Through the glass darkly. That was our trip home. Better believe it, my friend. (Jesus freaking Christ…. if I say “my friends” again, I’ll turn into John McCain. And we can’t have that… not with all these Lincolns around.)
Okay, well, so I’m not such a good pilot. I kind of already knew that – that’s why we of Big Green made common cause with the likes of Mitch Macaphee, our sometimes-resident mad science advisor. But when Mitch ain’t available, we improvise and… well… things don’t always turn out the way you hope. It hurts my pride to say so, but I did push the stick when I should have pulled it, and our rented space craft went into a dramatic nose-dive. We were dropping faster than the S&P 500 during the dot-com bust (forgive the metaphor). How could I tell? Well, things on the ground were getting awfully big, awfully fast. I was just opening my mouth to say “Marvin (my personal robot assistant)!!!” when the Cheney Hammer Mill got big enough to crack our windshield.
I won’t tell you what came out of my mouth next. (My guess is that you’ve heard the word once or twice, but fuck it… this is a FAMILY blog!) It’s the kind of utterance that 
comes of driving someone else’s vehicle through one of the only unbroken windows in your squat house – namely, the one right over where I sleep. (Rather, slept.) Glass all over my best bedspread, glass in the water fountain, glass ground into the floor. Worse than that, high-explosive spacecraft fuel had spewed all over the walls (and my bedroom couch) and ignited, reducing my humble domicile to a somewhat more humble state. It was ugly… very ugly. (In fact, it still is ugly, as this catastrophe is compounded by the fact that I am not at all a good housekeeper.)
Were there any injuries? (Thanks for asking, actually.) The most serious one was sustained by John, who laughed so hard at my inept piloting that he was grasping his sides in pain. Big Zamboola caught some shards of windshield glass, but in as much as he possesses his own atmosphere, the shards burned up in re-entry. Moments before the crash, the man-
sized tuber scrambled off for his specially designed, climate-controlled, shock-mounted terrarium and strapped himself in. I’m not sure how my brother Matt or the Lincolns managed to emerge unscathed, but it could have something to do with their common interest in avian biology. Yes, they were bird watching in our moment of sheer terror. Callous and uncaring? You might think so. But anti-Lincoln’s lifetime list of birds is getting longer every day. (Between us, I’ve seen the list, and there are at least six or seven chickens on there, entered by name. I’m just saying.)
Okay, well…. so we’re home anyway. I, for one, am glad to have my feet firmly planted on the ancient planks of this august old squathouse once again. It feels good… even if I have to sleep with an umbrella (and a hazmat suit).
