It’s called snow, Marvin. The white stuff, falling from the sky? That’s not hard rain, it’s freaking snow. What the hell kind of weather station are you, anyway?
Oh, hi. Well … we’re getting into that time of year when larger mammals hibernate. That’s not how we roll, of course, but we do get a little more sedentary (if that can be imagined) as the winter months wear on. Fortunately, we have our podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN to keep us hopping this December. Here’s what we’ve packed inside this hollow tree:
Ned Trek 38: The Squire of Mara Lagos. Our new installment of Ned Trek is a takeoff on the classic Star Trek episode entitled “The Squire of Gothos” and features me doing really, really poor imitations of both Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Perle turns out to be a compulsive gambler this week in a Lost in Space-style plot twist. See what you think … and feel free to play it back at 125% speed.
Put The Phone Down. Matt and I begin our yak session with a rendition of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, which maybe goes on a bit too long (we are joined by a Dalek after a few choruses). A little later on we go into dueling Sagan mode, give a nod to talking like a chimp, discuss the merits and demerits of the Ned Trek episode, and take a closer look at Matt’s various medals.
Song: Christmas is Over Here. I mentioned that we included some warmed-over holiday numbers in this episode – this isn’t one of them. This is just the two of us making up a ridiculous song that has never been sung before and likely will never be sung again. Ain’t that Christmas?
Song: Up North. One of Matt’s very first Christmas songs. This recording is, I think, from the late 1980s, a cassette 4-track master, and one of probably 4 versions of this song we’ve recorded over the decades. We include this one because of the ape-like backing vocals towards the end. Not to be missed.
Song: Quantum Christmas. This is an outtake from the sessions that resulted in our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas, back in 1999. We did the mix then decided to leave it off the final collection. Matt wrote this, of course, and it plays with the observer’s paradox in quantum physics as a metaphor for avoiding your relatives.
Song: Dark Christmas. Another outtake from the 2000 Years To Christmas album. It think we thought it was just too long to fit on what was already a longish album, but … there were likely other reasons as well. This kind of sounds like what we sounded like back then as a band, so give it a go.
Song: Ornament. This is another 4-track cassette recording, this from Matt’s 1990 Christmas collection (among my all-time favorites) that he gave to family and friends that year. We did a version of this for 2000 Years To Christmas that didn’t end up on the album, but I much prefer this one.
Enjoy it, folks. Now … back to tracking the weather.
We’re actually planning kind of a special party for its twentieth next year. Don’t tell it we said so – we’d like it to be a surprise. I was thinking maybe a nice new CD player, or one of those disc stands that holds maybe 200 albums. Hell, we could fill four of those with unsold copies of that thing. (Psst … don’t tell 
But more than anything else, we are thankful to you, our listeners and readers. (That includes all you little Russian bots – I see you!) And that’s why we have chosen to express our gratitude by posting a warmed-over installment of Ned Trek entitled 
Not that we haven’t cultivated that particular field before, you understand. It’s just that we’re digging in a bit this year. It’s partly due to the specific Star Trek episode we’re mocking, but hey, let’s face it … there are a lot of neo-fascists taking power just lately, including the clownish variety we have here in the states (to say nothing of the right-wing brown shirt organizations we deal with at the street level these days), so these songs aren’t exactly historical documents, per se. We’re jamming on current affairs, people. Ripped from the headlines, as it were. It’s enough to make Marvin (my personal robot assistant) blow a fuse or two. Just so long as he doesn’t grow a little mustache.
Right, so …. I realize this isn’t a technical blog. That’s not what you come here for. You come here for pithy observations and gripping tales of pointless adventures. For instance, I could tell you all about the festive autumnal arrangement in the hammer mill courtyard contrived by the mansized tuber in his spare time, but then this would seem like a gardening blog, and it’s anything but that. Or I could tell you about all the lawn signs that were dumped in our driveway following the mid-term elections, but then you’d think this was a political blog, and well …. sometimes it is, but … not just now!
There are a lot of things a grown man can do in his spare time, particularly someone with so many half-baked hobbies such as myself. Why I spend even five minutes with this hunk of junk is beyond me. And then there’s the radio. (Sorry Marvin – that was low hanging fruit.) I suppose I could become an inventor like Mitch Macaphee, or an antimatter president like Anti-Lincoln, or a large sweet potato like the mansized tuber, but there are individuals already filling those vital roles in society. Perhaps wisdom, in part, is recognizing your place in the world and trying to make the best of it. Or perhaps not … perhaps wisdom is something else entirely … in part. (And perhaps my favorite hobby is sophistry.)
Hey, anyone out there who works with audio and video knows, this stuff is time consuming. Especially when you’re a lazy sloth like me. I’m a bit more like Bobby Sweet than I care to let on, truth be told. I like to sit back and strum on my old guitar, pound out a few chords on the old piano, drop some canned fruit in the old blender and swear at the fact that it still doesn’t work. All I can say is that, despite the distractions, we are working on the 
Our local House member, Claudia Tenney in NY-22, is one such republican. Trump came for a fundraiser over the summer; Paul Ryan came by a few weeks ago, and just this week we were treated to the sight of Eric Trump, who gave a pep talk to Tenney’s campaign volunteers and staff. For her own part, she has been channeling Trump a bit more than usual, referring to Colgate university as a crazy, left-wing school, whining about “socialists” coming up from downstate to help her opponent, and so on. I suppose she is calculating that, between her own erratic behavior and the spectacle of being carried around on the flabby shoulders of GOP celebrities, she will have enough lift to get over the finish line in November. We shall see.
Okay, so …. that guy’s crazy. And, as Mr. Spock once observed, madness has no reason … but it can have a goal. That’s what Mitch’s anti-gravity machine was all about. The device attracts gravitons like a bug zapper, apparently, though it doesn’t zap them … it just keeps them busy so that they can’t hold the rest of us down. (You always thought it was THE MAN that was holding you down, but no, says Mitch, it’s the gravitons!) Anyhow, it kind of worked for about a week, then something went bust. That happens a lot with mad science tinkerers like Mitch. Hell, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has dozens of glitches, but hell … he’s family.
Right, so … Mitch Macaphee has his own theories. And his theories usually lead to some nameless device that looks like a ham radio rig from the 1960s, with dials and meters and knobs and blinking lights. It makes a “woo-woo” sound. Sometimes he puts arms and legs on it and calls it Marvin (my personal robot assistant). Sometimes he throws a switch and things disappear … or appear. This time around, he adjusted the right combination of buttons, switches, lanyards, etc., to suspend gravity in the hammer mill. An anti-gravity machine, as it were. And that means more than floating hammers, my friends. Suffice to say, I haven’t had to use the stairs all week. If this keeps up, we may be battling obesity before long.