Pick your poison.
Holy hell. Is that thing on again? Well then, what’s that little red light for? And the countdown box…. Twenty-five, twenty-four, twenty-three….
Oh well. While we’re trying to figure out what’s going on there… What’s been happening here at the mill? Usual stuff. Keeping the roof on, as they say, and the fridge stocked with lunchables. (Or, at least, snackables.) You have to be versatile to please the mix of tastes we have around this joint. Take Lincoln (please). Now, he’s a fan of chicken fricassee. Of course, being a vegetarian, I won’t have anything to do with the stuff, but that doesn’t stop him. He keeps putting it on the shoplifting… I mean, the shopping list. And I keep coming back with tofu. (He’s no happier now than he was in 1863.)
But it takes more than food to make a life. We’ve been working on the next album, as you know. Quite a process. Some of you have been on the inside of our album construction activities, some not. For those of you who haven’t witnessed this first-hand, here’s a little peek inside our methodology. We start with a big boatload of songs. This time, it’s a mishmash of about 60 or 70 numbers that we’ve done demos for at one point or another. Now you may wonder how, with so many possibilities, we could possibly arrive at a decision on the final project list. There are a number of things Big Green considers… and they include:
- Specific Gravity - This is a no-brainer. If the specific gravity of a song is
too heavy, we try making an alloy by blending it with some more light-hearted material. Failing that, we scrap the sucker. Perhaps the constituent parts will come in handy (they sometimes go into making a first-rate pedal bike). - Stock Value - Something that relates back to what I was talking about before, with the chicken fricassee. Before we consider recording a song, we put the lyrics in a pot of water and simmer it for six hours. If it produces a broth that can be used in pilaf or gravy, it’s a keeper.
- Particularness - I don’t know if I can explain this. I’m looking for some word in particular… mmm, can’t think of it. Oh well… it will come to me.
These and 37 other parameters give us all the data we need to make an informed choice. That’s why we say… the quality goes in before… oh wait. That’s someone else. What do we say? (It’ll come to me….)
in Somalia facing possible war crimes prosecution in the United States (where he now resides). Some of his torture victims now live in the U.S. as well, and would like to get some justice. Fair enough. While the correspondent took the time to describe how heinous that regime was, she neglected to mention the fact that our government had sent them something like $1 billion over the Carter, Reagan, and Bush I years. Small detail.
Perhaps it’s unfair of me to single out NPR. I just guess I’m getting annoyed with hearing Jim DeMint, Judd Gregg, or some other “conservative” leading light every time I tune in. On Thursday I got to hear from a Democrat…. Bart Stupak. Who’s running Washington again? (Oh, yes. On Wednesday, during the “Political Junkie” segment of “Talk of the Nation”, there was an extended conversation with Mitt Romney, a.k.a. Guy Smiley, a.k.a. Bush redux.) Meanwhile, the daughter of our own Karadzic is reviving McCarthyism with a web commercial attacking what she terms “The Al Qaeda Seven” in the Obama justice department. So not only does the war criminal brag of his guilt in plain sight, but his spawn is somehow treated as possessed of some expertise by virtue of her father’s ill deeds.
What was that sound I heard, coming from down below? Some kind of tectonic activity? A passing subway car? Or could it be….. a tuber in distress?
random, stupid detail about people’s personal lives of interest to no one other than themselves. We are certainly guilty of that. Yeah, I know the standard jibe. Big Green is all yak and very little music, right? Well…. right enough. Too much talking, not enough music - got it. And it’s been almost a year and a half since our last release, International House. So what the hell - time to get off our sorry butts and start strumming, pounding, screeching again.
them AND play them live. And what the hell - let’s do a powerpoint, besides. Matt and I have been knocking our heads together, and we’ve started laying down some tracks with Marvin (when he’s available) recording reference drums until John White returns from his extended trip to Madagascar. (Where do you rent a gas car in Madagascar?) The virtual reels are rolling… that’s what that freaking noise is.
comprehensive health insurance reform? Never. Rebuild the entire thing to suit them, and they’ll still vote against it purely for spite. The problem here is, of course, the democrats themselves, who can’t seem to recognize when they’ve got something that’s both popular and worth defending. I’m referring to the public option, Medicare expansion, and other measures denounced as “socialism” by the other side (and conservative dems) but which the general public is strongly in favor of. The reason why people aren’t fired up about the current plan is that they stripped those measures out to please conservatives. Obama - congress - get a clue! Pass something that will make a real positive difference in people’s lives quickly, and they will support you.
The latest Afghan campaign continues unabated. I’ve heard the Taliban being accused of using civilians as human shields. Just a couple of weeks ago, though, the U.S. and local Afghan government leaders were encouraging people to stay in Marjah so that there would be someone to govern when they had taken over; and there have been reports of refugees being blocked from exiting by our military. Numerous civilians have been killed in what quickly became a war zone. How is this different?
Down and down and down we go, round and round and round we go… Ah, I forgot what comes next. Oh yeah - it’s either “ker-splash!” or “crunch!”
Dropping him into the crevice is like dropping a potato down a well. In fact, I don’t know why I’m using a simile - it IS dropping a potato down a well, waiting to hear the splash. I know what you’re thinking, but just remember… the man-sized tuber did nothing but oppress us as mayor of our little town, and so he owes us, in our estimation. (No, I don’t have a mouse in my pocket. I’m referring to the entire Big Green entourage.)
some ’splainin’ to do, as Tom Coburn said to Justice Sotamayor. Take, for instance, this little number by Matt called “Edward Teller”:
raising taxes, cutting popular programs, etc. That is, however, the main reason why they have been sent to Washington D.C. - to decide where the money for the federal government comes from and where it goes. If they are unable to grapple with these issues, they might consider applying for jobs at the corporations that paid for their campaigns. What irks me about the deficit reduction commission, aside from the participation of paleocons like Alan Simpson, is that they are not directly accountable to the electorate. Even more than that, commissions are usually mustered to do particularly dirty work, like cutting or privatizing Social Security to save a few bucks.
Death and Texas. Jesus christmas. No one likes paying taxes, or going to the dentist, or taking exams, or eating their Maypo (well…. almost nobody), but this software executive in Texas who flew his plane into an IRS building should have taken an anger management seminar or something stronger.
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.
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?)
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.
mainstream media. This sometimes manifests itself in the form of stories that focus on a reporter’s experience rather than whatever that reporter is witnessing. (Gary Trudeau has offered an extreme example of this with his journalist character Roland Hedley and his perpetually inane Twitter feed.) There’s also the phenomenon of framing complex historical events as being largely the product of one person’s efforts. Probably the best example of this would be Reagan purportedly bringing down the Berlin Wall through the awesome power of speech. And there’s “Charlie Wilson’s War”, the namesake of which - former Texas representative Charlie Wilson - just passed away this week.
Whatever his role may have been in providing fuel to the Afghan war effort during the 1980s, this was not the work of one man, any more than the fall of the Berlin Wall was the result of one speech. This ongoing crisis was many, many years in the making, beginning in earnest with the Carter administration and the decision to begin backing the fundamentalist factions within Afghanistan because it was felt that they would prove a longer-term, more pernicious problem for the Soviets than any secularist elements. Money began flowing on a larger scale in the Reagan years as the CIA embarked on what was up to that time the largest operation in their history, conducted in cooperation with the Pakistani ISI and the Saudis. Fanatical fighters were recruited all over the Muslim world, including most notably Osama bin Laden and his cohorts. So we all had a piece of this one, and now it’s got a piece of us.
The thing I’m seeing (as opposed to the thing I’m sayin’) is this massive crack in the foundation of our beloved Hammer Mill. Never noticed it before, actually. Funny what you run across when you’re snooping around the place, looking for discarded foodstuffs (abandoned sandwiches, leftover fruit, etc.). Pretty soon you’re picking up on all of the stuff that’s been going on without your noticing it. I always thought that Mitch Macaphee’s experiments in plate tectonics might have some regrettable consequences. Now I can see that I was right. What has Mitch been working on, specifically? Funny you should ask. It’s this thing he picked up on in one of Matt’s songs, a little number called “Why Not Call It George?” The chorus goes like this:
Now, I would be the first to caution people against taking song lyrics seriously. After all, look what happened with that Manson thing - and all because he was reading too much into Tommy James and the Shondells’ Crimson and Clover. (You know… “Crimson” - blood! “Clover” - on the graves of the dead! “Over and over” - MANY dead!) Well, Mitch has gone and done it again, trying to recreate the mother of all continents through some strange electromagnetic process that only HE understands. Hard to believe he is the inventor of something as, well, intellectually challenged as Marvin (my personal robot assistant). (Don’t tell Marvin I said that. Just attribute it to someone else, please - he’s very sensitive lately.)
working on a few songs… actually a sackload of songs. Not doing the lounge lizard thing any more. No sir, the next time we perform, it will be our own ridiculous tunes, not someone else’s. And we will have a powerpoint presentation handy to explain each one, so no one makes the mistake of misinterpreting them like Manson did with “Crimson and Clover” or whatever the hell song. Matt and I have been working furiously on this project, now that we know the potentially disastrous consequences that may result from mere un-footnoted performances. What the hell - we played “Why Not Call It George,” and now the Earth may be destroyed. Who knew?
Haiti. The story is starting to get old, I can see, even though many are still waiting for help, not getting enough food, can’t find a doctor, etc. A large part of the problem is our obsession with security. I’m afraid we’ve been an occupying power for a few too many years; it has had its effect, just as it has on the Israeli Defense Forces. We take a military approach to everything, and we trust no one. The U.N., for the most part, is in the same boat, driving around in secure vehicles even before the earthquake hit. Combine this with the general decay of our emergency management capabilities over the past decade and it’s not hard to understand why even with a significant commitment of resources, people in Haiti have been waiting a long time for a helping hand.
going to kill the “Top Taliban Leader” or “#3 Al Qaeda Leader” by remote control before we realize that these guys are almost always replaced by someone younger and more militant, and that the human cost in terms of civilians killed and wounded in these operations generates many more recruits than can ever be discouraged by martyring militant leaders?