Two guys walk into a bar, see? Okay… and one of these guys, well… he’s not really a guy, exactly, okay? Follow me so far? Right, so this one guy who’s NOT a guy, he’s got like five heads. And he breathes not so much air as, well, liquid nitrogen. Stick with me, now, it gets better…

Oh, Crikey! I had no idea you were standing right behind me (virtually speaking, of course). And here I am right in the middle of blowing a fairly salty spaceman joke. Stand-up is not my long suit. (Actually, I don’t have a long suit. Kept tripping over the excess pant-legs, quite frankly, so I cuffed the bastards.) Actually, that last aside is kind of how this joke is supposed to go, so now I’ve really blown it. No matter. I’d really much rather talk to you than this impromptu crowd of acolytes that has materialized around me. And when I say “materialized,” that is precisely what I mean. Here on the planet Omicron Rigbox, the natives move by molecular dissolution and refabrication, so they’re always appearing and disappearing at unpredictable intervals. Damned unnerving, if you ask me.

Anyway, we played kind of a small club here – not the usual stadium or theater routine, to be quite frank. I would say this is the Omicronian equivalent of CBGB – kind of rough looking and smelling of cheap beer and urine, mostly. Only Marvin (my personal robot assistant) didn’t seem to be bothered by it. (Even sFzshenKlyrn looked green… and I mean more green than is normal for him.) There was this one spaceman at the bar, dressed in a 1950s-vintage sci-fi astronaut suit, with the fish bowl helmet, the oxygen tanks, the whole nine yards. He was hitting the sauce pretty hard (his fish bowl was half-full of high-balls). Then some party of Andromedans kept requesting David Bowie’s “Ashes to Ashes”, and we did a kind of cobbed together version of the song just to shut them up. Before we got to the end of the number, old captain fishbowl had gotten hold of one of the Andromedans and was attempting to choke the fucker to death. (In vain, luckily, since Andromedans have three necks. Though, strangely, only two heads.) Punches were thrown. Mayhem ensued. When bottles started landing on stage, we took our leave. 

Apparently, mister spaceman had objected to these lines in the chorus of said Bowie song:

Ashes to ashes, funk to funky

You know Major Tom’s a junkie

…and like many a cartoon spaceman from the 1970s, he closely identified with the fictional astronaut from Space Oddity. Touch S.O.B. … touchy crowd, too. Wouldn’t want you to think that we are at all squeamish about rowdy listeners, but you should know that the beer bottles on Omicron are the size of bowling pins, and just about as heavy. (The whole bleeding planet is made of glass, so there’s no shortage of the stuff.) You get hit by one of those suckers, and man… you stay hit. With the help of some of Marvin’s cyborg groupies, we loaded the equipment back on to the ersatz Jupiter 2 space cruiser and buggered off into the ethers, a fist-full of generally non-negotiable glass coins our only reward for the night’s work.  

Not a quality experience, you’ll readily admit. I, for one, had thought we’d moved beyond this sphere of performance venue long ago. Sadly, posi-Lincoln has proven a bit of a disappointment as a tour promoter/booking agent. (He’s beginning to make the man-sized tuber’s cracker cousin look competent by comparison.) The guy is just too ready to say yes when an offer comes his way. He’s got issues, frankly… and I’ve neither the time nor the inclination to work through them with him. (Trevor James Constable is taking a crack at it as we speak, applying some kind of Reichian device I cannot even begin to understand. It reminds me of that glass booth people climb into at a casino where they try to grab $20 bills that are being blown around them by a fan. Disgusting.  

Next stop? Don’t know, frankly. I just hope it’s better than the last one. This GET ME THE HELL OUTA HERE Tour 2006 is turning out to be one of the lousiest tours we’ve had since our journey to the center of the earth mis-adventure a few years back.  You know — when Marvin and the Morlocks took over the dance floor? Don’t remember? Just as well. Just as well.

None so far, anyway. Fear? I laugh in its face. Danger? Mere amusement. Calamity? She and I are old friends. (I call her Jane.) Certain doom? I spit in your face, you flimsy cardboard sideshow attraction…. What was that? Did you hear a noise?

Welcome back to the traveling sideshow that is Big Green‘s GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE SUMMER TOUR 2006 – a welcome departure from the trials of a tiresome planet Earth, to say the least. I can only speak for our tiny corner of that accursed globe, but even so, there are troubles-a-plenty down there. If you are reading from some extraterrestrial locale, heed this piece of advice – stay away from the one called Earth! Stay AWAY!!! Misfortune awaits you there – just ask Big Zamboola, who was once a planet himself and found it necessary to abandon his own personal gravitational field in order to accommodate the demands of the demonic planet Earth. Christ, you can’t even get a decent egg salad on rye down there without someone shorting you on the half-sour pickle. (Last time, I got a freaking dill spear… out of a jar! Barbarians!)

Okay… enough of my tirade. You’ve come to hear happy news, and I shall not disappoint you. For those of you who were wondering (and I’m sure there are at least one or two), I did ultimately relent and allow Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to take the helm of our J2 space RV and guide us to the mysterious planet Kaztropharius 137b where the vast majority of our records are sold. Good thing, too. It turned out that our witless wandering was being remotely guided by nefarious critters from a nearby dead star (the one known as “Dead Star 14”), who were attempting to steer us into a black hole (or what sFshzenKlyrn would call, “a fun, fun carnival ride!”) I guess until you’ve been crushed to a wafer-thin singularity, you can never know how purely FUN it is. (Try this at home, kids.) Luckily, trusty (or is it “rusty”?) Marvin took the reins and pulled us away from the icy grip of fate just in time. Man-o-man, what a ride.

We were greeted on Kaztropharius 137b with the usual enthusiasm. All the denizens of that mysterious, murky world were flashing their little blue lights at us. This is what passes for applause here, and it can be a bit disconcerting from the prospect of a climate-controlled stage. In fact, the flashing became so furious at one point that Matt nearly dropped his bass guitar and the man-sized tuber (who was doubling as a conga stand) started breaking out in strange blisters. There may be radiological factor involved here, I’m not certain. (Note to self: schedule visit to health clinic upon return home…. assuming they’re still accepting no-pays.) The only one who was unaffected was — of course – sFshzenKlyrn, to whom the laws of physics do not in any serious way apply. (Some of you may remember the time, a few years back, when he grew to be ten stories tall. Now there’s a guy who refuses to obey the laws of physics.)

Things went pretty well, though, I must confess. Only headache is the lack of confirmation on our upcoming jobs in the Small Magellanic Cloud. Kind of want to have a signed contract before we cross the void, know what I mean? Poor old Lincoln has been sitting by that FAX machine for the last two weeks, waiting, waiting, waiting for word to come buzzing through. A man of great patience, our man Abe. (My guess is that anti-Lincoln pulled the plug on the FAX machine, but don’t quote me on that.   

No, no… don’t run. I won’t go there. Just humming quietly to myself. World of my own. Did I hear a whistle just then? Passing bobolink, perhaps? Perhaps not. Did I say something? Did you?

So much for twenty questions. (Always hated that game!) Well, here we are in deep, deep shit… I mean, space, trying to feel our way from solar system to solar system without the benefit of anything even resembling a trained spacecraft pilot. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) keeps insisting that he knows how to drive this thing, but quite honestly… I can’t understand a word he’s saying, and unless he makes himself a bit clearer, I simply cannot risk putting all of our lives in his “hands” (actually claws, but you get me). Mitch Macaphee, our chief science advisor, claims to have a master’s license, and he has actually piloted us through this “middle passage” between solar systems before, but…. well…. he’s having a bit of a bender this week. Got his hands on some Neptunian schnapps during our showcase on Uranus and, well… the rest is history (or should I say nausea). Anyway, not a chance of letting him have the tiller. 

Of course, that leaves us quite literally rudderless. I mean, I don’t know how to fly this thing. And much as I have every confidence in Trevor James Constable as an expert in etheric or bioplasmic energy, piloting interstellar RV’s is a little beyond his ken. And sFshzenKlyrn… don’t even get me started on him. The last time we let our Zenite guitarist take the reins, he took us on a scrape ’round the galaxy none of us are likely to forget. (As a pan-dimensional being of no fixed shoe size, sFshzenKlyrn regards conventional scientific devices like space ships as nothing more than cheap carnival rides.) So ultimately I’ve resorted to just snapping a little toggle switch on our control console that’s marked “Auto Pilot”. (Actually, it has an engraved plate that reads “Hatch Light”, but that’s crossed out and “Auto Pilot” is written over it in crayon.) Up to now, we haven’t crashed into anything… but then I don’t think we’re any closer to Kaztropharius 137b, either. It’s probably too soon in our meanderings to ask Big Zamboola if he knows how to drive this thing. (After him, it’s the man-sized tuber.  

How have our gigs gone so far? Glad you asked. This is interesting, actually. The Neptune jobs were actually quite well attended, though because of the poisonous atmosphere, we were unable to really connect with the crowd… or even see them through the vapors. So how did I know anyone was out there? Could see the glowing ends of their fancy panatela cigars, that’s how. The rest was just simple arithmetic. (Big favorite up there on Neptune, those stogies – if you ever want to make friends there, just flick your little oxygen lighter and fire one of those babies up. They’ll treat you like their old uncle scaly.) The showcase thing on Uranus didn’t go so hot, frankly. I told you about Mitch’s little… well… issue. Then the stage, for Christ’s sake, was made of molten nickel. (We have a stipulation written into our standard contract that magma-based performance surfaces are not acceptable – John White insisted on that, and with good reason!) To top it all off, it turned out that the representative from Loathsome Prick Records was a real… well… loathsome prick. Who woulda thunk it? (You woulda? Hmmmmm….)   

So we’re essentially two for three on this GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE SUMMER TOUR 2006. Not too shabby. That is, if you don’t count the fact that we’re drifting aimlessly at this particular juncture. At least now posi-Lincoln has an opportunity to catch up with some of those club owners, and he has been working the wireless relentlessly since we executed our trans-stellar injection. I think he’s hoping to get us into the Hard Rock Cafe on Polaris, but don’t hold your breath. (Hmmm… Maybe we should give Marvin a crack at that astrogator….   

Is that a southern moon or a northern one? Little hard to tell from this perspective. Everything is relative, relatively speaking. I even have relatives in my band. Matt Perry – my brother. Little known fact. Oh, and John White… brother-in-law. Kazow – now you know. 

Okay, so anyway. Big Green has embarked on its very special GET ME THE HELL OUTA HERE Tour 2006, after much discussion of logistical considerations, much debate, much…  too much… pain in the ass nattering over every detail, our great space cruiser finally lifted off, hours behind schedule. Like 400 hours. (That’s actually days behind schedule, but we’ll call it hours.) Well, like I said, there was a lot of preliminary bullshit. Ship’s manifests to manifest. An entire complement to compliment. Orders to be put in order…. I’m telling you, these things take time. The important thing is, we sailed off into the heavens with all of us on board, and just minutes behind the arrival of the bailiffs at the door of the semi-deconstructed Cheney Hammer Mill. (Close shave!)

Many people have asked (don’t ask how many… just trust me) about the spacecraft we use (I’m telling you, it’s more than a few people… lots of people, okay?) when we go on these interstellar tours — how does it work, what are its origins, etc.? Well, for those of you who are just dying to know (and you know who you are), we drive a reconstituted stunt model for the original Jupiter 2 spacecraft used in the Lost In Space television series of the 1960s. No, it doesn’t run on “deutronium” fuel, as that ridiculous show suggested, any more than Dick Nixon ran on cottage cheese and ketchup (beyond a certain point). Thanks to the efforts of our chief science advisor, Mitch Macaphee, the phony J-2 is propelled by an eludium positron star-drive with a maximum range of 7500 light years between refuelings. Now that’s economy. Don’t know how it works exactly, but when it’s idling it sounds like this:

….Pocketa Pocketa Pocketa Pocketa Pocketa Pocketa Pocketa Pocketa Pocketa Pocketa Pocketa….

Yeah, I know. Mitch says they all do that. It gets us where we need to go, that’s the point. 

But there are more reasons for using the J-2 than mere economy. Frankly, it’s jolly comfortable – like an RV in space. What’s more, it’s supremely robot-friendly. What with Marvin (my personal robot assistant) as an important member of our contingent (as far as the cyborgs of the galaxy are concerned), this is a prime consideration. The J-2 has a customized magnetic “lock” pedestal built for automatons – old Marvin just steps in there, throws a switch, and he can stand through 40 g’s of forward thrust without pegging a single dial. (That’s how a robot spells comfort, my friend.) The man-sized tuber has his customized terrarium on the lower deck, and even Big Zamboola finds plenty of room to bounce around in the engine room / power core area. What the hell, we’ve got a crew that defies simple definition, if you catch my meaning. Not just any interstellar craft will accommodate them all. 

Anyway, so here’s the plan: We arrive on Neptune this weekend for a couple of pick-up performances, booked at the last minute by Posi-Lincoln, followed by a showcase on Uranus sponsored by Loathsome Prick Records, then it’s off to Kaztropharius 137b for our triumphant return. By that time, hopefully, we will know where the hell else we’re going. (Keep watching that FAX machine, Lincoln – those signed contracts should be coming through any time now!)

It’s awful hard to hide on a ship, m’ladies. Scuttle me britches, sons-of-a-bitches. Raise the yard-arm. Lower the yard-leg. Hoist the mizzen-mast. Mast the hoist-mizzen. Hast the moist hizzen, for shizzle.

Whoops. Didn’t know you were copying all that. Just practicing my ship-board jargon. Getting a little bit rusty, what with having spent the last year on solid ground. My pirate words are getting all tangled up with one another. (Hard enough to understand those scurvy fuckers to begin with without putting their ravings through a scrambler.) We’re getting awfully close to launch time (it’s about noon right now, and I’m getting peckish) … launch time, and if I’m going to be scuffling around in zero gravity environments, I want to talk the talk as well as walk the walk, you follow me? Arrrgghh.

Enough of this gay banter. We are about to embark on a bold new expedition to remote corners of the galaxy. I’m not talking some old Ford Galaxy, either, I’m talking about the big enchilada, the mongo galaxy… what we know as the Milky Way. No, not the candy bar. The real deal. No, not John Kerry. Arrrgghhhh. Bloody brand names! You just can’t get away from them. Try to have a five minute conversation without stumbling upon large swaths of the language they have appropriated to their own dark purposes… just TRY. Okay, I’m a bit on edge – I admit. This trip is looming, and I’m just not ready. Not packed, not rehearsed, no house-sitter. I haven’t even gotten Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to agree to sign an appearance contract so that he can join us on stage without charging extra money later on. (Oh, he learns QUICKLY.)

Actually, speaking of contracts, we’ve gotten some interest from another corporate label. You remember our old label – Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc.? (I think they’ve contracted that to just Hegephonic since our day.) Well, just as we were packing our pipe organ onto the spacecraft, a blank contract came in from a label called Loathsome Prick Records. Can’t say as I’ve ever heard of them before. I think they do a lot of spoken word stuff. (They may be the guys who distribute Bill O’Reilly’s books on tape, but that’s just supposition.) I’m not sure where they found out about Big Green, but what the fuck… they HAVE to be better than Hegemonic (or Hegephonic). Sound like a nice bunch of people, anyway. Think maybe I’ll drop them a note before we blast off. Or maybe I’ll have the Big Zamboola carry it over to them personally. (He can always catch up with us, being a planetoid and all.)

What’s that sound? It’s the low murmur of our stardrive engines revving up. Yeah, I just made that up. I don’t know what propels us from planet to planet – we just press buttons, consult our science advisors, and somehow we get there. What the hell, do I look like someone who knows what he’s doing? Look closer!

Can you talk any faster? Me thinkst not. Even if you could, I can’t type any faster, so it wouldn’t do any good. That’s what I’ve become, after seven years of this. Stenographer to assorted denizens of cyberspace. Can I stand the strain? Well, no.

I’m sitting on the landing gear of our rent-a-spacecraft, killing time as my cohorts continue their preparations for the upcoming Big Green GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE interstellar tour. Yes, we did change the name — thought better of it. I think this is a bit more descriptive than the last one, wouldn’t you agree? There’s a greater urgency, a more definite sense of momentum. Just wait a momentum, please. WATCH THAT CRATE! THOSE COMMEMORATIVE VASES COST A FORTUNE! Okay, sorry. Hard to get good help these days — very hard… especially when you don’t have any money with which to pay them. We just hope to bugger off before they expect compensation. (Hey… I told you the new name was more appropriate.) JUST LET ME KNOW IF YOU NEED A HAND, GUYS!  

As I mentioned last week, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) will accompany us this time out, as he has so many times before. This decision was taken by popular demand on the part of Marvin’s enormous cyborg fan base out yonder. (So if you’re listening out there… he’s coming, damn it! Stop e-mailing me, you obsessive cyborgs!) Yes, we will have the full complement on board the imitation J-2 space cruiser; a regular who’s who of Notes From Sri Lanka lore. We got your man sized tuber, your sFshzenKlyrn, your Trevor James Constable (complete with orgone generating device; additional T.J. Constable accessories sold separately), your Mitch Macaphee, your posi Lincoln and anti-Lincoln, and even your Dr. Hump right here. I’ve seen each one of their crates being carried on board whilst I’ve been sitting here, relaxing. (Yes, we’re keeping them all in crates. Why not, eh?)

Who will be keeping an eye on the mill while we’re gone? Well, this is where the clever part comes in. Frankly, I didn’t have the heart to leave tubey or any of the others behind to face the hostility of an entire community, still bent out of shape from the bombing run that Gung-Ho treated them to on our behalf. (Well… they all flatly refused, for one thing, and let’s face it — there are more of them than there are of me.) So we commissioned our scientific cohort Mitch Macaphee to rig up the equivalent of a baby monitor system… our “eye from the sky”, as it were. That’s the more clever half. The slightly less clever half involves cardboard cut-outs of ourselves strategically positioned at all the windows. This will give the mill the appearance of occupancy. What purpose does that serve? Not sure. Fact is, we set them up before really thinking through what the effect of doing so would be. So rather than let all that good work go to waste…. we left them there. And we mounted one outside the front viewing port of our space craft. Call it a hood ornament… or a baby monitor.

Anywho, Mitch set it up so that we can talk back through those monitors and, hopefully, intimidate any intruders into abandoning their nefarious designs. I thought that was a nice touch. And as I sit here watching people work, I can only applaud Mitch’s initiative in devising this “solution”, as they say in the corporate world (where thesauruses are as rare as hen’s teeth).

Hopefully when you hear from me again, it will be from somewhere in outer spaaaaaace. Somewhere with breathable air and a positive gravity. (Hey… we wrote it into the contracts this year, so no surprises, right?)

No baby on that. I’m off pop songs this week, friends. Had it. Mention one and it’s with me all day, like those little transmitters they plant in your head when you’re in the mental institution. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? No? Where did I hear that? Well…. let’s just say a little voice told me.

Okinawa! (Another island entirely.) We are getting closer to the goal of launching our ad hoc interplanetary tour. How much closer? Well… I’ve got a hat, a baseball hat, and it says Big Green Tour ’06 on it. And we’ve got suitcases. Hey, it’s closer than we were LAST week, okay? What am I, a machine? That’s Marvin (my personal robot assistant)’s role, not mine. For those of you who have been wondering (particularly you fans in the greater cyborg community), we have relented on the topic of bringing Marvin along on the tour. We simply can’t do it without him and expect the kinds of flies… um… crowds we’ve been drawing the last few times out. Looks like the task of running interference back on old terra firma will have to fall to someone else. Man sized tuber, perhaps? Hmmmmm….

No, seriously – we have made progress. For one thing, we’ve settled on a name for our tour. It’s going to be called BIG GREEN’S GET OUT OF TOWN FAST! SUMMER TOUR 2006… for obvious reasons. There are also some less than obvious reasons, like our perpetual need for additional cash. Can’t beat the revenue of an interplanetary tour, especially when – like us – you remain unhappily obscure on your home planet. (Just barely moving the needle down here on Earth, friends – I’ll be frank with you. And don’t call me Frank.) And with all these (ahem) unexpected rebuilding costs, damn it, man! That scaffolding is going to be up for months on end. Do you have any idea how much masons charge in our neck of the woods? They have to import all the bricks from Madagascar, for chrissake. We need to make hay, gentlemen, make hay. Cause as we’ve learned from Edward G. Robinson during Israel’s captivity in Egypt… can’t make bricks without straw. Nyeaah. Where’s your Moses now….? 

So there you have it. Don’t delude yourself that we are only in this for the sake of “art”, or that we make music for reasons of “peace” and “love” and “pastrami”. No, look… the utilities don’t take crystal necklaces in lieu of a check every month, no matter how hard we try to polish them up and make them look nice. No dice! Money makes the world go round. (Pop music again!) Anyway, like anyone else who wears pants and eats sandwiches, we gotta have it, and if we can’t find it here on the good oit, we’ve got to go out in space and rake it up. Necessity breeds invention – we have posi-Lincoln inventing the tour for us right now, working the phones, sending interstellar e-mails to the usual venues, mailing out contracts. He’s actually pretty good at it, though he does tend to write everything down on ancient pieces of paper that have already been written on. One of them had his old address on it – guess he lived in Gettysburg once. Who knew? Damn his habits of thrift! Not the most efficient filing system, but hell… it’s better than mine. (Mine was bombed out with the mill, thankfully.)

We’ll be setting dates real soon and making them public, so if you’re planning to be somewhere in the vicinity of the Ursa Major in the next six or seven weeks, leave some space in your calendar. And bring an appetite! Mitch Macaphee plans to handle the catering this time out. He’s supposedly a really solid cook, as most chemists are. (I hear he has over 100 recipes. He calls them “elements.” Funny guy.)

Six-eleven. Hell, that’s 9-11 turned upside-down, isn’t it? Spooky. Strange coincidences abound in the land of the paranoid – a foggy and foreboding place if ever there was one… and there WAS one. Six-eleven. Our fodder who art in heaven.

Guess we’ve got that old travelin’ blues. Ain’t that how the song goes? (There seem to be a lot of old songs on my mind these days, I must admit. Please forgive me.) Anyway, you’d have them too if somebody blew a big hole in YOUR squat-house. Crikey, the whole place smells like charcoal and old hammer-stock splinters. Old anti-Lincoln can’t even make himself a plate of anti-matter toaster waffles without nearly yakking all over his stew. Intolerable, I tell you. Just the sort of situation that would drive normally reasonable derelicts such as ourselves to thoughts of the road… of performing before throngs of adoring fans (many of which have two or even THREE heads)… of visiting exotic ports of call in undiscovered galaxies. Of… of…. of escape, damn it, escape!

Turns out that Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is
not all that keen on the idea of being left behind to handle little tasks like… oh…. rebuilding the mill, buying off the constables, dodging any stray shells from Gung-Ho’s proving grounds (I believe the Cheney Hammer Mill may now be listed as a legitimate practice target). Minor stuff, but he’s balking… at least to the extent that his programming will allow. Robots of Marvin’s general classification don’t frown, exactly, but they do have subtle ways of letting you know that they are not too pleased with what you’re demanding of them. Lookit — when professor Mitch Macaphee builds a robot, it’s bound to be more than just a soulless servo-mechanism. Our Marvin has feelings, you know? And opinions, lots of opinions. Only thing is, he’s programmed to be somewhat reticent, in an automatonic sort of way. (I keep thinking one of these days he’s just going to EXPLODE. Or join “Captured By Robots” for real.

Hey, you can’t make everybody happy. Neither should you try, in my book. (I have a book? News to me.) Still, Marvin is an important part of our ludicrous entourage, and as such, he is due more than a minimum of consideration. Truth be told, he has a substantial fan base in his own right. It certainly rivals our own, particularly in those out-of-the-way corners of the galaxy run entirely by robots, cyborgs, or the like. I don’t think it’s entirely clear to them that Marvin is not a musician, as such, though he does pick up an instrument every once in a while – banjos, guitars, drums, the occasional bagpipes, etc. As you might imagine, out in the great beyond there isn’t always a whole lot of difference between holding an instrument and actually doing something with it. (Yeah, that’s right. It’s a lot like planet Earth.)

Anyway, so once we’ve got the rent-a-spacecraft in shape, we can start thinking about little details like, where the hell are we going? and what the hell are we going to do for money? One thing at a time. Don’t ask more than that of us, my friends. Too damn taxing.

Tell me what I say, right now. Or rather, I’ll tell you what I say right now. And do it right now. See how much meaning there is in even the simplest, most emotive pop lyrics? Just dripping with meaning… like Crimson and Clover… the song that, I believe, could have more logically inspired the Manson rampage than Helter Skelter (which is just a raucous song about a carnival ride). I’ve mentioned this before — think about it. “Crimson”… blood! “Clover”…. on the graves of the dead! “Over and over”… many dead

So I say unto you – beware those who read too deeply
into pop lyrics.

Anyway, what the hell, things are a little disheveled here in Big Green land (so what’s new?). Seems we’ve gained a Hammer Mill but lost a … well… lost a wall of the Hammer Mill. A major supporting wall. Not a good thing from a structural engineering perspective, no sir. Our overzealous neighbor Gung-Ho really knows how to put a hole in something. (And if we hadn’t been in the midst of our eviction order, that something might have been us.) With a daunting clean-up and repair job ahead of us — to say nothing of the effort we will need to expend staying ahead of the legal consequences of Gung-Ho’s bombing run — we are giving serious thought to another interplanetary romp, spreading our message of love throughout the galaxy through the universal language of song. You know, on the lamb again.

What about the album? Well, we’re close to finished with that sucker. Just doing some backing vocals, incidental instrumental parts… then it’s mixing time. So I think we can afford to take the old mastering deck on the road with us. Only trouble is, Mixmaster Marvin (my personal robot assistant) will probably be staying behind on this trip to oversee the reconstruction work at the Cheney Hammer Mill (and to soak up all the love from the local constabulary as they arrive with torches, hoping to put our heads on pikes). Don’t know how that’s going to work, exactly. We may need to have the man-sized tuber sit in for some of the mixing. He can actually push those faders pretty well with his larger roots. (It’s the ears I’m a little worried about. Namely, he ain’t got any.)

Hey, we’re used to just feeling our way along around here, anyway. You know that, right? That’s what drives us creatively… grim happenstance and the usual assortment of animal needs. For Matt and I, that means assorted vegetables and a hard roll. For John, a carton of cottage cheese (or “cowboy food” as it’s known in this manor). For Mitch Macaphee, a bottle of Riesling and a live circuit board, or one of those Frankenstein-era arc generators with a big spark flying off the end. See? It’s a little different for everyone.

So next week, expect to see us packing our belongings into the battered spacecraft we use as an interstellar RV. Something to look forward to, eh? Let’s just hope the local constables are a little slow on the uptake. (It usually takes a week or two for them to get around to discovering that we’re responsible for some disaster.) ‘Nuff said. 

There it is – the magic word. Little mishap or major catastrophe, doesn’t matter. One word covers it all. Call it an apologia, a mea culpa, a universal admission of human failing… that’s the word of the day. Then there’s that other little word: FUCK!

Fair warning to all: Be careful what you ask for! Yes, friends, in an effort to restore our squatter’s status at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, we have managed to blow a big hole in our beloved squat house – a major breach in the street-side wall, courtesy of neighbor Gung-Ho and his squadron of bombers-for-hire. Of course, we had asked the good fellow to drop a few intimidating shells on the offices of the developer-bloodsuckers that turned us out onto the streets. This he did – actually, a bit more emphatically than we had expected. In fact, much of the town is in ruins, including the local magistrate’s courthouse. (Our plea for leniency was vacated, as was the courthouse itself… just ahead of a wall of fire.  But as is his wont, he got a little carried away and… well…. ka-boom. That’s right — ka. boom.

When we headed back towards the mill to claim what was rightfully ours and saw a yawning gap with black smoke rising to the heavens, we knew something was awry. Though I was inclined to send Marvin (my personal robot assistant) in first to assess the damage (and perhaps extinguish the fires before secondary explosions ensue), I took it upon myself to walk through the front door ahead of him. What happened then? Well… I can only tell you in the form of a popular song:

I fell in through a burnin’ ring of fire!

Down, down, down, and the flames a-gettin’ higher!

Yes indeed — Gung-Ho had opted for the heavier ordinance. I think he may have had one or two of those mini-MOAB’s in his arsenal, I don’t know. Earth penetrators, perhaps. Either way, there was a gaping hole in the Earth’s crust just inside the front entrance, the walls of which were alight with an unearthly flame – Saint Elmo’s Fire, perhaps. (Saint somebody’s fire…) In any case, I was imploring Saint Getmethehelloutahere in as loud a voice as possible, grabbing uselessly at the air as I hurtled downward through a newly drilled chimney of living rock that appeared to stretch straight to the chewy center of the “oit”, already. And I would have encountered that great ball of molten caramel, had it not been for the diligence of our own Trevor James Constable, who quickly surmised my perilous circumstance and trained his orgone generating device down the bomb crater, grabbing me like a science fiction tractor beam and pulling me back from the very jaws of oblivion. Close shave, big mister.

I would rather not go through the trauma of describing the rubble-strewn mess that confronted us within the bowels of our beloved squat-mill. Suffice to say that we (i.e. Marvin) have a very large clean-up job ahead of us. Probably a good time to go back on the road, especially since the local constabulary will be after our collective ass, once they discover who is responsible for the surprise attack… and once they’ve dug themselves out of their collapsed building. Spaceward ho!