NOTES FROM SRI LANKA.
(August '01)
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8/5/2001
What....again??
That burning 'cano stopped erupting. What a time for the monsoons to come! This lean-to reconstruction effort has seen its share of misfortune.
With substantial encouragement from John and yours truly, construction has pressed forward through the deluge. Sure, the foundation hole is filled with rainwater. Sure, our chief architect has just floated out into the Indian Ocean. But what does it matter? We've got a lean-to to build!
Man, I'll tell you...just one stray
thermonuclear blast can bring some pretty strange things to the surface. First
there were the luminous beings that emerged
from our backyard volcano (they're now building an embassy on the other side of
town with sFshzenKlyrn's able assistance).
Then there were 
those weird 19th Century people that Mr. Tedd got mixed up with
(like most libertarian socialists, he's far too trusting of strangers). Now
we've got assorted religious figures bobbing up in our flooded basement, two at
a pop (see photo). If it keeps up like this, we'll be able to file for a tax exemption as a
holy site. Maybe this is our ticket out of this dump...
Nah...
You'd think it would be a lot harder to get work done with a gaggle of waterlogged saints milling about asking for directions, but that's not the case. They pretty much mind their own business and we mind ours. Their "business" amounts to finding their way back to the Auriesville Shrine. Ours is keeping our reconstruction team together long enough to erect a substandard replacement for our late substandard domicile.
It's
not just the flooding and the unexpected appearances of biblical and medieval
church figures that makes it difficult to keep the crew focused on the job.
Let's face it, these people -- Dr. Macaphee, Mr. Tedd, Eric the Architect -- are
all artists and, as such, have all kinds of complex sensitivities. I've
already told you about Dr. Macaphee's unshakable reticence. Eric the Architect
is tremendously sensitive to sound. The man practically lives in a portable
"cone of silence," donning earmuffs every time someone pours milk onto
a bowl of Rice Krispies. (How he got through his engineering degree I'll never
know.) And then there's Mr. Tedd, with his sometimes flabbergasting commitment
to achieving total equality between horses and humans. Sweet mother of pearl --
couldn't we just have a normal crew?
With all the chaos at the building site,
Matt, John, sFshzenKlyrn, and I have taken
up temporary residence at an old abandoned hammer factory once 
owned
by the Vice President's family. This is probably where they developed the
"multi-directional impact generators" (i.e. "hammers") that
the Pentagon used to buy for something like $700 a piece. That may have been how
old Dick snagged his job as Secretary of Defense back in the original Bush
Administration television show (not the current "Bush -- the Next
Generation" series). Anyway...aside from the heaps of discarded hammer
handles and the grime encrusted windows, the factory has proven a quite
serviceable spot to set up temporary housekeeping. So...forget the address I
gave you last week. Send your construction fund checks to:
Big Green (or what's left of them); Cheney Hammer Factory, 2nd Floor, Colombo, Sri Lanka
Or just drop me an email at jperry@biggreenhits.com with instructions on where to find your charitable contribution, whether it be cash, stamps, carrots, or croutons. Only don't send Rice Krispies or any other "loud" cereals, or we'll lose Eric for good.
Old Faithful. What's worse than a fink, right? When we were kids, people like Nazi collaborators were held up as the lowest of the low, even though many of the worst offenders were reinstated into positions of power or brought back here after the war, unbeknownst to us at that time. And, of course, through the years stories have surfaced about how we aided various bloodthirsty regimes in rounding up their most hated opponents, like Nelson Mandela way back when.
Well,
another one of those stories just came to light -- sort of. It seems the U.S.
State Department, at the urging of the CIA, put a hold on the distribution of
its most recent volumes of the Foreign Relations document series -- the ones
that contain declassified documents on Suharto's bloody rise to power in
Indonesia back in 1965-66. The U.S. embassy in Jakarta supplied lists of
opposition party (PKI) leaders to Indonesian security forces, as well as a 50
million rupiah payment to the movement (Kap-Gestapu) that led the subsequent
killing spree, eliminating the PKI's hundreds of thousands of members, mostly
landless peasants.
State told the GPO to put a stop on shipping the volumes -- not quickly enough, it appears, because some of them went out...and one found its way to the National Security Archive, who posted the entire first volume on its web site . (See http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB52/)
Missed that story? I'm not surprised. I just happened to stumble upon it at the website of the London Independent newspaper. I don't know why Colin Powell's boys felt like they had to sit on this information -- it certainly never made it to my hometown newspaper. (The New York Times published a story on July 28th, which you may read on-line...for a price. No abstract is available on their site.)
luv u,
jp
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8/12/2001
Greetings from the Cheney Hammer factory!
I've got to hand it to the old bag of wind...his ancestors sure could make a hammer. I dropped a 12-gross carton of them down four flights of brick stairs and not one of them lost its head. Kinda like old Dick back in the day. During the great and glorious Gulf War (or the "War of the Worlds"), you couldn't find a white knuckle on him. And he was behind those boys all the way. (About 4,000 miles behind them.)
What
was I doing dropping hammers down stairs? Just clumsy I guess. We've been trying
to get our lives back together, albeit in kind of a temporary fashion. Everything
is still a bit upside down, particularly in Matt's corner of the workshop, where
the ceiling tiles look a lot like floor tiles (maybe it's just the light). We did
take a few moments to do a little publicity photo to send to our fans in the
outer solar system, as well as on the planet Kaztropharius
137b...just so people don't forget
about us and about what we stand for. Quality music. Quality hammers. What else
is there?
There are certain advantages to living in an abandoned workhouse stacked with 40-year-old crates of surplus hammers. Plenty of advantages. Like when you want to do some remodeling. For instance, John and I have been tacking fragments of geodes up on the walls as a decorative accent (a little design tip sFshzenKlyrn picked up from Joanne Liebler, host of the planet Zenon's most popular TV show, "Room for Change"). We're thinking of cutting up some old truck tires we found out on the loading dock and nailing them up, too. And then there's those petrified bagels in the commissary -- they'd look nice flanking the front entrance. That's where 247 12-gross cartons of hammers can come in handy.
Back
at the lean-to, work has once again commenced on the studio. Our tight-lipped
technician Dr. Mitch Macaphee has accepted an exchange of services arrangement
in lieu of salary for the time being...at least until we get our legs back under
us. In return for his best efforts in plugging together our new gear, he gets
free use of the fitness center outside the Cheney Hammer factory. That includes
unlimited hours on the exercise equipment, with sFshzenKlyrn
as his personal trainer. A couple of weeks under his able tutelage, and old
Mitch will be cracking geodes with his bare hands.
We appreciate Mitch's flexibility. Eric the architect has been a tougher nut to crack, however. It took us the better part of a week to coax him back to shore after the flood waters carried him into the Indian Ocean. I think he was intimidated by those strange medieval church figures who bubbled up unexpectedly from some recondite cavity deep below our property (some people have strange sensitivities, that's all I can say).
How did we get him 
back
on board? Luck had a lot to do with it. While I was clearing a space to pitch my
dilapidated sleeping bag last week, I stumbled upon a pair of cowboy boots that
could only have belonged to our beloved Vice President during his brief sojourn
in Texas (before scrambling back to Wyoming to re-establish residence last
year). Since Eric is a big fan of Bush/Cheney, I knew this priceless souvenir
would lure him back to dry land. Naturally, we oiled the boots up to a blinding
shine before snapping the Polaroid and sailing it out to Eric in an empty wine
bottle. You never saw an architect tread water so fast. It was astounding.
As for the odd religious figures who are still stumbling around the building site...well...we'll get them some cowboy boots, too. Somewhere.
On Holiday. Dubya's spokespeople
have been talking themselves blue in the face trying to make it sound as though
his month-long ranch vacation is well-deserved and, by the way, not all
fun and games. They should save 
their
breath. I, for one, am glad to see him leave town. He can bloody well
stay on vacation as far as many of us are concerned. Only instead of combing the
golf course and riding his horsies, he should be lying back under the ramada,
listening to those subliminal relaxation tapes. You know the ones. Where a
soothing voice tells you, "You are calm...You are calm...Repeat after
me....I am a good chief executive....people like me....I am a good
chief executive...." Four weeks of that, and maybe he'll start taking
questions from the press again. Who knows...could even lead to a press
conference. That's the power of the mind, my friends. (It's a terrible thing to
lose.)
The corporate press is usually ranging around for stories during the month of August, when all the people with money are on vacation. That probably explains why I saw a story this morning about the attack on a refugee train by Jonas Savimbi's UNITA terror army in Angola -- an attack that killed 100 people. Perhaps it was the high number of deaths that drew this passing reference to a 26 year old conflict initiated and long floated by US arms and intelligence support. In any case, August should be dubbed "African Continent News Month" -- something to report on until those newsworthy white folks return from their holidays.
Be careful out there.
luv u,
jp
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8/19/2001
This just keeps happening. Freaky.
Welcome back to the web's only source on what to do with decommissioned hand tool molds. (Hang them on the wall. Proudly.) We're piecing things together, slow but sure, each of us with our respective tasks firmly in hand. Half a league, half a league, half a league on. (Let's see, that makes a league and a half so far.)
I have a happy coincidence to report. It
seems that those boots we found in the hammer factory (formerly the property of
our illustrious Vice President, 
in
all likelihood) fit sFshzenKlyrn
like a glove. In fact, he hasn't taken them off since last Monday when he first
stepped into them by mistake, thinking they were some sort of pleasure vehicle. He
sure likes those limos, though he says they make him feel like he's at a
hoe-down.
I for one was surprised that an erudite, urbane Zenite like sFshzenKlyrn would have any experience with hoe-downs, but it seems there was some sort of country western craze going on last time he was on his home planet. He described week-long benders soaked with Jack Daniels and Zenite snuff, when every volatile peptide-laced cloud-cowboy would hoe-down till they were toe-down. Old sFshzenKlyrn would yank out his blonde telecaster and start twanging out the C&W, calling himself "Tex Piadro" and encouraging his brethren to drink heavily and form "human" pyramids. Yeeee-haw!
Not all is sweetness and light, however. Eric the architect was a little put out by the fact that his boots were appropriated by a space alien. Hey...we're not responsible for his hang-ups, right? I suppose if a Methodist accountant from Idaho had taken them, that would have been all right. In any case, we found him a pair of hobnails that should do the job nicely. (Artists! Sometimes I feel like I'm running a kindergarten. "All right...has everybody got their cowboy boots? Who wants another glass of milk?")
Speaking of prima donnas (fuck -- I
hope he doesn't read this lousy column!), old Dr. Mitch Macaphee has
needed a bit of handling, as well. I know I've 
mentioned
how tight-lipped he's been since his arrival from the University of Bologna. Hey
-- that would be fine with me, except that he's the guy who's plugging together
our new studio, and I'm sick of having to wrench answers out of him with a
crowbar. So we've been...gently...encouraging him to speak more, using
little incentives. I've taken to hanging full-color posters depicting the
valuable prizes he might earn simply by yukking it up a bit more. We've tried
bribing him with food, board games, puppy dogs, hallucinogens, rare earths, and
more, to no avail. John wanted to try offering him airplane tickets, but that
seemed counterproductive.
It's a bit frustrating, since now we have the murderous bean-counters at our label, Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc., breathing down our necks for new product, as well as the huge five-legged, three-eared protozoa who inhabit the planet Kaztropharius 137b clamoring for more Big Green hits. Dr. Mitch is going to have to work overtime for the next three weeks...or else hire some help, goddammit...if we're going to stay ahead of the long knives. This could get discouraging.
I've
got to hand it to those Kaztropharians
-- they're big fans of Terran music
in general and Big Green
in particular. Mega-collectors, too, particularly with respect to old vinyl. I
understand some of them have album collections stacked ten stories tall (they
haven't discovered the record cabinet yet, so they still store all their music
"flat"). In fact, they are becoming a major employer of out-of-work
earthbound librarians, many of whom now make a tidy living tending the towers of
classical, pop, and arena rock albums the ever-keen Kaztropharians
have accumulated over the aeons. So
if you're an unemployed MLS, drop us a line at info@biggreenhits.com
and we'll send your name along with the next shipment of cut-outs. Can't
guarantee anything, but it's worth a go.
Mr. Mailbag. Well, it's that time again...you know...when we open up the mailbag and see what creatures emerge from its murky depths. Since your friends in Big Green have been changing addresses more frequently than folks in the federal witness protection program, our comments this time around are taken from the Big Green annex at www.Garageband.com, where we have a few songs posted. Ready?
Our first "letter" comes from Coquine of Vermilion in Alberta, Canada. She gave Martha's Christmas a listen and offered this observation:
:( Good Lyrics, but needs work! Extra Credit: Guitars, Lyrics; Special Award: Most Bitter Breakup Song
Well, Coquine, you've got a point there -- we could use a little more work! Our performance calendar is showing way too much white space. But don't worry, we're not on the verge of a break up, bitter or otherwise. But thanks for the award, just the same!
Here's another missive from somebody named "tdawg", who reviewed our highly controversial Pagan Christmas:
hey,
it was the 60's..
Point
well taken, "tdawg"! 60's Brit Pop is about where our development got
arrested....(well....maybe 80's Brit Pop, as well. We got arrested there, too.
But we had priors.) That's the thing about those popsters -- nothing really
stands out. But don't worry, "tdawg". When our next album comes out,
you can bet that every song will have a vocal "meloday" to revolve
around...and that it will be, how you say, "hella catchy!"
Thanks for your comments. Keep those cards and letter coming. And if you see your review in this column, email me at jperry@biggreenhits.com and we'll send you a free CD. (I tried sending one to "tdawg" but it came back undeliverable. Go figure.)
luv u,
jp
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8/26/2001
Man o' Maneschewitz...
How do I look? Not bad for someone who spent half of last night pumping the stomach of a gluttonous Zenite sugar freak, huh?
I
f
I've told sFshzenKlyrn
once I've told him a zillion times...don't eat massive amounts of junk food
when your cadmium neutron core is below 423 degrees Kelvin (in other words,
"on an empty stomach"). And that freaking sundae he inhaled last night at
the club had sucker written all over it. Before I knew it, our nebulous Zenite
friend had gone all verdigris. His volatile superstructure began emitting flashes
of quasar-like intensity. Then sFshzenKlyrn
keeled over backwards like a slapstick comedian. We carried him off stage, and as John
and Matt divided up all the cash and luncheon vouchers in his wallet, I began
pouring stop bath down his gullet in a desperate attempt to bring him around.
Eventually I succeeded, but it was touch and go for a while there. (He was going
all solid and his rads dropped below 4.57k/s. Not a good sign.)
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. We've been
playing a few gigs around the greater Colombo area to scare up the money we need
to keep our lean-to reconstruction project in the black. Nothing too
ambitious...just setting up 
at
a local gin mill and letting it rip. It was actually our friend Gung-Ho who
suggested we play a few Friday nights at the paramilitary canteen he frequents,
which is something of a cross between an American Legion hall taproom and an
old-fashioned drug store. It's not unusual to see the local Archie Andrews
enjoying a phosphate between a pair of bourbon-swilling ex-Contras or Kopassus
brigade veterans. Sure, they get a little boisterous. A few drinks and
inevitably someone wants to hear Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner for
the umpteenth time. The proprietor put a dartboard up last week -- that was the
end of that wall. (He's thinking of putting in some French doors, just to
keep the draft out.)
Anyway, sFshzenKlyrn (though a good session guitarist) has no self control when it comes to soda fountain fare. He just slogs those malteds down one after the other, then it's on to the banana splits. I think the guy's got a problem...I mean, a flapjack-like dependency on hot fudge and root beer. After just a couple of weeks on stage, it's difficult getting him through a whole set. I've got to get Dr. Hump on the phone and ask for some guidance before we shove off on our next interplanetary tour, which will hopefully happen late this fall if I can get those miserly fuckers at Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc., to sign the necessary releases in time.
And
what about our next studio project? Dr. Mitch Macaphee has made some progress
this week on the technical side of things. We have high hopes for this new
studio, as it seems to be taking up more space than did our previous residence
in its entirety. I think old Dr. Mitch might be reading from a manual written by
John Lennon's old crony "Magic Alex", the mad inventor who tried to
build a 48-track studio for the Beatles at their Apple offices but ran into some
insurmountable technical problems. (If I remember correctly, he had gotten so
far as to hang 48 speakers on the studio walls, one for every track...)
Dr. Mitch is definitely old school -- bigger is better. That's why all of Matt's guitar effect boxes are the size of refrigerators. Sure, it's a little harder to see him on stage. But he sure sounds cool.
Back to the High Frontier. Now, I know it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, but now there's been official word as to the fraudulence of the most recent Missile Defense test. The news? Basically, it was the same as the three previous tests. Essentially no unknown quantities involved whatsoever. Global Positioning System beacon on board the target missile, guiding the "kill" vehicle to its prey. The Pentagon has confirmed this to Defense Week magazine...not that it was hard to guess (see NOTES FROM SRI LANKA for July 15, 2001).
Didn't
hear about it in your local newspaper? I'm shocked...shocked! I
suppose with all the column inches devoted to the vitally important, entirely
content-free Gary Condit story, our erstwhile local editors must have
reluctantly dropped it into the same bin as the story about Dubya stopping
publication of declassified State Department documents on US complicity in the
Indonesia bloodbath of 1965 (i.e. the bin marked trash). How could that have
happened?
Anyway, Dubya has named USAF General Richard Myers as the new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. And, naturally enough, Myers is well briefed on the "high frontier" Space Command plan Rumsfeld is working on. Hey -- basing weapons of mass destruction in space sounds like a good idea to me...and I'm sure it will prove every bit as reliable a deterrent to military budget cuts as our rationally impenetrable missile defense shield.
For a brief discussion of the successful PR partnership between the Pentagon and our enviable free press, see Joe Conason's column (7/31/01) at salon.com. And if you'd like to know a bit more about the Pentagon's plans for outer space, check out their Vision 2020 brochure for a look ahead.
luv u,
jp