Holy smithereens, batman. Or are you superman? Either way, keep an x-ray eye open for falling debris. Actually, that’s only if you’re superman. If you’re batman, perhaps you have some kind of protective or repellant device in you utility belt. If so, deploy at once. Use ’em if you got ’em. (That’s what I need… a utility belt! Mitch!)

Hola, you blog browsers out there. Welcome to the land of unintended consequences. Yes, that’s right, my friends… Big Green has made another slight miscalculation. It seems we weren’t real careful about what we were asking for, and Jesus Christmas, we got it. (Or is that Mother of Pearl?) As you may recall (if, like me, you haven’t got anything better to do than surfing the net and catching up on one bogus thread or another), we had resorted to a last ditch effort at getting a-hold of Gung Ho, our militant neighbor, and asking him to use his mercenary war machine to… well… blast our way back into our beloved squat house, the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, in a manner of speaking. Now, specifically what I had had in mind was a show of force to intimidate the developers who pulled the mill out from under us. You know what I mean – a couple of ultra-low flyovers aimed at their local headquarters. Maybe dropping a couple of duds on the roof. Leafleting, perhaps. That sort of thing.

Well, we tried to reach Gung-Ho at his remote deployment (destination: classified) via a number of different methods of communication – smoke signal, orgone generator, e-mail, etc. I’m not sure which one(s) actually got through to the old man, but whichever it may have been, the message must have gotten significantly garbled somehow. (My vote is on Trevor James Constable’s orgone generating device, which should never be confused with a telegraph.) Gung-Ho apparently got the impression that he should mount a full-scale, sustained bombing campaign against the real estate firm in question. Or maybe he just thought that would be a more fun way to do the job — he’s never been real big on the subtle approach, quite frankly. Either way, he and his A-Team came screaming into town in their surplus F-15’s, shooting up everything within seven square blocks of the real estate office. To make matters worse, he chose the very moment when we were making another appeal for leniency to the local magistrate… on the basis of our good will towards the community.

Awwwk-ward. 

Okay, so how did this affect our plea? Never mind that now. Suffice to say we failed to engender a sufficient degree of sympathy from the judge — or so it seemed when he was fleeing the courtroom along just ahead of a collapsing cinderblock wall. (Yes, the courtroom is downtown, a stone’s throw from the developer’s office.) It’s a little hard to describe the phantasmagoric scene that confronted us as we scurried into the street. The word pandemonium comes to mind, but I’m sure there are others more appropriate to the occasion. Catastrophe, perhaps. Suffice to say that Gung-Ho’s principal target — the headquarters of the Madagascarian firm that had arranged for our eviction — had sustained more than superficial damage. The basement looked as though it might still be useable, once rubble from the five floors above it could be steam shoveled out. Ouch. 

We tried to reach Gung-Ho on the phone, but no luck. He must have just swooped in for the air strikes and then flown back to whatever area of the world he’s destroying-for-hire this week. Seems like the only thing to do is to make our way back to the outskirts of town and see if, by any small chance, a stray round or two might have homed in on… the… hammer… mill……       

Fill in the blank. (My preference is “fuck”, but don’t let that influence you.) Always the “f” word in this group, eh? Not so unusual. A million and one uses for that storied old English term, and most of them apply to the music business. Nouns and modifiers… sometimes proper names. (Sometimes improper names.)

Anyway, greetings from the streets of Colombo, Sri Lanka — Big Green‘s new “virtual squat house”, now that we’ve been tossed out of the Cheney Hammer Mill. As always, morning finds us scrambling for shelter amongst the curbside artifacts and trash bins. Expect to see us huddled together? Not a chance – it’s every slug for himself in this band. At least that’s the way I felt about it while there was still a relatively congenial spot available to me beneath the flapjack vendor’s stand. Alas, I have been expelled from that sanctuary, as well. Bloody merchants! Now I’m trying to worm my way into my colleagues’ temporary digs. So that thing I said earlier about every man for himself? Not so. Not so.

Now, I don’t want to leave you with the impression that there has been no movement on our efforts towards reparations. As I mentioned last week, our (former) neighbor Gung-Ho may prove to be our ace in the hole, so to speak. So far we’ve had no luck trying to reach him at whatever remote location he’s been hired to invade, but we’ve got our best minds working on it. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has graciously allowed his solar batteries and internal cosmium oscillator to be linked into a makeshift transmitter. (Matt’s on the key now, tapping out “C-Q, C-Q”, just like pops used to. Sometimes Marvin throws in “S.O.S.” for good measure.) Trevor James Constable is using his patented orgone generating device to send distress signals out into the ethers, even though the chances of their attracting Gung-Ho’s attention are next to nil (especially if he has his helmet on). John? I don’t know… I think he and anti-Lincoln are resorting to smoke signals. Either that, or they’re burning an awful lot of Zenite snuff.

It may seem ignoble of us to be calling in for close air support. Why, you may ask, don’t we use the legal process? Why the early resort to violent methods? Well, I’m going to tell you. We Big Green ers are simple folk. We don’t go in for all that fancy legal-schmeegal mumbo-jumbo. Most of us, at least, prefer a more direct message… like blow a big hole in their land office headquarters. (My brother is a bit more attached to the intimidation method – have some goon lean on them, know what I mean? Only goon we’ve got is Big Zamboola, and his intimidating days are definitely over.) Not that we can count on Gung-Ho to do anything particularly rash, but hey… we can ask, right? Doesn’t hurt to ask.

There’s a time limit on this street lifestyle – I’m sure some of you know what I’m talking about. As my photos indicate, I’m getting a little scruffier every day. (You should see the man-sized tuber. Couple of days out in the rain and he starts taking root… and even the pillbox-dwellers can’t take the sight of him.) Come on, Gung Ho!

Once I had a hammer mill, made it run… made it race against time. Once I had a hammer mill, now it’s gone. Brother, can you spare a… Oh, if I had a hammer mill…. I’d hammer in the mornin’ …

They say there’s a song for every occasion, every circumstance of life. Particularly the less pleasant circumstances (though most of those are country songs). Why do you suppose that is, eh? I mean, what is it about living in a small, damp, shaded area beneath a pancake-vendor’s cart that drives a person to song? Is it the persistent smell of rancid cooking oil? The muttered oaths of disgruntled customers, waiting in vain for a decent stack of jacks? The puddle of stagnant muck that is gradually leeching into my ragged clothes? Well… it’s hard to quantify the precise sources of creative inspiration. It pains me to tell you that, though the shadow of the wrecking ball is not yet upon her, our beloved Hammer Mill is not long for this world. Damn their eyes, those Madagascarian developers…. O defilers of our humble dreams! What kind of upscale tourists or well-pensioned retirees would want to make a new start upon the ruins of this sainted mill? Okay… so perhaps I’m overstating it a little bit. The place smells like a city bus. But… and this is important … it smells better than the bottom of that malodorous pancake stand! And after a few years, I’ve became used to the draftiness, the rusted machinery, the occasional cave-ins, the crumbling brick battlements. Yea, we even started to look forward to them. After all, it’s all just part of the squatter’s lot — living the dream, as it were, even if it more resembles a nightmare. (What… you can think of a better way to live? I’m listening. Speak louder!) I think the hardest part is watching Marvin (my personal robot assistant) fighting against more than five years of programming that keeps sending him up to the barricaded doorway, only to be turned back again. He’s got a number of routine Mill maintenance tasks filed away in his sophisticated electronic brain, and not being able to complete them makes his circuits smoke like a chimney. (I saw Mitch Macaphee lighting a cigar on one of Marvin’s red hot relay panels just yesterday. Matt and John sometimes warm their hands over the glow when the night air gets brisk.) Hmmm… well, maybe that’s not the hardest part. The hardest part is probably listening to Anti Lincoln make his dictatorial speeches to nobody. Even his low-rent junta generals have skipped town in search of more promising digs. All right, mister anti-president — it’s been three hours. Time to clam up. Jesus, do I miss those massive hammer mill walls! What recourse for the wrongly evicted? Well… there is one possibility, slight though it is. We’ve put a call in to Gung Ho, who’s currently deployed with his mercenaries someplace explosive (and profitable, no doubt). I figure he might know a guy who knows a guy… who’d be willing to drop a bomb on a guy before they get the wrecking ball in position. Hey, don’t look at me like that. Last chances are last chances, right? Anyway, so far no response from the Gungster. If you happen to run into him (and live to tell the tale), have him contact us at:

Just under the Flapjack Cart

Third vendor stall along

Colombo Market Square

Colombo, Sri Lanka

Or just have him dial “JOE FLAPJACK” on his cell phone- it will go right to me.

Okay… let’s put it another way. Take me away. That’s more like it. Has a pleasing finality, a sense of “closure” – that quintessentially American value. Yes, that’s it. Closure. Aaaaahhhhhhh. Multo mucho end-o-lissimo.

As some of you will recall, your Big Green fiends (I mean, friends… what a difference a letter makes!) were served last week with that loathsome object known as a writ of eviction. Seems there are forces at work in the land that want to keep the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill — our beloved squat — as abandoned as its name suggests. They also happen to have local codes and property law on their side, it appears. Not good. Not at all good to have police showing you the door… especially when they want you to walk through it, besides. (I’ve seen the freaking door, okay? Stop pushing me!) I mean, it’s one thing to throw people bodily out of the only home they’ve ever called their own…. but you don’t need to get nasty about it. Or do you….?

Got to tell you, this is all about money. Sure, sure, you’ve heard me jabber on about this before. But it’s true, I’m telling you. I’ve got it on the best authority — Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who has been hanging around the local public houses, Tonto like, listening in on other people’s conversations.  These real estate developers from Madagascar, it seems, have targeted the Cheney Hammer Mill as part of a larger parcel that will soon be converted into luxury condos and sold to… well… sold to people who can afford them. People like Mitch Macaphee. You know… the heavy wallet brigade. Silver and riches. Gold and jewels. That’s all that ever matters to the local planning ministry! They would sell their grandmother’s grave to developers, and send the same thugs harassing us now to see her exhumed and consigned to street beggary.

Do I seem bitter? Well, hey… I just spent the night in the flapjack vendor’s cart with Marvin running interference. My ass is killing me. Even more troubling is the fact that this consortium of developers will not stop with our humble hammer mill. I’ve heard mutterings that they are planning to pave over large sections of the Indian Ocean and start selling parcels to retirees and businesses. Mitch Macaphee’s eyes kind of lit up when he heard about this little scheme — I could almost see the diagrams being drafted in that big floppy brain of his. A veritable city on the sea. As if that isn’t bad enough, I can see the same kind of sparkle in Commandante Lincoln’s eyes, as well: vast new lands to conquer! A new horizon for the hoary junta. God be praised! 

But hey… we’re not beaten yet. No sir, not by a long shot. This is just the opening salvo in Big Green‘s continuing battle for its wholly illegitimate home. Hey – be that as it may, it is more legitimate than that bloody flapjack stand. (And a hell of a lot roomier, too.) 

Hey, I meant figuratively, damn it. That smarts! I’ve only got two legs, you know. And two arms, so go easy. Ouch! Watch it, friend…. I’ve only got one of those. Accursed gendarmes!

Oh, crikey. You heard all that then, didn’t you? Geez. Welcome back to the house of pain, a.k.a. the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, now in the process of being more abandoned than ever. That is to say, our little squatting party is being forcibly broken up by thugs from the local constabulary, hired on their off hours by building contractors who have been lusting after this piece of land for some months now. Like Colombian death squads in the night, they shed their uniforms and do their dirty work. Bastards! How the hell did Marvin (my personal robot assistant) work with these fiends? 

Yeah, so anyway — the lawyer thing didn’t pan out. Nobody wanted to take the case, even with our financial advisor Geet O’Reilly’s persistent urging, egged on by a blue-spotted Mitch Macaphee. No money in it, you see? Not a good prospect. Oh… and our little impromptu protest, reported on in these pages last week, had little or no effect, other than to light a fire under the constables, who were pounding on our door just a few mornings later with the writ of eviction tucked into their baby-blue helmets. Take it from me, this is not the sort of thing you want to wake up to. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think real fast in the morning…. so my first inclination was to try to give them the slip. That was plan C from outer space, quite frankly. (My idea, I’m afraid…)

Plan C went like this: Matt, John and I snuck out the back door of the Cheney Hammer Mill, along with the Big Zamboola, who is the only other member of our entourage that gets out of bed early. None of us has any kind of motor vehicle at this point, so we had to walk past the v-formation of heavily armed police attempting to dislodge us from our lodgings (or de-mill us from our millings, to be more precise). Perhaps it was that sixth sense all constables have that tipped them off to our presence, working our way up a side street (or perhaps it was the admittedly incongruous sight of Big Zamboola — a man-sized planetoid — bouncing up the street like one of those oversized “earth” balls).  We thought we had shaken them when I felt that big, cold hand on my shoulder. Man… I should have listened to Zamboola’s rantings for once. Usually he’s talking about sandwiches, you know  

Hokey smokes – so we’ve been served. And I don’t mean somebody has shown us their killer dance moves. I mean the constables handed us the eviction notice. So it’s on. I’d have to say Marvin’s reaction has been the most dramatic so far. Panhandling. Panhandling… on the first day of our grace period. We haven’t even been tossed out yet, and he’s working the streets. Sheesh. (Hope he picks up enough for a pizza — I’m freaking
starving.)

How ’bout that? Isn’t gravity supposed to pull instead of push? Damnedest thing. I’m floating, floating… floating… falling… FALLING!… fall… floating again… Make up your bleeding mind!

Oh, hello. And welcome back to the land of blog. Big Green blog, that is, a.k.a. Notes from Sri Lanka. This is where you come to get the latest on what the hell we’ve been doing all week… expecting what, I don’t know. You’ll have to excuse my earlier outburst — I was finally drifting off to sleep after hours of fruitless effort. Now that I’m back on Terra Firma, I can bring you up to speed as you wait breathlessly for every new detail of our pointless exploits. (Don’t worry about writing this down; the entire sequence will be chronicled in comic strip form on new boxes of Sugar Pops cereal. Look for the special Big Green display card. See your grocer for details.)

Now, now… where was I? Ah, yes. The eviction notice. The Cheney Hammer Mill has been condemned, you see. No two ways about it, our local chamber of commerce has it in for us, big time. As they are busily converting this entire island into luxury vacation flats, the “powers that be” have decided to take this opportunity to clear the decks of all squatters. Thanks to my somewhat ill-advised references to the hammer mill in this blog, our local council has long been aware of our illicit presence within its bowels (the mill’s, that is, not the council’s) and is now taking steps to see us put out on the street where they feel we belong. That means the three members of Big Green — myself, my illustrious brother Matt, and our long-time co-conspirator (and drummer) John White — plus Marvin (my personal robot assistant), his inventor Mitch Macaphee, our mutual friend Trevor James Constable, the man-sized tuber, the two Lincolns (matter and anti-matter), and Big Zamboola will be residents of various gutters and fields in a fortnight or so… unless we take drastic steps. 

What steps, you ask? Don’t ask… tell! We’re clueless over here. 

Our financial advisor, Geet O’Reilly, took a moment away from doing our taxes to suggest that we try some kind of legal intervention. “Why don’t you phone a solicitor?” she asked, and Mitch Macaphee started breaking out in blue spots. (He’s got this thing about lawyers, see.) Once we had his temperature stabilized, Matt asked Mitch to write a letter to the local Chamber of Commerce pretending to be a lawyer… he could, perhaps, invent some bogus letterhead — Macaphee, Macaphee, and Pendergast, LLC. Mitch’s spots turned green. This obviously wasn’t going to work. It was clear that we would have to take a more direct approach. No go-betweens, damn it! It was time to petition the powerful, to take our demands out into the street, to show them we weren’t going to just lie down and take it… that we were going to FIGHT! We’re going to choke that Chamber of Commerce building with protesters. Time to get down to it, friends – are you WITH ME? 

Actually, Marvin is pretty good at holding a sign. The trouble was with the man-sized tuber — he doesn’t really have hands, per se. You kind of have to stick the post of the sign in his husk, then tilt it back so it doesn’t fall on Big Zamboola from behind. Big Zamboola — there’s another problem. No hands, no husk… pretty much all mouth. We didn’t even bother with the sign in his case; we just told him what to holler. In any case, it was a pretty pathetic looking protest, particularly with all the spectacular marches that have been going on lately in the States and in France. From the windows of the mill, it looked like what it was — a straggly gathering of freaks on the steps of the Chamber building. 

Did I go? Hell, no. Neither did Matt or John. We’re back here on a rear-guard maneuver, making sure the demolition crew doesn’t sneak in during our absence. Clever, eh? Pass the nachos, Johnny… there’s a good chap!