Category Archives: Usual Rubbish

Usual Rubbish

Anudder home.

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Where did I put my html tags? I thought I packed them with my socks, but they don’t appear to be in there. WFT, man…. getting a new home is always such a pain.

No, friends. We have not abandoned the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. That would be something you might expect from the department of redundancy department (of redundancy). We have, however, abandoned our old web site and moved into a new one, designed by, I don’t know, professional web designers… as opposed to my sorry ass, who threw together our last site with Front Page and some tweezers … not to mention some cracked old photo manipulation software. Yeah, that’s right. Do I have to draw you a picture? (Actually… that would have been better than what came out of that software.)

Anywho… out with the old, in with the new. We’ve been using WordPress for Hammermill Days (and, earlier, Notes from Sri Lanka) for over five years, and so we thought, hey, why not build the whole freaking site using the same software? It actually works, you can edit it from anywhere using a Web browser…. How easy is that? Too easy! That’s what Mitch Macaphee says. Being a mad scientist, he thinks things should be hard … at least as hard as building Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was. Sure, he built Marvin out of spare parts and bric-a-brac he had lying about his lab, but that doesn’t mean it was easy. Building a sentient being never is, my friends.

Now, the cynical and suspicious-minded amongst you (and you all know who you are) will imagine that this web site face lift is all about our supreme ambition to become special assistants to inevitable president-elect and future king of the moon Newt Gingrich; that we somehow abandoned and discarded our illin’, aging old web site for a shiny, sexy younger one, like … well, like … something some politician did once. That is a dirty lie. Fact is, we have already been invited by Newt Gingrich – future president and current Lincoln in his own mind – to advise him on interplanetary relations including, most specifically, his plans for our nearest neighbor in space. In point of fact, we will be a bit like the late Richard Holbrook, who was given the Af-Pak portfolio. (We will be in charge of the Moon, Mars, and Saturn, so it might be called the LunaMaSa portfolio, in media culture shorthand-speak.)

So anyway… welcome to Big Green’s new home on the Web. Take a look around. Kick the tires. Leave comments. Move in to one of the pages and order expensive dinners. Glad to have yuh.  

 

Usual Rubbish

Luna, oh, Luna.

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How much does the moon weigh? I don’t have an answer to that, for chrissake. What am I, a freaking scientist or something? Go ask Mitch Macaphee. What? He told you to ask me? Mother of pearl…

Oh, hi. Was wondering when you would drop by. Not the best time, as I’m sure you’ve surmised. We’re working on our proposal to the Gingrich campaign to be their official liaison to the Moon people and their special counsel on all matters Moonly. This is an ambitious move for Big Green – certainly as bold as our attempt to glom onto the W. Bush campaign and presidency way back in 2000 (the distant future… the year 2000…). That started with something as humble as sharing an interstellar tour bus with the man himself, but resulted in our brief but fruitful installation into the corridors of power. (We still have some of the fruit from that little sojourn, though it’s a tad ripe now.)

Right, so anyway … back then it was clear that Bush would be the nominee. This time, it’s clear that Gingrich will be the NOMinee. I mean, he said so himself, right? And is he ever wrong? I’ll ask Marvin (my personal robot assistant) … if he ever gets his head out of his ass. But I digress. Come the inevitable Gingrich presidency, our nation’s relations with the Moon will occupy center stage. He will need the best advice available, and who better to tap for that particular responsibility than the Hammermill team, right? We’ve performed on the Moon. Moon people are our people.

That said, I was a little surprised to receive this request for proposal (RFP) from the Gingrich group. Do we really need to substantiate our wild claims with fact? What kind of a world is this becoming? In any case, we are being asked to demonstrate our knowledge of Earth’s nearest neighbor in space on the most rudimentary level imaginable. How much does the moon weigh, for pity’s sake. As any expert know, that depends on what phase the moon is in. Right now, it’s close to full, so its weight today is going to be a hell of a lot greater than when it’s in first quarter phase, right? Any Earthbound knucklehead knows that. But can anyone write you a slamming anthem? One that will appropriately accompany your pressure-suited legions when you conquer the moon?

Okay… clearly I’ve said too much. It wouldn’t do for Newt’s plan of lunar domination to gain to great a currency prior to his inevitable election, so … keep it under your hat for now. There’s a good chap.

Usual Rubbish

Poditis.

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Hey, turn off the water when you’re done in there, okay? Hello? Mitch, is that you? Matt? Lincoln? Where the hell is everybody?

Oh, right…. they’ve gone to a clambake. Or so they said, anyway. I think they just want to get the hell out of this drafty old Hammer Mill, and who can blame them? Not I, my friends. Still … someone has to mind the store. Perhaps you suppose that Marvin (my personal robot assistant) could handle such a simple task as guarding the mill, but no… much too complicated for his tiny mind. No, it takes real intellect, acumen, and chutzpah to keep this abandoned mill running up to par. And it there’s one man under this roof who can…. hey … did I leave the front door open? MARVIN?!

Okay, well… we all need help, right? That’s what bands are all about. Otherwise hapless musicians, huddling together to ward off the elements, keeping the home fires burning. Personally, I think they’re all irked at me for being such a jerk during our last podcast. (Matt was being a jerk, too, but he’s probably joining them in their shunning of me just to be ironic. Freaking hipsters!) The reason I think that is, well, we did act like jerks. That’s what people expect, okay? Here’s some of what they’re probably complaining about in the March episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN:

Derisive Tributes – As we often do when a prominent primate passes away, we paid tribute to Davy Jones of the Monkees and Andrew Breitbart of the Internets and, well, we were perhaps a little less than sufficiently pious. As Matt said, I went so far as to turn it into a “big joke”. Like making repeated mention of rejected would-be Monkees Charles Manson and Steven Stills. Stop using words that hurt! Listen for yourself, reader, and judge.

Questionable Remembrances – At least one anecdote was shared – I won’t say by whom (Matt) – about someone being arrested at a Jethro Tull concert in 1979. That could have been anybody, right? But then we had to go and talk about Matt’s dentist and how she shares a name with an infamous character from classic Star Trek. That got us into quoting lines from the show and, well…. all the evil that proceeds from that.

Looney Music – The Cousin Rick Perry songs, all first drafts, were a little weirder than usual this time around, with a kind of seventies lounge pop number, a shanty like diddy, and robot rock about Romney and Santorum. Add that to some pretty awful banjo and kazoo improvisation, and you’ve got yourself a podcast.

So…. as I said, friends, listen and judge. Personally, I think my Mill-mates all have poditis. That’s probably because they had to listen to the freaking thing while we were recording it and about five times thereafter. Who can blame them?

Usual Rubbish

Lunar new year.

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Hey, what the…? Did I sign off on that? Are you sure? Well, I guess you would know better than I. Wouldn’t you? RRRrrrrr….

Face it, we’ve got bad quality control here at the Cheney Hammer Mill. Was a time that not a single hammer went out of here with unsightly flashing or a splinter out of place in their ironwood handles. Not so with Big Green, it pains me to say. We are not perfect – ADMIT IT TO YOURSELF. It’s just because we’ve got irons in so many fires. Too many spoons in the stew. Eleven toes on each foot. I don’t know – you pick the metaphor. I’ve got work to do.

Nah, see… Marvin (my personal robot assistant) posted our March episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN, our podcast, before I had had a chance to listen to it. We could be saying ANYTHING, for chrissake. If we had reputations or integrity, we could lose either (or both). There are some advantages to general slovenliness and moral degeneration, but I’ve only just thought of one of them, so…. there can’t be too many. Anyway, it’s out there, warts and all – another wide ranging discussion between Matt and I, discussing everything from the death of Davy Jones and Andrew Breitbart, to Star Trek mythology, to things too obscure to describe in print. Freakish, that’s all I can say. Plus three more songs from Rick Perry – a 70s-pop lament tentatively called “Rick: The Searchable Name”; a doggerel called “Really Rick Perry”, and a primitive rock number entitled, simply, “Santorum”.

Okay, well … that’s done. Now, to our new commission – that of spearheading the efforts of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in his efforts to conquer and rule the moon. He got our names from George W. Bush, no doubt. We have been in the dubya rolodex ever since he went on tour with us back in 2000, which led to our taking on an advisory position in the early (pre-9/11) Bush White House. (We were in charge of his Space Commission, based on our long history in…. well…. space.) Hey… nothing succeeds like success. Except perhaps failure, in our case. Anywho, the first thing Newt has asked us to do – aside from grease the diplomatic wheels with any people found on the moon – is to write a national anthem for our nearest neighbor in space. One that duly celebrates his initiative, his genius, and (he also says) his modesty.

So, well…. Matt and I have to get to work on this. Perhaps John can work up some pedal steel parts. We’ve got stuff to do, Marvin – don’t bother me with trifles! (Unless they’re the tasty dessert kind.)

Usual Rubbish

Fruit cup.

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These are indeed auspicious days to be Big Green. What the hell am I talking about? I was hoping you would know, good browser.

Yes, just hanging about at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, assembling the next podcast of THIS IS BIG GREEN. Uh-huh, that’s right – we personally assemble each episode by hand. (And no, that’s not the royal “we” – I in fact have a mouse in my pocket.) It’s painstaking work. Ironing out the dross, cutting the vulgarities, tuning up the music, tweaking the costumes (oh yes … we wear costumes on our audio podcast). It is details like these that make for great podcasts. Ours is not one, but … we use the same means that the greats use, with less than great results. I’m being honest, okay. YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT? (You do? My apologies.)

Okay, so that takes some time. What do we do with the other 23.5 hours in the day? Well…. we’ve actually got a project ahead of us. Yes, another project. It’s not one of those diorama things you used to build for show and tell – you know, a box depicting the battle of the Monitor and the Merrimac, with a starfish thrown in for good measure. Then if you do particularly well on your in-class presentation, you get a little reward – perhaps a star sticker, or an extra fruit cup at lunch time. That’s all good, until you run into that bruiser out on the playground, whose dad left town with some floozie from the Shriners circus last year, and who’s been going around with a chip on his shoulder ever since, and who apparently owns all the playground equipment because if you even go NEAR the see-saw he’ll break you in half, and …

Right… well, I strayed a bit. The project. Remember, way back in the year 2000, when we briefly hooked up with Dubya Bush while he was out on the campaign trail, sharing our interstellar tour bus with the soon-to-be president of these here United States? Well, it helps to know people – that’s all I can say. One introduction leads to another. Because of our experience with extraterrestrial constituencies, the Gingrich campaign has tapped us to be its liaison to the moon people. This could be huge, friends – one of us (Matt, perhaps) could be named ambassador to the moon if the Newt-like object is elected president this fall. How awesome would that be?

Tough commute? No worries. With gas at $2.50 a gallon, it won’t matter a bit.

Usual Rubbish

Albumination.

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We’re out of the big box retail business. Easy come, easy go. Now what do we do for scratch? Start scratching? What am I, a dee-jay? (Perhaps I am…. )

Leave us face it. As so many of our closest friends and advisors have told us, Big Green’s money-making gene is recessive. The cash bone definitely is not connected to the Green bone. Even when we have a hole to China’s most productive consumer good factory – literally a tunnel to the bank! – it blows up in our faces. The gods want us humble. They have given us a mission, and we must fulfill it. Live simply in an abandoned mill. Make music. Travel to other planets via questionable means. Go forth and do as I tell you. WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

What the…. got gods for three minutes and they’re already demanding as hell. Well, you should know that we’re not letting the grass grow under our feet. (Except the mansized tuber, of course – that’s his natural state.) As you may be aware, Matt and I have been busy with our podcast. A grueling monthly broadcast schedule, now in its eighth grueling month. Ever eat gruel for eight months straight? Just try it sometime, Ebeneezer. Even you will be calling for more bread, damn the ha-penny extra. Right…. where was I? Ah, yes. Work. Work, work, work. The podcast demands a great deal out of us – namely, that we turn on the recorder, stand in front of studio mics, and talk total, rambling nonsense like we always do. Then we press stop. (I told you – it’s a great deal.)

Then there are the songs. We’ve done a lot of Cousin Rick Perry songs – it’s becoming a bit of a theme, like Christmas or rare foot diseases. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has been good enough to help track some of the numbers. In fact, we’re thinking about pulling it together into an album – finishing the songs we threw together for the podcast and putting out an album of Rick Perry themed material. Would the resulting product be an abomination of sorts? Perhaps in the Eyes (or the Ears) of the Almighty Rick. He is among our more sensitive cousins, to be sure.

So, yes, our hands are full, our hearts (and wallets) light, our spirits…. I don’t know, I’ll go with spongy.

Usual Rubbish

Crash of 12.

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Call out the marines. Get the cops down here. Somebody plugged our money hole… and this could be a problem.

Yeah, I know … all good things come to an end, right? We were just starting to get traction as the next big-box store. Our theme is that of an abandoned mill… all of our stores look like abandoned mills. (Note: we only have one store, and it’s in an abandoned mill.) We have a mascot, Marvin (my personal robot assistant), and a jokey spokes vegetable, the mansized tuber, who we were thinking would wheel his way through quirky television commercials, speaking in a British… no, Aussie accent. Perhaps German accent. We haven’t worked out that part yet. He would show up in board rooms and on cruise ships … at least the ones that don’t tip over or catch on fire.

And hell, with the help of our marketing advisor, Noname, on loan from the A and R representative at our corporate label, Loathsome Prick Records, we even had an expansion plan on the board, with a big map and hexagonal icons representing new store locations in Boise, Idaho, Keokuk, Iowa, Redmond, Washington, and about a thousand other locations. Big Green was even planning to go global, with outlets in Spain, Qatar, Estonia, Sri Lanka (of course), and down under somewhere (or something). It was a bold, ambitious plan … one that made our militant cartoon neighbor, Gung-Ho, fairly salivate with envy. All of the lands HE wanted to conquer, spread out invitingly before him on a topographical map. Oh, the envy!

But… that was then, this is … OWW! (Forgive me. Marvin just rolled over my right foot.) One day this past week, the free consumer goods, once so plentiful, simply stopped flying out of that hole in the floor Mitch Macaphee burned with Trevor James Constable’s Orgone Generating Machine. (I know… that’s a little hard to parse. Just look back a few weeks, you’ll get it.) We just sold the last programmable toaster yesterday. All out of custom! Even worse, the hole emitted a parting gift of sorts – namely, a bill of lading for everything that had flown out over the past three weeks. And it’s considerable. I didn’t know a number could have that many zeroes behind it. (A google-plex, perhaps?)

So there you have it. The once mighty Green-mart empire, brought low by an interloper on the other side of this wretched globe. Curses! (Ahem…. hurt my throat, there.)

Usual Rubbish

Lock, stock, and barrel.

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Is that the time? Right – time to close up for the day. It’s 4:20 in the afternoon and I’ve been slaving away for nearly half an hour. Shut it down.

Woe is he who must labor in vain. I don’t know what that means, but whatever… your friends in Big Green are proprietors for the nonce. That means we have proprietary interests, perhaps for the first time in our lives. And you know what they say… as soon as you get a stake in the world, it’s all over. Kiss your altruism goodbye, my little scaly friend. Forget your deeply held values – this is cash, Jimmy-boy, cold hard cash! To hell with all that other stuff. All we care about is pushing product out the door at a tidy profit.

What products? Hey…. whatever comes flying out of that hole to China. Mitch Macaphee burned a tunnel through the earth so clean, it doesn’t even whistle when it spins (and it should). Now it’s like one of those air-tube delivery systems in an old department store. On the other end, probably just outside the gates of a Foxcon plant, somebody’s dropping consumer items into a hole … and they come flying out of the opening in our forge room floor moments later. It’s a tunnel to the bank, my friend.

Okay, so… on our marketing advisor Noname’s recommendation, we opened a storefront in the Mill that we’re calling, “GREENMART”. People come in with plastic shopping carts they borrow from the supermarket up the street and load up on cheap swag built by slave labor – an all-American pastime if ever there was one. (And there was one.) Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has been working the cash register, so to speak. Actually… there is no cash register. Marvin just does the calculations using his own processor unit, then spits out a receipt. He even takes major credit cards, which is news to me. (If I’d known that during our last tour, I would never have hocked my Bean Boots for that hoagie back on Neptune.)

Yes, I know… this is like selling stuff that fell off the back of a truck. Where’s the outrage? Ask Bob Dole.

Usual Rubbish

Hold it.

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There’s a valuable resource for you. And right here under our noses. We’re rich, I tell you, rich. It’s like finding a whole bag full of doubloons. Or perhaps triploons.

What am I talking about? What indeed. I’ll tell you, friend(s), we’ve been squatting in this abandoned hammer mill for more than ten years. You know what squatting that long does to your quadriceps? Seriously, we’ve been occupying the Cheney Hammer Mill before the Occupy movement ever put on its first pair of short pants. Not for any principle, you understand, other than that of having a roof over our heads. A penniless band, Big Green was in those days. Ah, but no more. Fortune has smiled upon us, once again.

So often these things happen by accident. Someone tinkering with something, blowing some time, and next thing you know, whoosh! Well, that’s what happens when you live with a mad scientist, anyway. For weeks, Mitch Macaphee has been tinkering with that orgone generating machine Trevor James Constable left behind some years back. He hooked it into one of his little ion generators and – as I said earlier – WHOOSH! Fortunate that no one was standing in front of the machine’s array at that moment. The thing was pointing down at the floor of the forge room and, well, suddenly there was a clean, round hole in the fire-brick floor.

Now, I tend toward curiosity, I must admit. But I, like you, have seen Crack In The Earth, so there was no way I was going down that hole. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) wasn’t having any of it either. (I’ve been volunteering him for way too many duties just lately.) I tried to get the mansized tuber to check it out, but no luck. Fortunately, there was no need to send anyone down there. They just started popping out of the hole. What did? Boxes. Boxes of goods from China. Valuable goods, just popping out of the hole. We’re rich, I tell you, RICH. Forget everything you know about value-chain management and global enterprise logistics. We’ve got a hole to where stuff is made. People drop the stuff in on the other end, and it comes out here. End of story.

Okay, so… we’re working on the sales component right now. Stay tuned. And while you’re tuned, check out the latest episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN, our podcast, the February edition. Two new songs by Rick Perry. Another extra by us. Corporate underwriting spots tried and botched. Something for everybody. Yeeha.

Usual Rubbish

Last ditch.

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This isn’t a pillow, man. This is a freaking anvil. You got this from the forge room, didn’t you? What do you think I am, some kind of machine?

Yeah, I know – I should expect this sort of thing, living in an abandoned hammer mill. Remnants from the forge room, repurposed for bedding materials. Such are the times we live in. Big Green, like many indie bands, lives pretty close to the margin, my friends. We don’t have the resources for all of those extras bands like The Decemberists and Black Flag can afford. God, no… we just make do with what we’ve got. In these hard times, our fans expect this much at least: that we should be every bit as miserable as they are. And friends, we don’t disappoint.

That said, I do wish Marvin (my personal robot assistant) would use a little sense in straightening up my living space. Admittedly, his mind has been elsewhere. I think our new marketing advisor, Noname – a minion from our corporate label Loathsome Prick Records – has been reprogramming him when no one’s looking. Beyond her ken? I don’t think so. Marvin’s not that complicated. He’s running a 486 processor, for chrissake. If he went to Harvard for seven years, he might end up with as much brains as your $10 wristwatch. Even an art history major like Noname can reprogram his ass, no problem.

Right, so… first she got Marvin all ironic. Now she’s working on getting us to do, well, more interesting things. Stuff that will make the news, you know? Like, I don’t know – setting the mill on fire, or drinking to excess and lying in a ditch in the middle of town, or hijacking a weather balloon and dropping tins of condemned sardines on the Washington monument, or…. well, you get the idea. You can see the headlines now: Big Green Makes Last Ditch Effort For Big Time. Or perhaps BAND BETS FARM ON MAJOR MELTDOWN. Or perhaps not. Sometimes I wonder if Noname is really that well checked out on this stuff.

Hey, we just do what we’re told, right? When was that ever the case?