Summer projects.

Gardening? God, no. I don’t know the first thing about it. And no, I’m not going to build you another gazebo. The first one burned down, fell over, and was washed into the sewer. Not doing that again, dude.

Yeah, I know – it’s not quite summer yet. Still, we’re trying to get our summer projects all lined up … mostly because there’s very little else to do around the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, particularly during this COVID-19 isolation time. Nothing happening, so we make lists of things that might happen. That makes sense, right? Anyway, I don’t think I have to tell you what Matt’s summer project is. Here’s a hint: it starts with an F and ends with an “alcon”. It flies around and lives on the side of tall buildings. It … oh, damn it, see for yourself! (Utica Falcon Project site) THAT’S my brother’s summer, people, and good on him.

The rest of us, well … mostly at loose ends. Antimatter Lincoln is dreaming of his revenge, though the dream is a bit murky, as I still don’t know who he wants revenge against. (He just says he swore he’d “keel” him, whatever that means. Some nautical reference, perhaps.) Mitch Macaphee plans to spend the summer packing up all of his experiments on Proxima B, now that it’s been discovered by non-evil Earth scientists. He was hoping to keep this big, rocky Earth-like planet under wraps, I think. Seriously, the dude would steal the Moon if he thought he could get away with it. (Actually, he claims to steal it every month, bit by bit, until it’s completely gone. Cute trick.)

What about Marvin (my personal robot assistant)? Funny you should ask. You see, Marvin is an automaton, a service cyborg. He has no agency, you see. You simply program Marvin to do a certain thing, and off he goes. Sometimes, yes, he gets it wrong. (Actually, the “sometimes” is more indicative of how often he gets things right, but that’s another story.) If we programmed him to ride in circles all summer, that’s what he would do … though he wouldn’t be at all pleased. And me? I’m trying to resist gravity, but not so hard as to fly off into space. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) I’m also recording some older songs that never got onto any of our projects. We’ll see how it goes at the end of the summer – if they don’t suck, I’ll post them. If they suck …. yeah, I’ll probably post them anyway. You guys know me better than I know myself.

So, recording, archiving, bird-watching, revenge … we’ve got it all here at the hammer mill. This is going to be some summer.