What is this? More bickering? Jesus Christ on a bike. Can’t you guys ever just let it drop? Always putting the boot in, putting the boot in. Leave it, damn you, leave it. Do I have to come back there again? You’re distracting me from my driving!
Oh, it’s you. Honestly… sometimes I feel like the parent of three-year-old quadruplets. (Or is it four-year-old triplets? Same total number of life years, you see.) It’s especially bad when we’re out for a ride in the woody. No, that’s not a euphemism for some kind of warped sexual encounter between bandmates — we really do have a paneled station wagon, an old Ford country squire. Don’t look at me like that. It’s an old junker, okay? I can’t help it if it belches black smoke into an otherwise moderately breathable atmosphere. For chrissake, if you lived with this crew, you’d have to find a way to get them all out of the hammer mill from time to time too. It gets pretty close in there, even with all that space. Mitch and his cigars. Matt and his cooking. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and his incessant juggling.
We went out for a brief ride in the ‘wagon just yesterday, and I had to pull over at least a couple of times specifically to speak to Marvin about those bloody pins he keeps tossing in the air. (He had the best juggling coach, too… some guy named Sven. Go figure.) Not a lot of headroom in that car, as you might well imagine — this isn’t some suburban land-yacht or Mercedes SUV, friends. Anyway, it was my turn to drive and by virtue of our friend sFshzenKlyrn’s generous holiday gift (a small poke of Zenite snuff), the vehicle somehow ended up in a roadside drainage ditch. I’ve been in a number of crashes in my time; most of them involving space vehicles (or at least one space vehicle and a car of some sort), but this was among the more embarrassing incidents of its kind. For one thing, it transpired within eyeshot of the freaking mill. My comrades elected to walk the rest of the way home, singing the ridiculous round with which they had been bludgeoning me while we were still on the road. That left me to beg assistance from a passing donkey cart. I think you can imagine the ride home, station wagon in tow. Not a pretty sight.
When did it become my responsibility to entertain the troops? I’ve been elected by default, quite frankly. Mitch Macaphee may be able to 
pilot a spacecraft, but he’s no taxi driver. And don’t even ask me about the man-sized tuber. Why, his little spindly roots can’t even reach the pedals, poor fucker. Matt and John? They like to hang out the windows with their tongues flapping in the breeze. I suppose the most likely candidate for chauffeur would be Marvin, but hell — we get Marvin to do everything. I mean, that robot is entitled to a little down time, even if he is my personal robot assistant. Besides, if you put a robot in the driver’s seat, it’s like riding with Hitler. Don’t ask me why… some truths are imponderable.
With a bullet… literally. Big Green’s acoustic anti-war song Red, Gold, and Green has reached number 250 on Neil Young’s Living With War Today chart — that’s out of about 1,100 songs and without any promotion from yours truly… until now. Get over there and click that mo-fo! (By the way… The President’s Brain is Missing is at #399 and could use a few click, too.)
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
