Crap shack.

Lights are off again. I thought I just bribed that guy last week. Didn't I? What.... it was the wrong guy? His pushcart was decorated with a cardboard sign that had "electric company" written on it in crayon. Seemed legitimate to me.

It seems I'm too trusting. We all are here at the Cheney Hammer Mill, Big Green's crap shack of distinction. Oh, we've had a lot of crap shacks through the years, from a tumbled-down house on Irving Avenue in Castleton-On-Hudson to the slightly less beat up place next door to it.... (and one or two others, if memory serves). Then of course there was the lean-to in Sri Lanka. (What happened to that? It leaned fro.) Anyway, next to all those joints, this abandoned hammer mill is the next best thing to being someplace decent. And yet, here we are... lights off, phone disconnected, water intermittent, gravity reversed (Mitch Macaphee's been at it again)... It all comes down to one thing: frankincense. No, wait. It's another word.... Money. Yeah, that's it. Bleedin' money.

Now, Mitch... there's a guy with frankincense... or, rather, Franken-sense (i.e. the sense of Dr. Frankenstein). He's always inventing some kind of half human, have robot hybrid. That's why he's the only one with any cash around here. For chrissake, the government has dropped more than one grant on him for developing "hybrids". The fools think Mitch is building cars; instead, he's formulating a cyborg army in his spare time. I should have him pay the electric bill - he's the bastard that's using it all. One might suppose that Marvin (my personal robot assistant), built some years back by Mitch, was some kind of prototype, but not a bit of it. Marvin is pure robot; no organic components whatsoever. He's clean, man. Ergo, he has no role in the coming reign of the cyborgs. (Not to worry, friends. This is just one of Mitch's pipe dreams. All mad scientists must have them.)

Yeah, I'm putting Mitch on the hook for pizza tonight. The rest of us are completely tapped out. Typical. That's what we get for, well.... lack of ambition, let's call it. Though, to be fair, not all of us are lazy mo-fos. Take the man-sized tuber, for instance. Now, he's willing to do anything the situation calls for, including standing out in the street and selling #3 pencils. Particularly when we specifically ask him to do this kind of thing... which, of course, we did, just as soon as he wheeled himself out of the time warp and back into the 21st century. And yes, I did say #3 pencils (we sold out of the #2's last week). Truth be told, his take has been somewhat disappointing thus far. Perhaps he needs bigger pencils. Marvin! See if we've got any of the big number threes!

I know, I know - we'll only get so far abusing the help. Time to start planning an escape from this crap shack. Can you say, interstellar tour 2009?