You’ve got big feet — admit it. And it’s hard to find the time to care for those feet right and proper, is it not? Are you constantly shuffling, trying to circulate blood through those podiatric pests? Do your footfalls get heavier over time, the stubby toes of your youth gorged to a pasty and callused husk as those sub-abdominal albatrosses fatten themselves?

“Just once,” I’m sure you say to yourself while on line at your local grocery store, “just once I’d like a cashier to tell me I have the feet of Baryshnikov.” Yet you’re willing to suffer your hooves because nobody has presented you with a viable option for long-term foot maintenance. Feet age and mutate. They adapt, growing like goldfish to meet their accommodations.

Wearing bigger shoes only exacerbates the situation. Larger socks blind the foot, but the resulting shrinkage in offset by sock costs. A certified doctor at the prestigious National Institute of Socketry recently released the results of a 2007 study confirming just that. Faced with such justified scientific pessimism, you might feel helpless. Yet, one must resist the urge to cover one’s ears and stare down angrily at one’s ever-enlarging feet. There is hope!

Our solution comes from a more controversial field of discovery. While researchers are still analyzing star charts and tiny light bulbs to determine how the universe started, a long-discredited theory underpins our newest product! “The universe is, always was, and ever shall be.” — this was the mantra that echoed the halls of higher thought until the better part of a century ago. Today we realize that this is obviously false, having asked God directly. However, the concept of persistence — of a universe unaffected by the passage of time — was so intriguing that one of our own staff managed to scrawl out a design of a product to achieve such an effect, shortly before the unfortunate soul was disemboweled by his future self.

Presenting the Static State Stockings: you put your feet in, and they cease to exist in our universe! “Cacklin’ cobras!” you’ll cry as these cotton coverings cup the corns of your chitinous clodhoppers, coupling creature comfort with cosmological conniving and careful, competent craftsmanship. What you’re feeling isn’t warm or cold; neither soft nor scratchy; there is no pinching, and no slack. You are on a plane beyond pedestrian clamminess, and your copilot is a lifetime warranty card.

Once the leg staples are permanently affixed, your lower extremities are forever shunted to a parallel reality where they, frozen in time, will no longer interfere with this season’s fashions. This will also increase blood flow to the face and hands, causing intense swelling and the growth of unicorn horns, which four of seven Minnesotan cattle masseuses agree is medically acceptable. You don’t have to take “no” for an answer — demand that your doctor stuff your stocking this year with a pair of Static State Stockings.

Static State Stockings contain 32% cotton, 4% nylon, 2.5% wool, and less than 1% copper. The remaining percentage is vacuum. WARNING: do not, under any circumstances, turn your Static State Stocking inside-out or throw them into the ocean. Roboshrub Incorporated is not responsible for Static State Stockings lost at public laundromats. Consult Steven Hawking before use.

If you are receiving this post, then I have failed to create an adequate tale of hardship and eventual triumph this month, due to forces beyond my control. As I write, the remnants of Hurricane Irene, and the infrastructure left ragged in her wake, conspire to again blot out the flow of satiating electricity that courses through this hungry keyboard.

While the sporadic loss of power is not as troubling as having an uneven hot dog to hot dog bun ratio, I have always balked at the hulklike fury of those insolent Atlantic hurricanes. I'm sure that whatever I come up with next will be... oh, potatoes! The hurricane found where I live! I must flee!

*click*

I know what you’re all thinking: New York isn’t over a subduction zone, or a hot spot. So why should its inhabitants worry whether the numerous mountain ranges are volcanic in nature? Well, let me tell you about another place, in another time, that thought it was impervious to volcanoes. This far-off land never gave a second — indeed, a first thought, to their beautiful mountain being a geologic time bomb. The name of this place? Pompeii.

Exhibit one is the inestimable Joppenbergh Mountain in Rosendale, New York. This mountain has already plotted against the good people of Rosendale, launching boulders and maybe other things down its rocky face. Science tells us that this is natural. You know what else science says is natural? Aliens.

Over a hundred years ago, Joppenbergh was a productive member of society, and we (people) mined it for precious ore, filling it with more holes than Swiss cheese. Then, like a hollowed-out tree, it collapsed for no reason. Now it may take its revenge against the town, by erupting. Scientists claim the mountain isn’t a volcano. But they also claim Bigfoot isn’t real. Not only is he real, but credible sources say he’s been sighted on Joppenbergh.

Is this an elephant-shaped cloud behind a mountain, or a plume of ashy smoke billowing from an active volcano?

Numero dos is Long Island, a colony of New York. Each year, more and more of Long Island breaks off and sinks into the ocean. Again, science beats the glacier drum (or drumlin, as it’s called), saying that this process is the inevitable result of Long Island being a moraine. Balderdash! You’d have to be a “moraine” to believe that!

Again, I say volcanoes are at work. The people of Long Island need to evacuate before the retroarc that created the ground beneath their feet opens and swallows them up, which is what credible, unspecified sources now say. I realize that a lot of Long Islanders would disavow such advice, but none of them pay their psychics as much as I pay mine. In the last year, I bought so much psychic advice that my psychic was able to take her family on a two-week vacation in Bermuda, just as she had foreseen.

There are many other prime examples of volcanic activity in New York, but I see no reason to unnecessarily burden the public with this knowledge until I can secure lucrative copyrights to, and royalties for, the distribution of my shocking conclusions. I’m also seeking grants to perform further research, which will cost the state much less than my rivals in the scientific community. I keep my budget in check by providing inaccurate data, something real scientists are too cowardly to try. I say that in this unforgiving economic monsoon, we can and should be building storm shelters without nails.

If you wish to contribute funds or cattle to Roboshub Inc., please remember to send all envelopes to a nonexistent address. We have a deal with the postal service to dispose of all “dead letter” mail, and we open each and every letter — including that invitation to Duncan’s birthday party you didn’t get when you were in fourth grade. We also collect “Letters to Santa”, which we dump into the sea because we believe it benefits children to do so.