Down town.

Anybody got a plumb line? You know - a weight on a string? Come on, people - let's get resourceful here. Jeezus. How about a tape measure with an eggplant tied to the end?

Oh, hi out there in TV land. Just attempting to plumb the depths of what has become a rather large rend in the garment of our adoptive home, the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill here in upstate New York. We're just getting a preliminary read here, but I'd say this sucker goes down pretty far. Maybe to the center of the Earth (or, to use the term New York-based geoscientists commonly employ, the "oit"). In fact, I have some pretty good evidence that this crack goes straight through the nougat to the chewy center of our lively little planet. What evidence, you ask? The first-hand kind... as in robot hand... as in Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who volunteered to, well, dive down there and take a look.

Now, when I say he volunteered, I mean so in the technical sense. In other words, I called in a technician - Marvin's creator, Mitch Macaphee - and asked him to program into Marvin the willingness to volunteer for such a dangerous task, which Mitch did in a trice. No problem for an experience mad scientist. There were a few glitches, of course - in essence, Marvin's mouth was saying "I volunteer" but his legs were pedaling in the other direction. (Those magnetic-drive casters produce some torque, let me tell you.) That aside, we managed to get a rope around him, strap a flashlight to his forehead, put a cell phone in his claw, and lower him down into the abyss. Fortunately, Marvin's eyes double as web cams, so we were able to see the underground landscape unfold before him - fascinating journey, as that Australian interior designer might say in a totally different context. Care for a Foster's? (Product placement - hey, got to keep the lights on somehow, right?)

Think this is an idle interest? Think again. I will admit to some ignorance as to what we might find fifty, seventy-five, or even one hundred miles below us. But as far as I'm concerned, anything down there belongs to US. That's right... a pie-slice shaped vector of earth stretching from the perimeter of the hammer mill down to the core of this planet - a colossal spike of mineral wealth - belongs to us, at least as far as our new legal advisor Anti-Lincoln can tell. Yes, I know what you're going to say... why, WHY would we consult someone as untrustworthy and disreputable as anti-Lincoln, the literal antithesis of our most revered president? A man with no scruples, no ethics... what kind of a lawyer could he possibly be? OUR kind.

So, lookit. You know how there's gold in them there hills? Well, the real fortune is right under your nose. About 50 miles or more. Start digging!