Anudder year.

Here comes another one. Just like the other one. Where have I heard that before - anyone?

Hello, creatures of the Web. It is I, here with news of what's happening in the remote corner of Central New York (itself a remote corner of somewhere else) known as the Cheney Hammer Mill. Stretch out your banjo strings, grease up your mouthharps, and start to wail - we're ready for some good old rustic hillside music, the kind you hear wafting through the pines on a late summer evening in the lower Adirondacks (or, perhaps, the upper Catskills... somewhere around there). Foot-stomping good. Yee ha. Do I sound convincing? Yeah, I know... not. Well, be that as it may, we do crank out a mock-country number every once in a while, usually some kind of political commentary, like High Horse. That seems the closest we can come to authentic north-woods music, and that's about as close as we WANT to come. Though I'm fond of its "woodyness", that quality tends to grate on Marvin (my personal robot assistant). He has tin ears, you see, and tin does not mix well with wood.

I've tried to encourage Marvin to be a bit more outgoing. You know how it is, though - he's kind of standing in the shadow of his more ambitious little "brother", the man-sized tuber, who is now mayor of the town that is trying to have us evicted from the Hammer Mill. (DAMN YOU, TUBEY!!) Anyway, I suggested to Marvin that he should get more involved in the community, maybe volunteer somewhere or take part in community theatre. In fact, the local theatrical society is doing a production of The Wizard of Oz, and there's a part in that show that would be PERFECT for Marvin. (That's right - Dorothy. You see the resemblance too, eh?) Still, he seems kind of reluctant. I asked Matt to have a word with him. I asked him again. And again, I'm not planning on asking a fourth time, so I should probably ask Mitch Macaphee, Marvin's inventor, to get involved. Take a little interest in your son, Mitch! (I'm almost certain he reads this blog.) Come on, now - do the decent! Fatherhood means more than dropping off a few alkaline batteries every other week and a card at Christmas. Get with it!

Oh, well. It will take more than a few ill-considered cat calls to make Mitch change his cheating ways, to say nothing of his more serious failings. What the hell, he's nearly incinerated the planet at least six or seven times since taking up residence with Big Green. (And that was just while mixing his famed "atomic" high ball at our infrequent cocktail parties.) Then there are the engineering experiments, the cooked-up creatures, the floating appliances (our forty-year-old clothes washer was suspended four feet in the air for the better part of a week one time - Mitch's handywork.) Small wonder Marvin is so screwed up in the head. Look at the example his inventor is setting! I can only hope that one of Mitch's new year's resolutions will be to stop doing practically everything he spends most of his time on right now. Seems unlikely, but one can hope.

Geez, is that the phone? Oh, right... that's the alarm on Mitch's anti-gravity machine. Hopefully our feet can return to the ground now. Bloody scientists!