese. Matt just had a smack-down with a praying mantis that was making off with a fragment of stale halvah. (Did Matt prevail? Let us pray.) I've asked Big Green's mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee, to put his considerable skills to good effect and invent us some money (or maybe a pizza), but he can't be bothered with such trifles.... not when he's preoccupied with his unified field theory. (Not going so well, I perceive.) And now we're rifling through drawers (not with real rifles, you understand), rummaging through garments, and shaking the hell out of every cup and jar in the joint looking for loose change with which to keep our lights on for another week. What? What do you mean you hocked the lights? You moron!

Sorry for the unpleasantness... I hope you didn't find it too unpleasant. Sometimes it's hard to impress upon Marvin (my personal robot assistant) just how much of a problem lack of money can be for us humans. Marvin, of course, has no need of crass commodities such as food, water, heat, clothing, etc. I'm certain he thinks we're just obsessive and addicted to our well-entrenched consumer behaviors. Of course, he's partly true - our fondness for Zenite snuff has proven a little difficult to shake. (I blame sFshzenKlyrn, who is always arriving from the Small Magellanic Cloud with a fresh poke.) But that exception aside, we're really just talking about basic necessities here. Marvin - whose batteries are self-regenerating, drawing energy from gravity and the relative proximity of matzoh bakeries - fails to grasp our predicament. I swear, I thought I heard him grumbling as he fished around in the bottom of a storage crate, looking for stray quarters. (Sometimes the metallic squeaks his joints make sound like a gruff voice saying, "loser, loser". Or maybe it's me.)

The Lincolns have been of some assistance in this regard. As you know, their shared visage appears on certain denominations of U.S. currency. Now, we have quite enough of the coin that bears their likeness - virtually worthless, as you know. But the bill still has some value, and the fact that we have not one but two Great Emancipators in our entourage means that both can be put into service attracting $5 bills. Actually, John had the best idea - set up booths on opposite sides of town offering patrons the opportunity to have their portrait taken with Honest (or Dishonest, depending on which one you get) Abe for... well, for $5. So in a way, it's like trading one portrait of Lincoln for another, but hey... it's the best idea we've got, okay? And aside from the occasional meltdown by Anti-Lincoln (who rails against the very notion of being put to work like a beast of burden), it might actually help us make back all that credit default swap cash Loathsome Prick Records lost on our behalf.

Wasn't that thoughtful of them? Anyway, back to the scavenger hunt. Seems like I kept a shitload of dimes around here somewhere.

Casting Pod. Yours truly (Joe) appears on the next (I believe) installment of the Bloodthirsty Vegetarians podcast, now in its fifth mad year. Check it out at http://www.bloodyveg.com/ and let me know if I sound stupid ('cause I'm hoping so).