I, Robot Builder

Well well well, I have come to learn a few things about myself in these past few weeks, but nothing more important than this: I will never smoke PCP again. Unless it's free.

I've spent the past six weeks roaming the Earth, which later turned out to be my apartment, with my invincible quarter-sized right hand midget, Nevil. And because I spent most of my nearly two-month binge higher than Rodney King on payday, I was able to discover two important things.

One, I cannot stop a car moving at top speed with my face, as I may have wildly boasted in the past. And secondly, but most importantly, I am a master robot builder.

Now I use the word master somewhat loosely, because I've only built one. But oh what a robot she... he... s/h/it was.

The idea came to me while smoking pure PCP out of a trumpet I found in the trash, and watching that futuristic movie where Will Smith hunts down robots while wearing old school Converse sneakers. Now, I don't know if you've ever worn a pair of those, but whether you have or not, take it from me: They suck fuckin' whale dork. I say the future's looking pretty goddamned bleak when they can build robots that look and move like humans, but still can't make a pair of comfortable basketball shoes.

It was right about this time that I jumped up out of the bathtub and exclaimed "Holy shit!" That happens all the time, but this time in particular I capped off the gesture by dashing naked into the kitchen, to begin immediate construction of the Mickey Hanes 1.0.

Now the common moronic belief about robot construction is that you need a metallic skeletal frame surrounded by complex electrical wiring, a state of the art CPU brain, and some kind of gelatin-like skin to cover the whole mess. I'm here to tell you, that's a load of bullshit.

I made mine almost completely out of common household items: some toilet paper rolls, a few empty potato chip bags, and a ton of spare parts I found attached to my neighbor Tom's Mustang. You'd be amazed at all the parts that aren't being used under the hood and on the undercarriage. That's right; my baby is running on a turbocharged V-6. And just to make it super-bitchin, I sawed the head off my old NES robot and crafted it into the ever-vigilant crest of Mickey Hanes 1.0.

My original plan for building a high-tech computer brain out of an X-box and a Black & Decker toaster oven was cruelly kicked in the pills by the news that my neighbor's X-box had a porno stuck in it and some kind of heinous weasel had taken up residence in my own toaster oven. Always thinking, I ended up just sticking the antenna from my old RC car behind the robot's chrome-plated bumper shoulders. No points for style, but hey, fuck that.

When I fired up the robot for the first time, I almost dropped the RC controller, because it instantly snatched up Nevil and stuffed him in a shoebox in 2.3 seconds flat. I know this because I timed it several times afterwards.

I didn't know midgets had collapsible skeletons.

After several hours of laughing at Nevil trying to eek his way out of that shoebox before sicking the robot on him again, my face started hurting, so I decided to make some adjustments.

I tweaked a few wires here and there, played with a crankshaft or two, then yanked the ripcord to turn the robot on again.

I don't know what the hell I did that time, but when the V-6 started up, Mickey Hanes 1.0 made a sound like a roaring lion on angel dust. That was right before it made a bee-line straight through the front door, and hauled ass completely out of the range of my RC controller.

I vaguely remember screaming a semi-intelligible order at Nevil to stop that thing, but the robot mowed over that worthless, pint-sized meatsack like he wasn't even there. Nevil at least had the good sense to cling to the robot's underbelly and let it drag him through the door, and out of kicking range, before it peeled out on his face and left him in a smoking midget divot on the front lawn. I haven't seen the robot since. Nevil, unfortunately, hung around until I dug him out of the lawn.

Understandably furious at his letting-my-robot-escape insubordination, I hung Nevil upside down out of my window with piano wire for three days, by which time there was a family of birds nesting in his pants. Teach that goddamn twerp to disobey my orders.

In closing, wherever Mickey Hanes 1.0 is, I hope he's happy and doing good things, or at least running over important shit in that berserk way of his. But hey, no use crying over spilled milk, so off to my next task. I just tricked Nevil into eating two pounds of Alka-Seltzer by telling him the stuff will make him invisible. This is going to be awesome. Later.

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