No, Mitch. That’s not the point, man. Wait a minute, wait a minute…. I think somebody may be reading what I’m typing into my stupid blog. Hold on… Yeah, I posted it. Sorry, Mitch – I’ll call you back. Bye.

Hi, everybody… it’s your old pal Bozo. Did I say Bozo? I meant Joe. Beg your pardon, I’m all farmisht. Just spent the last half-hour on the phone to Mitch Macaphee, inventor of Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who has taken up residence in a relatively comfy treehouse outside of Buenos Aires for the summer. (Just to be clear, Mitch is in the treehouse, not Marvin. Marvin is the one who fell out of a tree.) I hate to treat so distinguished a mad scientist as some kind of cheap tech support, but damn it, we’re desperate… desperate, I tell you! (Phew!) No, no… not life or death. Marvin’s on the fritz, that’s all, and it’s proving to be a bit of an inconvenience.

It happened just after we crashed back home last week. As you know, Big Green had taken a little trip out to Cancri 55 for a showcase gig that ended up lasting two freaking months. Long story short, we had a bit of a rough landing on our return (right into my m.f. bedroom) and in the process, Marvin seems to have shaken some key piece of electronic brainology loose. What’s the problem? Haven’t a clue. That’s why we dialed up the man who put him together… this in hopes of getting a step-by-step method for setting the tin man straight. Of course, Mitch being the typical mad scientist that he is (he’s living in a fucking tree, for christ’s sake!) has proven incapable of giving a coherent answer one way or the other. Three calls, and the best I could get out of him was a recipe for gazpacho. (Actually, it’s a pretty good recipe. But I digress…)

What is Marvin doing that’s so annoying? Well… first he donned some nautical headgear left behind by that mad man Admiral Gonutz. Then he installed himself on the rusting freight elevator and insisted that everyone call him “Admiral”. Admittedly, that was only mildly annoying. After a couple of days of that, he took it into his robotic skull to start swinging around on the rafters in hammer assembly room five. Now, Marvin was never much of an athlete, so this was actually a bit dangerous, as all 267 pounds of him (yes… he’s made of metal, friends) would come crashing down onto the work floor every ten minutes or so. What the hell – we thought that was pretty bad. But we hadn’t seen anything yet. Nope. Nothing. (Is this thing still on? Oh, right.)

Here’s the capper – one night last week, Marvin broke into my wall safe (unlocked, as it happens), took our squatter’s contract to the Cheney Hammer Mill, and sold it to Loathsome Prick Records, our label. Now they own our sorry asses, lock, stock and barrel. So Mitch… if you’re reading this… love the gazpacho, but… how do you fix this s.o.b.??

Through the glass darkly. That was our trip home. Better believe it, my friend. (Jesus freaking Christ…. if I say “my friends” again, I’ll turn into John McCain. And we can’t have that… not with all these Lincolns around.)

Okay, well, so I’m not such a good pilot. I kind of already knew that – that’s why we of Big Green made common cause with the likes of Mitch Macaphee, our sometimes-resident mad science advisor. But when Mitch ain’t available, we improvise and… well… things don’t always turn out the way you hope. It hurts my pride to say so, but I did push the stick when I should have pulled it, and our rented space craft went into a dramatic nose-dive. We were dropping faster than the S&P 500 during the dot-com bust (forgive the metaphor). How could I tell? Well, things on the ground were getting awfully big, awfully fast. I was just opening my mouth to say “Marvin (my personal robot assistant)!!!” when the Cheney Hammer Mill got big enough to crack our windshield.

I won’t tell you what came out of my mouth next. (My guess is that you’ve heard the word once or twice, but fuck it… this is a FAMILY blog!) It’s the kind of utterance that comes of driving someone else’s vehicle through one of the only unbroken windows in your squat house – namely, the one right over where I sleep. (Rather, slept.) Glass all over my best bedspread, glass in the water fountain, glass ground into the floor. Worse than that, high-explosive spacecraft fuel had spewed all over the walls (and my bedroom couch) and ignited, reducing my humble domicile to a somewhat more humble state. It was ugly… very ugly. (In fact, it still is ugly, as this catastrophe is compounded by the fact that I am not at all a good housekeeper.)

Were there any injuries? (Thanks for asking, actually.) The most serious one was sustained by John, who laughed so hard at my inept piloting that he was grasping his sides in pain. Big Zamboola caught some shards of windshield glass, but in as much as he possesses his own atmosphere, the shards burned up in re-entry. Moments before the crash, the man-sized tuber scrambled off for his specially designed, climate-controlled, shock-mounted terrarium and strapped himself in. I’m not sure how my brother Matt or the Lincolns managed to emerge unscathed, but it could have something to do with their common interest in avian biology. Yes, they were bird watching in our moment of sheer terror. Callous and uncaring? You might think so. But anti-Lincoln’s lifetime list of birds is getting longer every day. (Between us, I’ve seen the list, and there are at least six or seven chickens on there, entered by name. I’m just saying.)

Okay, well…. so we’re home anyway. I, for one, am glad to have my feet firmly planted on the ancient planks of this august old squathouse once again. It feels good… even if I have to sleep with an umbrella (and a hazmat suit).

Electrodes to power, turbines to speed, wind in the willows, egg on your face. What the hell – why can’t we get lift? We need lift, man, lift! Arrrgh! Where the hell is Mitch Macaphee when you need him?

Answer: Buenos Aires, at a mad scientist conference. You know as well as I do, don’t you?

Well, friends and countrymen (and countrywomen, as well… and, well, city men and women… and dogs and cats and….. oooooohhhh!), your associates in Big Green have finally arrived in the environs of the small marbled greenish-blue planet we know as Earth. And when I say “environs,” I mean atmosphere; straight down the chute in our rented spacecraft, nose pointed towards the upstate New York industrial ruin we know as the Cheney Hammer Mill. As John and the others are otherwise occupied, I have taken it upon myself to man the helm, with Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and the man-sized tuber (see his Facebook page) handling the navigation console. (Yes, it takes both of them to do that… and there’s only one chair.) And as you may have gathered from my previous utterance, it’s not going real well. Not real well at all.

Okay, full disclosure: I’ve actually never piloted a spacecraft of any kind before, let alone a rented one. And as many may already know, I don’t have any practical experience in the driver’s seat of any manner of flying machine. Oh, sure… I’ve dabbled from time to time – when a band spends as much of its working life in the icy void between worlds as we do, you tend to pick things up – but there’s nothing that resembles skill in my method… nothing at all. In fact, we’re in the midst of what might be described as an “unpowered descent” and I haven’t the foggiest idea how I initiated it. (I pressed some pretty buttons, pulled a lanyard or two, and heard a strange crunching noise… that’s all I remember, officer. Swear to Jesus or Moses or any of them saints.)

Ahead of me I can see the North American continent growing larger and larger. Pretty soon it fills the viewing screen. I point the rented space cruiser towards the dotted outline of New York State and begin looking for the inscriptions for “Little Falls”. 100,000…. 75,000… 45,000 feet and still nothing! Then it strikes me… ouch! Damn lanyard hit me right in the face! (Rat bastard.) There was also something else… this must be a topographical continent, not a political one. No wonder there’s no type, no little target-like symbol over Albany, no heavy lines for major thoroughfares. Looks like I’ll have to land without those subtle cues. Marvin points to a fat-looking peak – could this be Bear Mountain? Need a map, damnit. Tubey – Look in the glove compartment. Good vegetable.

What’s this…. the lights are going out. The sun has gone behind the horizon. I’ve got to fly this thing in the DARK? And my navigator is back on Facebook? Jeeezus.

Hmmm… thought I shut that thing down. Lincoln – have you been using this computer again? How ’bout you, Anti-Lincoln? Big Zamboola? Right. Must’ve been the other ones. Man god damn.

Oh, hi. Lucky thing you’re reading this, really. Some of our Big Green travel associates have been monopolizing our one reliable connection to the “Internets”, as Stephen Colbert calls it, for their own evil purposes. No, I don’t mean Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has been cavorting with his fellows in Captured By Robots, or that the man-sized tuber is plotting with his co-religionists in some kind of anti-animal jihad (I believe the are Unitarians, but don’t quote me on that). Nay, I refer to their recent obsession with so-called “social networking” sites – your MySpaces, your FaceBooks, your Linkedins (though one might have thought that the Lincolns would be all over that last one…. it is for the more mature amongst us, after all….)

So… how, you may ask, can these strange tag-alongs feed their new-found obsession whilst we are bobbing aimlessly in space on a rented interstellar craft? Well, I’m gon’ tell yuh. This here cream puff of a space ship we borrowed has got one hell of a wireless connection. I mean, this sucker can connect from a distance of 3.5 light years, without losing any bandwidth. Crikey – I can watch that freaking guy screaming about Britney Spears all the way from Aldebron! Okay, so you’re probably thinking, “Hey, fucker, there’s only one Web-connected terminal on board… why can’t you keep them off of it?” (Not thinking that? All right then. What was I thinking?) The truth is, I can’t really tell these guys anything. Now they only communicate through virtual groups and friend lists and other strange methods for avoiding conversation. (Did I say that?)

That’s not the only thing holding me back. I mean, you have to do something with your time during these long treks across the trackless wastes of outer space. Tubey and Marvin soak up the hours in front of a computer screen. Matt fills in tablets with imaginary bird sightings (he conducted his own personal Christmas Bird Count en route to Proxima Centauri, where there’s nary a pigeon to be counted). John builds model volcanoes and juggles the disembodied heads of ventriloquist dummies (gotta have a hobby). Big Zamboola practices his gravity phenomena, while the Lincolns catch up on their history (140+ years of catching up to do, and posi-Lincoln is only up to the progressive era). Me, I’ve got my distractions, most of which involve sleeping. I’ve been known to yawn a bit in my free time, and I’m a semi-professional dreamer. Not much on snoring, but I dabble.

Matt thinks I should put my foot down. Not with respect to the on-board Web surfing, you understand… he just wants me to get my feet off the furniture. I’ve got an answer for him, but he’s going to have to look at my Facebook page. (Gawd… not me too!)

I hear rocks… rocks bubbling. Or is that something else. Wait a tick, wait a tick… could be… Yes, by god it is. It’s… the man-sized tuber cooking dinner. Again.

I suppose it probably comes as no surprise to those of you who have known Big Green for more than a week or two that an oversized vegetable does much of our cooking. Yeah, we’re vegetarians, and I think that particularly resonates with the man-sized tuber – my guess is that he thinks the safest place for a vegetable around here is on the handle-end of the ladle. Fact is, we don’t eat a lot of root vegetables, and the man-sized tuber is far too tough to roast, far to fibrous to fry, far too husky to boil. He’s just plain inedible, that’s what it comes down to. (Though with a handful of shallots and a splash of merlot, he might respond to an overnight marinade. Mmmmmm-boy.) Wait, tubey, wait…. just kidding, man! Aw, put the pot down. Put it DOWN. No. NO. NOOOOOOOO…

Oh, okay – he’s just moving it to the back burner. Can’t hear real well, our tubey. I keep forgetting. Well, what the hell else is new? Oh, yeah. We’re hurtling through space in our new ride. Yessir, the cobbed together playground equipment we’ve been using to traverse interstellar space finally proved itself unworthy of even terrestrial travel, so we broke down (quite literally) and scraped together enough scratch to rent ourselves a ship… a proper ship. Not the kind that comes in a bottle, mind you – a space vessel, with functioning navigational controls, living quarters, and a hull that will hold atmosphere. But where… where would we find such a conveyance out here in the void between Cancri 55 and Earth? Actually, not that much of a problem. Hey… every shit town has its commercial strip, with gas stations and used car lots, right? Well, this interstellar backwater is no different. We just followed the neon lights and pulled into Proxima Centaurii Motor Rentals and South Asian Grocery. (Take exit 452a, just past the companion star – can’t miss it.)

I’ve never been any good at haggling, so I left the negotiations to John, and he came away with a sharp looking little unit for a one-way rental back to Earth. All we had to do was, well, hand over the licensing proceeds to our recordings for a radius of three light-years around Proxima Centaurii for the next three years – not too shabby, since we’ve yet to sell a single disc out here. (Don’t say anything!) That and whatever else we had in our pockets, including the last of our Cancri 55 currency. Got to tell you, it’s a relief to stand on a solid deck once again, instead of monkey bars… particularly when you’re traveling at 65% light velocity. And crew cabins, for chrissake! Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was immediately tasked with setting up the galley for the man-sized tuber.

So here we are, cruising along towards home, rice on the boil. Why rice? It’s cheap, that’s why. We blew the bankroll on this ship. Sure, it would be nice if we had a few vegetables to sauté;…. nice… root…. vegetables…..

Did you hear what I heard? Was that… sleigh bells? That can only mean one thing. That’s right, children… it’s the sound of jolly old fire alarm. The engines are burning up.

Yes, yes… Christmas freaking day. Don’t you just love this time of year? (Judging by your reaction, perhaps “love” was the wrong word.) Don’t you just fireplug this time of year? (That’s a bit better.) Over here in Big Green land, we have a reputation for keeping Christmas better than any virtual pop band you can name that traverses interstellar space and has a robot friend (and hangs out with Lincoln). Sure, that’s mostly down to our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas, now a venerable nine holidays old and still available for purchase and/or download at a retailer near you (or not so near you … check us out on the Russian mp3 download site Yanga.ru, which ranks us among “Best Artists” under Psychedelic Rock… and whose url sounds strangely like “kangaroo”, of which there are few in mother Russia). Yes, it’s hard to think of “Christmas” and “obscure indie alternative psychedelic (in Russia) rock” in the same breath without thinking Big Green. (So far, that’s the legacy. Don’t spend it all in one place.)

But our holiday isn’t just about the music. No, no… we follow tradition over here. Every Christmas, we break out the crackers and start passing out gifts, just like any normal band. And friends, this year is certainly no exception, even though we are bobbing here in space, directionless, our controls replaced by discarded vegetables, our navigation effectively disabled. No matter – the man-sized tuber donned his garish Christmas sweater and led a somewhat enfeebled rendition of “Oh, Holy Night” (which degenerated into “Oh, Holy Shit!” when the fire alarm went off). Due to limited shopping opportunities in deep space, we did a sort of round-robin gift exchange, a secret Santa type deal, drawing straws for gifts.

Who did I pick? Well, as it happened, I got Big Zamboola. He’s a little hard to shop for, but I got my hands on something I always felt he needed – head covering. Unlike full-sized planets, Zamboola doesn’t benefit from active weather patterns, mainly because he is no longer orbiting a star, so his delicate surface is virtually unprotected by cloud cover. (Sounds practical, eh? WTF – it was all I could think of, frankly.) My “secret Santa” was Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who handed me something that might have been a battleship or an enormous Chicklet, but was, in fact, a humble kitchen sponge. (Marvin went a little overboard on the wrapping this year. Could have knocked me over with a feather when I opened that sucker.) Our shipboard penury notwithstanding, it was a holiday celebration very much in the spirit of previous years. Lincoln made punch. (And that punch had a kick – thank you, great emancipator.)

So whoever you are, whatever you are, Big Green sends its best from its flying yurt. See you back on Earth…. assuming we arrive sometime this century. (Are the primaries over yet?)

What’s that, tubey? Losing pressure? Damn shame, that. And the gravity control is malfunctioning? Criminy. Oh, heck… there goes our navigation console. Reduced to molten lead. Sometimes things just don’t go right in deep space.

Hi, Big Green fans. Yes, well… we’ve finally gotten off the ground, pulling away from the Cancri 55 solar system at 40% of light velocity. Only trouble is, those repairs that our old friend sFshzenKlyrn effected just prior to our departure are turning out to be of somewhat less than the highest quality. Damn if I didn’t buy that service contract! I could have had the butt-crack guy from Sears up hear patching this decrepit ship together. Hindsight is 20:20, as they say. (What is that behind me? Looks like… an eye chart!) Feeling a bit of buyer’s remorse out here in deep space, as it happens, our life-giving oxygen seeping out into the void, our hands flailing uselessly as our legs float towards the ceiling. This is just the sort of trip that almost makes you miss commercial air travel. (At least they have free air.)

Okay, so sFshzenKlyrn fucked up… so he should be held accountable, right? Well, that would be fine, except that he’s not on board. Remember, now… he’s a creature from the planet Zenon as well as our perennial sit-in guitarist, and his ancestors spawned in an environment quite different from that of our humble home planet (Earth, for those who don’t know). He zips from solar system to solar system, galaxy to galaxy, like a mall brat on those flashing roller-sneakers (except not as noisy… and no cell phone). Once we stoked him into an inebriated state with multiple servings of flapjacks, he effected his faulty repairs and promptly flitted off into the ethers, perhaps taking in an intergalactic concert promoted by his Svengali brother, blFmondZagnitz, the Don Kirshner of the Small Magellanic Cloud. (If such a thing can be imagined…)

Whether or not it was entirely sFshzenKlyrn‘s fault is not the issue here. The issue is, well… how to breathe without air, how to keep your feet on the deck without gravity, how to navigate without controls. Vexing issues, indeed. Recognizing this to be the case, your friends in Big Green duly called upon the talents of all those within earshot. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was dispatched to mend the hull, in as much as he doesn’t require oxygen (though he prefers an oxygen-rich environment… question of personal taste, really…). We asked Big Zamboola to arise from his slumber and lend us a little spare gravity. (In as much as he is a planet unto himself, he does have a little of that mysterious force to spare.) Lincoln – still insufferably pleased with himself over his appearance on a late-night sixties talk show – was disinclined to lend a hand, but his evil doppelganger (anti-Lincoln) – still pissed off over Lincoln’s appearance on a … well, you know – set himself to reconstructing our navigation panel using whatever was leftover from last night’s dinner (which was, itself, leftovers).

So, my sweaty palms grasping the makeshift celery-stalk helm controls, I will bid you adieu for the nonce. Marvin? Man the half-eaten watermelon. Looks like turbulence ahead.

Back it up a bit. Bit more. Bit more. Good, good, that’s it. Now make it smaller… much smaller. No, not that way. I mean by material transmogrification. No, I did not make that up. Just ‘cuz you don’t know how…

Bickering, bickering. Seems like that’s all we ever do these days. That and sleep. No more oldies, though – we’re off that particular plantation, thanks to the somewhat blurry-minded ingenuity of one sFshzenKlyrn, the creature from Zenon and Big Green‘s perennial sit-in guitarist. How did we get him to use his enormous etheric brain? Elementary use of flapjacks – quite simple, really. Read last week’s blog entry. Finished with it? Take your time. How about now? Jeezus, you read slow! Too much Internet, young lady – it’s rotting your brain! Got it now? Good, good. That’s right – I threatened, and then I delivered on the threat. Our sFshzenKlyrn got a tall stack of buckwheat flapjacks just after I posted. Am I a liar? Huh?

What happened next? Well, I’m gon’ tell yuh. All hell broke loose, that’s what. Old sFshzenKlyrn reared up like an angry elephant, his eyes (or rather, protuberances that might be mistaken for eyes) flaring like torches, his voice a deafening lash of white sound, his pseudopods pounding the tarmac until it splintered like early winter’s ice on a marsh pond. Then something unusual happened (truth is, that’s what sFshzenKlyrn always does when he gets good grub – irks the shit out of the neighbors back home). Our Zenite friend floated off towards the remains of our space craft and began making himself useful. Quite unusual. Of course, he had to displace Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who had been mounting a quixotic effort to repair the ship by himself. (Trouble is, Marvin doesn’t have super powers. I should leave him outdoors in lighting storms more often. What doesn’t kill you gives you super powers.)

Strong word of advice – never let a Zenite guitarist work unattended, especially when he’s speeding along on flapjacks. We thought we’d take an hour or so to stroll into town and, I don’t know, watch the denizens of Cancri 55.3 go about their lives. We became particularly engrossed in a display of lava lamps in a shop window, and by the time we returned, sFshzenKlyrn had grown to the size of a large-ish house… or a small-ish office building. Predictable side-effect of the flapjacks, of course. Trouble was, he had been so focused on his work that he had actually busted through the ceiling bulkhead of the spacecraft, having ballooned to forty times his normal size. Still working though. Oh sure, he wrecked our ship again, but you gotta’ admit – he’s a professional. (And as you know, professionals come in all shapes and sizes.)

Okay, but listen… that isn’t even the weirdest thing that happened to us this week. Just this past Tuesday, Lincoln and anti-Lincoln somehow got themselves on the Jack Parr show. Very popular in this corner of the universe, along with other sixties pop culture items. Gotta ask how they managed it… when they get back from the Monterey Pops Festival…

Circle Game? Done it. Keep the Ball Rollin’? God, yes. Lodi? Oh, Lord… yes. Fucking hell… Wait, I’ve got it. “Six drops of essence of terror. Five drops of sinister sauce!” No? Come on – it’s from 1964, damn it!

What a slog. Yes, my little friends… Big Green is still here, out on the third planet of Cancri 55, only just discovered and already giving me a major, major pain in the ass. I’m telling you this right now – these space aliens have an insatiable appetite for sixties songs (which they call… “new” music). And when I say insatiable, I mean they want new shit all the time. You can not play the same song twice down here, friends. No repeating, no pre-fab set lists… just new, new, NEW. Even with a forty-year backlog, quite frankly, we are running out of stuff to play. (Note to you bar bands down there on Earth: Don’t come here. They will work you to death!) Unfortunately, we reeled through the good stuff in the first few days, worked through the bubble-gum cheese, and are truly into the dregs at this point. (As you can see, we’re starting to pull out the T.V. cartoon theme songs.)

While Matt, John, sFshzenKlyrn and I have been working the highly demanding crowd, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has been devoting all of his energies to piecing our damaged space craft back together. Not an easy task, especially with his meager talents. Mind you, sFshzenKlyrn could probably knock this task off in a lazy afternoon, him being a transcendental extraterrestrial being possessed of the sum of all knowledge, good, bad, and indifferent. Trouble is, I really think he likes it here. He’s a big fan of sixties music, and since time means nothing to him, he could easily spend the next seven eons here without graying a hair. (Truth be known, the eons will not have been so kind to us.) I have been trying to think of how to incentivize sFshzenKlyrn to take over the spacecraft repair work, but so far no soap. Well… there is one thing that would work, but I would never, ever, go there. Not after the last time. It just wouldn’t be right. And it could be all any of our lives are worth to even try it again. Nope, not right at all.

Bob Seger? They want to hear Bob Seger songs? I’ll do it!

Do what? Well… we all know that sFshzenKlyrn has a little addiction issue with flapjacks. (As do we all, of course.) This is more than a mere compulsion. Some of you may remember what happened the last time he went on a major binge. If so, I need not remind you… but from the very earliest days of our association with the man from Zenon, the dreaded half-stack of buckwheat flappers has been like a gun to his oddly misshapen head. The first time we witnessed a sFshzenKlyrn bender, the space critter grew to the size of a fifty story building. That was after a rather large serving, I will admit – with the right kind of controls, we may be able to induce a pavlovian response out of him… perhaps induce him to use his enormous talents to get us off this musically-challenged cinder. And perhaps be incinerated in the process. Hmmm…

Bob Seger? Chance we’ll have to take! Oh, sFshzenKlyrn my old friend! I’ve got a little snack for you!

Couple in the next room, bound to win a prize. They’ve been going at it all night long. No, seriously – they’re playing some kind of video game in there, and I think they may just be on the verge of winning a trophy. Believe it.

Why am I reciting 36-year-old Paul Simon lyrics? Well, that story’s seldom told. I am just a poor boy… No, no, wait. There is a reason (and not one that turns out to be yet another P.S. song). Seems the planet we have landed on (third planet in the Cancri 55 system) is home to a race that’s real big on sixties acoustic folk-rock music. Of course, they think it’s all new – smoking hot platters ripping up the airwaves, straight from planet Earth. That’s ’cause Cancri 55 is 41 light years from Earth, and… well… those transmissions are just reaching them now, having crossed the trackless void of space these last four decades. Now revolution is in the air, my friends, and so is the Lovin’ Spoonful. All these Cancrites are wearing cheap leather headbands, big buckles, and fringy boots. There’s a lava lamp in every window. It’s… well… weird and unnerving, but who am I to criticize.

So what does this have to do with Big Green? What the hell, haven’t you been kept current on our last few dispatches? Marvin (my personal robot assistant)!!! Did you forget to file my column? Damn your eyes! File this week’s column twice, my good man, and be quick about it. Sheesh – hard to get good robot help up here (even if you import it). Where was I? Oh, yeah. Help. We’re stranded on this odd suburban planet, obsessed with yesteryear (or is it yester-light-year?), and what the hell, we’ve just got to earn our keep. Now before you ask, we did try to send Marvin, the man-sized tuber, and both Lincolns out to find day jobs. No luck. What about sFshzenKlyrn? Well…. he’s kind of casual, relying as he does principally on an internal fusion reactor like most celestial bodies of his class. (Not particularly class-conscious as a rule, our extraterrestrial friend does enjoy certain existential advantages over us mere mammals.) So we’re left to our own devices, as it were. I mean, what would you do? Huh?

Well… I was hoping you might have a suggestion there. Anyway, we’re brushing up on our sixties numbers. Matt seems to think we can pass ourselves off as The Cowsills or Dukes of the Stratosphere. (What’s that? They weren’t really a sixties band? So convincing….) Hence my efforts at total recall, bringing back all those songs I listened to as a wan lad. Here’s how we figure it….

1. Learn some sixties numbers. What the hell, we’ve all had to play them at some point. Why not play them for extraterrestrials?
2. Tuck in a few numbers that haven’t yet arrived here from Earth. Say we’re, I don’t know, the Rolling Stones. We can start playing tunes from Exile on Main Street and they’ll think we invented sliced bread.
3. Cash in and buy spacecraft parts. Frankly, this is the whole point. We need to get our asses home.

Okay… if this totally doesn’t work, it was Lincoln’s idea – agreed? Good. He got us here in the first place, if you’ll recall. Back to rehearsal. What’s next? Red Rubber Ball? Oh, Christ! This place is a freaking nightmare! You, down there on Earth! Find a really, really long extension ladder someplace and prop it up in the general vicinity of the constellation Cancer. Do us a favor.