Hmmm. Looks like a good place to pound some stakes into the ground. No, sFshzenKlyrn, not that kind of steak. The pointy kind, typically made of wood. Wood. A hard, fibrous material that comes from large plants, like… like… Hey! Put the man-sized tuber down!!

Oh, hi. Jeezus christmas – this is like herding cats! Worse… herding cats on Neptune, except without that nice comforting methane atmosphere. Well, anyway… your various Big Green type amigos have taken a slight detour on our way back from Mars… very slight… about 25 light-years off course, thanks to president Lincoln, in point of fact. In a fit of uncontrollable curiosity, Lincoln navigated us over to the solar system of Cancri 55 in the constellation Cancer. Far off the beaten path, to be sure, and here we are on a very tight budget for this trip. (No petty cash… just a stack of pre-signed checks from our label, Loathsome Prick records, in a galaxy that only takes cash or plastic). So much for the Lincoln navigator. Oh, why… why couldn’t Trevor James’s Orgone Generating Device have brought back a ship’s captain from the 19th century instead of this useless emanci-mother-fucking-pater of the slaves (and his evil twin)?

Hard question to answer, so don’t even try. Anyway… finding ourselves in an unexplored solar system is bad enough, right? But then our cobbed together space craft (built from reconstituted playground equipment) started wobbling a bit, listing from side to side, etc. We asked Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to take over the helm while we repaired to the wardroom for afternoon refreshments… and Marvin, being a bit overwhelmed by such complex navigational controls, inadvertently brought us down on the third planet. Yes, the third planet…. the one we were warned specifically not to visit. (Actually, I just made that last bit up, so that the rest of this would make sense. It was really a whole lot more random and senseless than all that.) We slammed into the planet’s rather unforgiving surface (that much is true), our engine room bursting into flame (bogus), triggering secondary explosions that threw us in all directions (exaggeration – actually, the toaster oven in the wardroom started smoking – some bagel crumbs, I believe – and we all ran out of there).

What was the third planet like? Well, arid. Barren. Lifeless. Those are a few words you could use to describe it. All of them totally inaccurate, of course. We put down in a suburban neighborhood of some kind. Yes, there’s a Starbucks (or “four bucks,” as it’s more generally known). Yes, there’s a Home Depot and a Wal*Mart. And yes, the trade union leaders are all in jail. If there’s anything remarkably different about this world (as compared to our own home planet), I would have to say that it is that gravity thing. There is, in fact, gravity here on Cancri 55.3, but it’s not your normal keep-you-down kind of mysterious force. Sometimes it lets you up about ten feet, leaves you there, moves you a bit to the right, etc. Very capricious. I can tell you, I find it quite unnerving… and Marvin is about ready to pack up his banjo and leave. (He sailed up into the troposphere for maybe a half-hour then landed in the Staples parking lot, where someone mistook him for a stamp vending machine. When he didn’t spit out customized postage stamps, the disgruntled patron poured hot coffee into him.) Seems like Marvin always gets the shit end of the stick on these tours. That’s why we love him.

Don’t know how long we’ll be staying here, but time will tell. I noticed a club or two in the center of town…. maybe we can work our way home. Don’t like the sound of that, quite frankly, but… one does what one must. Marvin? Go into that dive and ask for a job – there’s a good chap.

Damn… dropped a hammer around here someplace. Now what the fuck happened to it? Marvin (my personal robot assistant)? Have you….? Wait, there it is on the ceiling, right where I dropped it. Sheesh.

Ah, it’s you again. Welcome, welcome. Just another brief peek into the wiggly world of Big Green and friends, now en route home from a brief Martian engagement to promote our yet-to-be-released second full-length studio album (that is to say, the album itself is full length, not the studio…. the studio is quite short), a feast for the ears we trust (not quite finished) and for the eyes, as well (not designed). Did I say “en route”? Well, I was taking some liberties there. Actually, we’ve gone on a bit of a detour, thanks to the boundless curiosity of President Lincoln (the positively-charged one), one of our erstwhile hangers-on, who decided to wrest the controls away from no one in particular and send us careering off into an entirely different celestial direction than that which would have brought us back to our beloved Cheney Hammer Mill on dear old earth.

Damn your curiosity, Mr. Lincoln! I’m certain it was a factor in your untimely death (though historians may disagree). But I digress…

Okay, so posi-Lincoln (without the knowledge of his opposite number, antimatter Lincoln, also in our retinue) saw some shiny, shiny lights out the starboard porthole, and took it upon himself to steer us towards them. Actually, what he was aiming at was the star Cancri 55, recently trumpeted in the terrestrial as having yet another planet in its solar system. How did Lincoln manage this? Well…. as many of you may know (if there are many of you to begin with), our usual navigator and helmsperson did not accompany us this time out (potential reason: no ship-board catering service), so driving the ship has been left up to, well, a cast of extras… and somewhat substandard ones at that. Sure, John has some piloting in him, but he has to sleep sometime. As it happened, it was the man-sized tuber’s turn at night-watch and…. well… Lincoln must have found him asleep at the wheel. For shame, tubey! Ten demerits! And NO banana!

Okay, so I was a little harsh. Root vegetables have feelings too, I know. But if he doesn’t get a little constructive feedback, how is he ever going to grow into a baobab tree? (His fondest ambition, word of honor.) Anyway, by the time we woke up, we were in the general vicinity of Cancri 55 – a feat most earth-bound scientists would think unthinkable (if such a thing is… even… thinkable…) but which we managed to pull off because the laws of physics do not generally apply… so long as we’re in the presence of our sit-in guitarist sFshzenKlyrn, we seem to be covered by some sort of general exemption. (Don’t ask me to explain the laws of physics…. it could take all night.) In any case, there we were, in the midst of the only fully articulated solar system generally known by humankind outside of the one they themselves occupy. It was a sobering moment. We stood before the viewing port in awe, taking in this clutch of new worlds, waiting to be explored.

Okay, well… actually the larger planet has a Starbucks. And a Tower Records. And I’m not sure, but I think Murdoch owns all the newspapers. But aside from that, this is Virgin territory. (Richard Branson got here first, apparently.) More later….

What is this? Another one? And wait… there’s one more! Can’t you see it there, behind the gaseous cloud formation? Oh, right… that’s sFshzenKlyrn. Step aside, will you? I’m trying to make a point here…

Ah, yes… the blogosphere. Nearly forgot. Sorry, friends. I’ve taken to having Marvin (my personal robot assistant) take dictation on this page, so very often he’ll pick up stuff I don’t actually want him to transcribe. Sometimes he starts a little early and some times he just fails to exercise common sense. Okay, like now, Marvin. Stop typing for a moment… I’ve got to use the can. I said stop. Did you type that? Stop, damnit! STOP! Oh, Jesus… never mind. I’ll just continue – it’s simpler, really. Anyway… I suppose I should explain. I was just commenting to my colleagues on the hitherto undiscovered planet around star 55 Cancri in the constellation Cancer. Damn, just wait until we get news of this back to planet Earth! People in the astronomical community will really sit up and take notice this time.

What’s that, Johnny? It’s been discovered? Bloody Yahoo headlines! You at least could have left me a few days to savor my imagined triumphant discovery. No matter.

Well, as some of you may already know, planetary pioneers or not, we did pretty well on planet Mars this past week, performing some tunes off of our upcoming album (plug, plug) as well as older numbers from the Big Green songbook. There were a couple of exciting moments, like when our oxygen began to run out. Luckily, we were able to innovate a solution to this most fundamental of dilemmas, even without the help of our too-clever-by-half science advisers, Mitch Macaphee and Trevor James Constable, both of whom remained on earth this time out. Indeed… as the air in our makeshift spacecraft began to grow quite thin, Matt had a flash of inspiration (comes from watching those fan-fiction Star Trek Web videos). He stuffed the man-sized tuber into his terrarium along with a sack of plant food and clicked on the grow lamps. Well, that sucker started pumping out oxygen as fast as we could catch it. WTF – that man-sized tuber has a practical use after all. (Aside from general likeability.)

Okay, so the gigs went okay, though I will admit… no cash changed hands at any time. I for one am chalking that down to our paymasters at Loathsome Prick Records, our corporate label. No doubt payment was made, just not to us. (After we finished playing, somewhere in an office building in New York a computer went “cha-ching!”) Someone got paid, that’s the important thing. Anyway, we left the red planet and started wandering in the general direction of Earth when one of the Lincolns (can’t remember which one, actually) took a particular interest in a small cluster of stars in the mid distance. So he took the controls. That was last night, while the sanest amongst us slept.

Now we’re in the general vicinity of Cancri 55, though I can’t say exactly how we got here. (I think sFshzenKlyrn knows, but he’s not saying.) Hey… what can I say? We’ll let you know if there’s a Starbucks there.

Antlers? Not antlers. That won’t work at all. You need something more simian looking. A chimp’s muzzle, perhaps, or lemur tail. Prehensile, yes… that’ll do the trick.

Oh, it’s you again, mister Spindle-legs. (A quote from Lost In Space, sorry to say.) Welcome back aboard the S. S. something sacred, where yours truly is coughing up copy for the commodore. Who’s the commodore? Well, that’s the guy in charge of Loathsome Prick records – the fellow who sent us off on this fool’s errand to planet Mars, where Big Green is slogging through some promotional performances to support the release of our next album… the one that ain’t done yet. Want a good time? Try careering 143 million miles through interplanetary space in a converted piece of playground equipment piloted by a crew of genetically modified, oversized root vegetables. You don’t know the meaning of the word “excitement” until you’ve done that once or twice. (Frankly, once is enough for me.)

As many of you will have surmised, we did eventually catch up with that speedy planet Mars, in spite of our poorly-planned trajectory. Man-sized tuber “A” (the original one) loaded a few more logs on the atomic propulsion fire and gave us enough additional thrust to reach Mars about 20 hours late (right about when we were scheduled to start playing our first gig, in an open-air stadium at the foot of Mount Olympus, the tallest peak in the known solar system already.) Luckily, time is not as precious on the red planet as it is on the green, so we were able to gather ourselves together, take a few quick belts of kilulu juice (official beverage of Big Green), and take our places on Mars’s most prestigious concert stages. Oh, yes, friends, this is the top of the world out here. No doubt about it – ask any Martian. (Note: This is what our Loathsome Prick publicist told us to say. Actually, it seems a hell of a lot like a graveyard to me, but…)

So anyway… we’ve played a bunch of numbers for a bunch of Martians and other unidentified space critters, pulling out archival tunes like “Special Kind of Blood” and “Don’t Give Up The Ship”, as well as tunes from our upcoming album (with tantalizing titles like “The Bishop” and “Do It Every Time”). Pretty soon, we started wondering about the crowd… could there be that broad a variety of head shapes, body sizes, and antennae styles? Seemed odd. Then John noticed an alien with a pirate hat on, and we realized what was up. Hallowe’en on Mars – guess it’s pretty big in these parts, or so Marvin (my personal assistant) tells me. (Don’t ask me how he knows. Like Tonto, he hangs out in those barrooms and hears things, I imagine.) And of course sFshzenKlyrn, our perennial sit-in guitarist, had a thing or two to say about this imported tradition. (He tells me the bastardized Martian term for the holiday, literally translated, is “Hollow mo’on.” Doesn’t lose much, actually.) So when in Rome…. don a costume and join the festivities. (But no antlers, Marvin. They don’t suit you.)

So, I’d say the first Martian gigs went okay. No major upheavals or breakdowns. A good time was had by all and sundry. Sure, the spaceship won’t start and we’re stuck here until we can find a competent mad science mechanic, but that’s nothing. Nothing at all. (Until our oxygen runs dry…. oh, man….)

Trans-Martian insertion commence… four… three… two… one… one… ONE! Commence, damnit! What’s the matter with you clones? Geebus!

I’m telling you, my friends – you just can’t get good help these days, not anywhere. Not on Earth (our home planet). Not on Mars (our current place of business). Not in deep space (which separates Earth from Mars). As you may recall from our previous Web-based utterances (known as blog entries), we’re running a little short-handed here in Big Green-land, particularly owing to the recent “brain drain” at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. The more knowledgeable (and higher-paid) members of our contingent – mad scientist Mitch Macaphee and etheric energy specialist / inventor Trevor James Constable flew the coop, having grown tired of our slovenly ways, our peasant fare, our… general ripeness, if you will. Anyway, they lit off for Rio, Monaco, Paris, and pretty much anyplace better than the mill.

So what the hell, we thought, we don’t need them. We can manage our own interplanetary travel, right? I mean, it’s not rocket science. Well, the fact is, folks… funny story. Turns out, it is rocket science. And self-sufficient as we may be, we are not bloody NASA, okay? So yes, we did manage lift off (with some difficulty), but that was the end of the easy part. On Matt’s advice, I had Marvin (my personal robot assistant) point the nose of the ship towards our objective – planet Mars, where bookings awaited us. Right… now this is the complicated part. Turns out shooting for Mars is shooting at a moving target. That sucker’s speeding along at some ungodly speed. So by the time we’re what should have been half-way there, it’s way the fuck ahead of us! That meant making some kind of complicated course change that required more hands than we could muster. Oh, there was one other option. You know… being screwed. No one’s favorite, as it happens.

Well, luckily for us, our good ex-friend Mitch Macaphee left one of his travel trunks in the ship’s storage bay. In desperation, we cracked it open, looking for something… anything… that could get us out of this jam (even if it was just a rope to hang ourselves with). Buried under some novelty tee-shirts (“I’m with Frankenstein”??) and other throw away items was one of Mitch’s many inventions – a small device he had been obsessed with over the course of several weeks… something he called the clonolator. He was going to try and sell it to Clonaid (a movement run by space people called the Raelians, not a refreshing drink) but I suspect he was asking too fat a price. Anyway, we thought what the hell – let’s clone the help we need to get this sodding ship back on course. So we ran tubey through the clonolator and zip-bang, it created several replicas of our erstwhile little root vegetable. Just the extra hands we needed.

Well, quite nearly. Don’t ask me why we didn’t run someone competent through that thingy. I guess we thought the man-sized tuber could handle it better than we mere mammalian mortals. Whatever – these clone-tubers are almost as useless as tubey himself. And Mars is getting farther and farther ahead of us! Damn you, Mitch!!!

I’m sure that wasn’t right, tubey. No, no… I’m telling you. Countdowns start with larger numbers and end with the smaller ones. What part of that do you not understand? Freaking root vegetables!

Hello, Big Green-a-zoids… and may I also say, GREETINGS FROM OUTER SPAAAACCE!! Yes indeed, since we last spoke (or exchanged cyber glimpses) we have taken the plunge into deep interstellar space – a somewhat limited ship’s complement of band members and available crew. Limited how, you may well ask. And well you may. My answer to that would be, well…. limited in terms of, oh, non-musical skills, like the ability to pilot a space craft, the ability to repair a space craft, the ability to navigate through interplanetary space, and so on. Not core skills for most alternative / indie / discorporate rock bands, but positively essential for this one. And yet here we are, after a somewhat rocky start. They say any lift off you survive is a good one. (But then, what the hell do THEY know?)

What went wrong? Well, it started with the ship. Our rebuild was less than optimal, let’s say (charitably). The resulting interplanetary conveyance resembles more something in the way of playground equipment than space-worthy vehicle. That is not exactly a metaphorical comparison – with our mad science advisor Mitch Macaphee AWOL in Argentina (or was it Madagascar? Can’t recall) we were left to our own devices. So Matt and I scavenged the parts from junkyards, rubbish tips, and – yes – abandoned playgrounds (though most playgrounds are abandoned at 2:00 a.m., I’ll wager) and, under John’s able guidance, we cobbed together the makeshift crate that will whisk us from Earth to Mars and back… hopefully. Sure there are holes. Sure it’s held together with duct tape. But damnit, she’s yar. She’s extremely yaaarrrrr….

Whoops – slipped into pirate mode there for a second. Where was I? Ah, yes. What’s gone wrong so far. Yeah, well… there was the ship, problematic at best. Then there was the countdown. Now mind you, John is the only one amongst us competent enough to sit in the helmsman’s chair. I chose Marvin (my personal assistant) to serve as navigator, since… well… since his memory banks include autographed portraits of famous navigators. (Hey, that’s more than I’ve got!) Matt and I were manning the teeter-totter… I mean, the stabilizer controls (a grueling duty if ever there was one). That left only Big Zamboola and/or the man-sized tuber to handle our countdown. Split-second precision was required if we were to make our launch window. Zamboola and tubey drew lots and, well, Zamboola won, so tubey got to do the countdown. (Don’t ask me why it works that way, because I JUST DON’T KNOW!) I handed tubey a hastily-repurposed eye chart with the relevant numbers jotted on it and told him to fire away.

Okay, I know. Tubey is non-verbal. That was part of the problem. Then there’s the part about counting backwards. Anyway, suffice to say that we’re lagging behind our planned trajectory and may miss Mars entirely. Stay tuned folks – Big Green – first band on the sun. That’s our weekend.

Good morning, sunshine. Stop that blinking – just rub the sleep right out of your eyes and get back to work, you shiftless mo-fo. If you want me, I’ll be… in the top bunk… just up the stairs… zzzzzzz…

Yes, exchanges like that take place regularly here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, where your friends in the Big Green collective are now warehousing themselves. When we’re not discussing anarcho-syndicalist theory, we’re making onion dip using sour cream and that cheap-shelf powdered soup mix. (You know, the kind with the crispy onion bits… mmmm, boy!) Then there are the 6-hour meditation sessions over a ceremonial plate of Ramen noodles. (The one who doesn’t fall asleep gets to eat the noodles. If you stay awake two sessions in a row, you can even boil them before you eat ’em.) So don’t think we’re an undisciplined gang of louts over here – we know how to keep the rabble amongst us in line, yessir. (It’s sorting out the rabble from the worthy that gets me confused…. so confused!)

When we are not testing ourselves physically, mentally, or spiritually, we are… well… dealing with the day-to-day pressures of life at the top. Did I say “the top”? I meant the other end. Always get those two mixed up. Oh, sure, we’re not exactly a hit factory here on the terrestrial music scene, however much applause we garner on other planets (and asteroids… don’t forget asteroids). But then you know that – that’s why you’re here. (You are here, aren’t you? AREN’T YOU???) You don’t want the kind of pop band that plays stadiums and makes millions and shows up on your favorite television shows and on the boxes of your favorite toaster waffles. You love Big Green because you want a band that lets a man sized tuber help with the mixing console… one that lets the robot assistant drive the spacecraft every once in a while. That’s because, well, you’re special. (And I’m not pandering, so don’t look at me like that.)

Speaking of which… as you may recall, we did, in fact, let Marvin (my personal robot assistant) drive the spacecraft last week. And as a reward for our broad-mindedness, he crashed the son of a bitch. (To be fair, Marvin was just trying to get into the spirit of our flapjack-fueled saturnalia, so he shouldn’t be saddled with all of the blame. Fucker.) In the absence of our scientific contingent, we undertook the task of repairing the vehicle, desperately trying to keep to the looming tour schedule our corporate paymasters at Loathsome Prick records recently handed down. But, of course, we had never assembled a spacecraft before… we had no guide for putting the pieces back together. (That sounds vaguely familiar to me.) And I have to say, it looked a little different before Marvin crashed it into the courtyard. Just possible we did something wrong, but…. ain’t no tellin’ until we hit that thruster control. (Insert dramatic tension here. Okay, that’s enough.)

Anyway, another week will tell the story. The countdown to Mars (or Armageddon) has begun. T-minus one six days and counting. Now it’s six days, eleven hours, fifty-nine minutes and fifty-eight seconds. Now it’s…..

What was that? You want more? Already? No chance, Jack. I’m shutting you off. This little watering hole has dried up, my friend.

WTF, followers of Big Green’s meandering life story – since when am I the flapjack nazi, anyway? Am I not every bit the addict that my various colleagues have shown themselves to be over the last few years? I should say so. (And, in fact, I did.) Even now, as lame made-for-television-commercial emo music wafts up from the living room downstairs, I am pouring grade A Patagonian pancake batter into the frying pan, the glorious golden circles of nutrition spreading out from the stream, spattering hot butter in every direction. Total abandon, my friends – isn’t that what you expect out of your pop musicians? Total, aimless, sputtering self-abandon, yea unto self-destruction. I have embarked upon that grimly seductive road. If I’m less than generous with the fruit of my skillet, it is out of conscience, not selfishness. DON’T FOLLOW ME HERE! SAVE YOURSELVES!!!

Whew! Forgive me. Flapjacks tend to bring out the melodrama in all of us. Just last night, posi-Lincoln got a bellyful and started spouting Shakespeare – Henry VI – Part II, I believe, though I’m no scholar, as I’m sure you know. (Keeps calling himself “York” and me “Gloucester,” then galloping off amid some unintelligible utterance. Strange, strange man.) Then, of course, there’s Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who is technically immune to the effects of flapjack consumption, but who is so anxious to be included in everything that he mimics the worst of us. And damn. does he overdo it! First he insists upon taking part in Lincoln’s performance. Then, after nearly a week of pulling our spacecraft together in preparation for our trip to Mars, Marvin, overcome with imagined euphoria, took the sucker up into the airspace above the mill and crashed it into a nearby bean field. Most impressive display.

I could go on about our failings, but you probably want to save some of that for later. What really irks me, though, is that this latest binge has set us back considerably in fulfillment of our deal with our record label, Loathsome Prick, which has demanded a string of gigs on the red planet in exchange for an extension on our album release date. We’ve got a pile of repair work to do now. What we really need is some expert assistance from our mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee… or perhaps a little coaxing from Trevor James Constable’s orgone generating device. Unfortunately, both of the more knowledgeable members of our contingent are now plowing much richer pastures in Europe and South America. Yes, friends… Mitch is in Brazil, shaking a casaba right now, most likely, while Trevor James has repaired to the south of France for some kind of bio-etheric conference. Where are they when you need them, eh? (I think I just answered that question.)

Well, more than anything else, we need one of those smart guys to repair over to the Hammer Mill and repair our damaged space vehicle. Mitch…. Trevor… if you are reading this you can find me here:

Behind this enormous stack of flapjacks
Downstairs kitchen
Cheney Hammer Mill
Little Falls, NY

So don’t say you can’t find us, ’cause you can.

Now, let’s see… how does that song go? Hmmmm…. strike up the band, Johnny. One small step… for one bald man. Giant leap for all time. Christmas day, thank you, ma’am. I came in peace… and left my mind!

That’s an oldy. Oh, yes… Christmas 1996 – I remember it well. As soon as we get our thumbs out of our asses on this seemingly endless project, I’m going to trawl through the archives and dust off some of those recordings that have never before seen the light of day. Prepare to be amazed. (Did I say “amazed”? I meant “annoyed.” Or perhaps “nauseated”.) But before you get to thinking that I’m distracting you from our current lethargy with vague promises of archival releases somewhere down the road, let me assure you that your good friends in Big Green are looking over these old songs for some very, very good reasons. And no, I don’t mean nostalgia for a past equally obscure as our present. No, no…. better reasons than that. Aggravated threats, mostly. And projectiles.

Let me ‘splain. We are under contract with Loathsome Prick, our corporate label, to release our long-anticipated (or perhaps no longer anticipated) sophomore album at some time in the next year or so. They had the option to demand the product any time after September 30, and, well, they did (the fuckers). Naturally, when we signed the contract (or, rather, had the man-sized tuber sign for us) we thought the release date would be quite a long ways off. Trouble with that long-ways-off kind of thinking is that, if you think about it too long, it gets a whole lot closer. So here we were, our album still not finished (though completely recorded), and the nice gentlemen at Loathsome Prick jumping all over our shit. What else could we do but cut yet another deal with them? This one was an agreement to play some gigs on Mars to promote the new collection. So now we’re scraping together a few sets worth of music – the usual last-minute scramble. So it goes.

I enlisted Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to descend into the catacombs of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill in search of old songs – tapes, lead sheets, lyrics, whatever he could find. After a day or two, he reappeared on the ground floor, his brass tarnished, his sensors covered with dust, but his ramshackle arms laden with booty. Marvin had stumbled upon the old sea trunk I had brought with me years ago when we first arrived at the mill. (Seems like just yesterday.) Inside were moth-eaten reams of paper, yellow with age (though they were legal pads, so they actually started out kind of yellow). I showed them to Matt, and he nodded solemnly. Yes, yes… these were the notebooks upon which he and I had penned so many of the songs that had made us obscure back in the day. (That was a hard day.) We began flipping through the parchment-like folios, mouthing the words silently as we went along. Nice work, Marvin. Good robot.

Okay, so finding our notes is one thing; putting together the songs is entirely another. From what I understand, we have about three weeks to get our ducks in a row. Then it’s off to the land of “Opportunity”. (You know… the Mars rover, “Opportunity”? The other one’s called “Spirit”? Never mind.) Somebody water the tuber – this could be a long hike.

Are you ready to rumble? Not yet? Okay then. Just asking. Don’t get upset, now. Put that down. I said PUT THAT DOWN! Do it or someone’s going to get hurt. No. NO. NOOOOOOOO!!!

Ahem. Well, we won’t post any more of that exchange, as it may be upsetting to young children. (This is a FAMILY blog, friends. Fuck yes.) Welcome back to the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, where band members are listless, robots are corroding, and plant creatures are setting down new roots as we speak. (The man-sized tuber has abandoned his terrarium for a patch of ground in the courtyard. Seems he’s getting in touch with his inner gingko tree.) Yes, your friends and colleagues in Big Green have taken refuge in the same safe harbor, seeking shelter from the storm beneath the same perforated roof that has offered us a modicum of protection over the past seven years. No, it hasn’t fallen in yet. And we have hopes that that will never, ever happen. (Well…. “never, ever” is a very long time.)

We spent much of this week making a desperate effort to finish our sophomore album in time for the highly unreasonable release date handed down by the corporate chieftains at our label, Loathsome Prick. Then somewhere around, oh, Wednesday, Matt and John threw up their hands. (Being somewhat less original than they are, I did so as well.) It just wasn’t going to happen. Release, yes… but not October. Never October. In fact, we ran the numbers through Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and his statistical modeling analysis module started emitting greasy black smoke. (Marvin did the rest of the calculations with a pad, pencil, and 39-cent wristwatch calculator.) It seems, at our present rate of activity, we may manage a Spring 2008 release, taking into consideration the current non-alignment of the outer planets and the relative mass of the third-quarter moon. (You mathematicians know what I’m talking about.)

Well, anyway – that was Wednesday. That left two more days to figure out how we will break the news to our masters at Loathsome Prick. Mind you, we’ve had prior experience with belligerent corporate labels. Some of you may remember our detention at the hands of Indonesian military goons contracted by our old label, Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc. (now Hegephonic). It was not pleasant, not nearly… so you can probably understand our trepidation. Naturally, we recruited Marvin to convey the news, preferably in some kind of binary code that would take the suits at Loathsome Prick a couple of days to decipher. Marvin put the message together and sent it off via the automaton equivalent of instant messenger. We waited. At some point during the course of that afternoon, I felt a mild earth tremor. Translation complete! Sure enough, the phone rang. We gave it seventeen or eighteen rings before answering. (Let ’em think we’ve got customers.)

Well, turns out they’re okay with the postponement, on one condition. Yes, that’s right, there is a forfeit. We have to play some showcase gigs. Where? At a venue near you. So long as you live on planet Mars.