Political Rants

The titanic struggle: A-holes vs. effers

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Another week of wall-to-wall reporting on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That characterization of the operation is tantamount to a federal offense now in Russia. Whereas there they use force to make people think a certain way, over here we use the Edward Bernays method. That’s why polling shows a majority of Americans wanting the President to be “tougher” in his approach to the Ukraine crisis.

Majority support for policies that could easily result in total nuclear annihilation doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Reporting on the atrocities Russia is committing in Ukraine flows in a constant stream from the corporate media. To be clear, it is 100% something that should be reported on heavily. But this is more than coverage. It is an influence campaign, and it may just get us all killed.

A game of absolutes

One of the sure signs that the networks are propagandizing us is the characterization of this war as part of a broader struggle between freedom and tyranny. Even Chris Hayes went on a tear about his last week, bizarrely extending this metaphor to the Cold War era. This claim doesn’t stand up to even the slightest scrutiny. Did we fight our near-genocidal war in Vietnam for “freedom”? I think not. Read Nick Turse’s Kill Anything That Moves. This is not good vs. evil, for we are not good.

Now, I expect this kind of thing out of the likes of Joe Scarborough, who is constantly laboring at the Reagan myth, desperately trying to keep it alive for another generation. Even on his show you will hear from people counseling caution, like Richard Haas. Those are the exceptions, though. It’s mostly a chorus of voices bearing witness to the suffering of Ukrainians in minute detail, showing frustration out of a lack of action on the part of the administration. The absolutism of good vs. evil is an essential component in their argument.

More like 1914 … or 2003

Frequent MSNBC guest Michael McFaul is back on the network, having suffered no real penalty for his endorsement of a comparison between Putin with Hitler, in which Hitler came out ahead. He was on Twitter telling people to stop talking about World War III, which was odd because he seems so wrapped up in World War II. McFaul is a fan of brinkmanship with respect to Ukraine – he thinks we can get a lot closer to open conflict without risk of nuclear war.

This is what happens when people take their own analogies too seriously. This is not World War II. We have nuclear weapons – thousands of them. We cannot do the kinds of things we did before those weapons existed. It’s simply not an option. There are many reasons why this period is nothing like 1939, but the nuclear question is probably the most salient difference. In all honesty, if you’re going to compare this with a world war, the closer analogy is 1914, when an accidental war prompted Europeans to slaughter each other by the millions for no good reason.

Don’t burn bridges

I’ve said it before. There’s only one way out of this horrendous conflict, and that’s through some kind of negotiated settlement. Cranking up the rhetoric makes this less likely, not more. For the Ukrainians’ sake, it’s better to make the deal now than later when their country is in even more of a shambles and many thousands more have lost their lives.

Ultimately Russia and Ukraine are going to have to reconcile themselves to being neighbors. That’s never going to change – it’s just geography. They need to find a path out of this mess, and we need to do everything in our power to help them get there.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Usual Rubbish

Want to hear a song? That makes four of us.

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2000 Years to Christmas

What man can stand the stress of being torn asunder then thrust back together? Who amongst us can quarter him/herself like a piece of fruit for the sake of a single song? What fool would throw his lot in with a madman who finds joy only in the fulfillment of his twisted vision? This guy, folks. This guy right here.

Yeah, I think it’s fair to say I’ve gotten the itch to perform. What can you expect after years of being cooped up in this abandoned hammer mill, miles from civilization? Not a living hell, I will admit, but clearly a living heck. It’s been years since we struck out on tour. (I blame all that striking out.) But we live in an age of miracles, my friends. Musicians now perform from the comfort of their own homes, thanks to the advent of the internet machine.

Labor action at the abandoned mill

Trouble is, when I raised the question of Big Green virtual performances, the response was less than encouraging. Yes, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was game. Antimatter Lincoln offered to play gut bucket (though frankly very few of our songs call for that rustic instrument). The mansized tuber volunteered a few of his smaller shoots to the enterprise. As for the actual band members, well …. not so much.

Can’t blame them, really. This is the busy time of year. Matt is taken up with his Peregrine Falcon project. (He’s gone big this time around, watching them from the deck of the star ship U.S.S. Enterprise.) John is doing his thing (if he didn’t have that, he’d have to get another thing). So that leaves me in kind of a spot. I mean, I can’t play four parts at once …. or CAN I?

Hell, this band looks damned familiar.

Crypto cloning to the rescue

It seems that our mad science advisor has been working on a little experiment of late. I thought I heard some strange noises coming from the north end of the mill. (That was just before it exploded, too. Coincidence, that.) Anyway, Mitch developed something he calls “crypto cloning.” The “crypto” piece is strictly about marketing – Mitch is keen to monetize this new technology.

Here’s how it works: A subject steps into the cloning device, and s/he is cloned four ways. That’s a big step up from making two of the same thing, Mitch tells me. (Twice as good.) The thing is, the cloning only lasts a couple of hours. At that point, your quadruplegangers hustle back into the protoplasmic host from which they sprang. It’s a kind of reverse-amoeba effect, if you know what I mean.

The quadruplegangers ride again

Before you ask, yes, I did let him test it on me. But only just long enough for the four of me to record one of Matt’s songs – a classic number called Going To Andromeda. Check it out on our YouTube channel or our new Instagram account. (Note: one of my clones came out with a mustache. Strange mutation.)

Political Rants

The Whine That was heard ’round the world

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I just want to say, for the record, that Senator Lindsey Graham is a whiny little barnacle. The man has zero charisma, zero original ideas, and that’s why he attaches himself to the ample asses of men like Trump, McCain, you name it. Who’s next? I don’t know. Which right-wing garbage scow is likely to pass this way sometime soon?

In case you think I’m just going off on a random tirade, let me just say that I’m making this observation in reaction to the first days of Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. I shouldn’t single Graham out. The entire Republican side spent the day simpering about the unfairness of a process that has yielded them a 6 to 3 reactionary majority on the Supreme Court for the rest of any of our lives.

Playing to the freak mob

Confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominees are mostly just opportunities for political grandstanding. Senator Josh Hawley, for instance, is shoring up his Trumpist/Q-anon conspiracy theorist base, suggesting that Judge Jackson’s judicial record on cases involving child sex offenders is somehow troubling. The specific language he’s using is crafted to appeal directly to the Q crowd, who espouse a retread version of the blood libel. Democrats are pedophiles, he’s suggesting, and this judge is enabling them.

Hawley’s concern for the children moves me close to tears. I can think of one easy way he could have made a difference in the lives of literally millions of American children: support the child tax credit. Of course, he voted against it, along with all of his Republican colleagues. Democrats might want to remind people of this from time to time. They might also want to remind people of Hawley’s support for the insurrectionists who attacked the capitol January 6, 2021.

Ancient grievances

Now, I don’t want to suggest that there was a “good old days” when this sort of political grandstanding didn’t happen. There was maybe a bit more congeniality back in the 1990s and before, but these hearings were still a freak show. Back when Orrin Hatch was the ranking member and Strom Thurmond the former chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Hatch opened every confirmation hearing with a long, drippy appreciation of Thurmond, a life-long confirmed segregationist shit-bum. No lie – I heard it at least twice.

The Republican’s evident resentment of Democrats on the committee stems back to the Bork hearings in 1987. Even then conservatives dominated the Court, and while Bork was turned down by the Senate, another conservative jurist, Anthony Kennedy, was confirmed instead. GOP senators at least affect to still be mad about Bork, about Thomas, and certainly about Kavanaugh, suggesting that Democrats are wild-eyed extremists attacking poor unsuspecting Republicans as they leave the office at the end of the day. Would that they were.

The humanitarian gambit

Russia’s murderous attack on Ukraine continues, as do the corporate media personalities who argue for America’s entry into the war. It is nothing less than this. They are now pushing the humanitarian intervention line – the one first used to blow things up in the Balkans in the 1990s, later trotted out for Iraq and Libya. Mika Brzezinski on Morning Joe suggested to Biden’s pentagon spokesperson that not intervening might “make us look weak”.

They are using this to chip away at the administration’s resistance to direct military involvement in Ukraine. The left needs to be unified on this – no entry into this war, period. War with Russia is not an option, and hasn’t been for more than 75 years. We need to remind people of this simple, obvious fact – nuclear war means the end of organized human society, period. There is no justification for that level of risk to every living thing.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.

Usual Rubbish

Put it all in the basket, if it fits

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2000 Years to Christmas

Well, now, I’m not sure we need that. At least, not in that quantity. And for god’s sake, none of those. What are we, made of money? Budget, my little friend, budget!

Oh … hi, everybody. Allow me to pretend that I didn’t know you were there. (Thank you for that indulgence.) You just caught us in the midst of a semi-monthly shopping trip. We go to the big market in the middle of this very humble little town and wheel a cart around. Then, once we’ve realized that we don’t have enough money to fill the cart, we push that aside and pick up a shopping basket.

No trouble like money trouble

You know what they say. There’s no reek that beats ass, and there’s no trouble that beats broke. (Is that really what they say? Well …. someone says it somewhere, I’ll wager.) Shopping trips always remind us of how little capital we have to work with. And before you crypto currency freaks start jumping all over my shit with investment opportunities and NFTs, let me emphasize that NO, WE DO NOT HAVE ANY MONEY. WE CAN’T EVEN FILL A SHOPPING CART.

Now that I’ve said that, let me contradict myself. We can afford small things. Not small diamonds, mind you, or little bits of gold. No, things like leeks, individual walnuts, an apple or two. (If we keep going with this, we could end up with a waldorf salad.) In any case, I don’t want to paint too grim a picture. We don’t want any pity – no pity, no thank you. No THANK you. (For more about the significance of this phrase, see Rod Steiger in In The Heat Of The Night.)

Just forget it, Abe. We ain't got the scratch.

Shameless plea for help

Okay, now I’m going to contradict myself again. The thing is, with prices on the rise (and I know you’re heard all about it), we’re getting less and less into that little shopping basket. For instance, instead of five leeks, we’re down to three. We even have to ask the nut monger to cut a walnut in half for us. Can’t imagine the dirty looks we get when we make these requests. It’s humiliating …. JUST HUMILIATING.

The thing is, you can help … and it won’t cost you a dime. Let me ‘splain. There’s a little thing out there called the internets. Turns out, you can listen to music over the internets through a variety of means. Maybe you have Spotify, or Apple Music, or Amazon Music, or whatever the fuck. Okay, so go to one of these services and look up Big Green – particularly our albums, 2000 Years To Christmas or International House – and play any one (or several) of the tracks. In fact, just build a playlist of both albums and run them on a loop while you cook dinner (and perhaps listen to something else on another device).

Mother lode of sorts

Now, if you’re subscribed to one of these services, the fee for playing our songs is zilch. But we get valuable revenue. It’s an astronomical return. By that I mean, like with a distant star, you need a telescope to see it. I think we get $0.000978 per play on our tracks, but I may be exaggerating. That’s the miracle of the digital marketplace at work, my friends.

Of course, that adds up over the centuries. Who knows – there may come a time in the distant future when we can afford maybe six or seven leeks in out shopping basket.

Political Rants

While you were looking over there

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As Russia continues to do what Russia always does, this time in Ukraine, other atrocities try to keep pace. The Saudis put 81 people to death this past week in one of their execution sprees. Ali AlAhmed shared some photos of the victims on Twitter, and it’s worth scrolling through the list just to afford these people a small portion of the humanity being accorded, quite rightly, to Ukrainians.

Then, of course, there’s Yemen – still Yemen. Over the weekend, UNICEF reported that almost 50 children were killed or maimed in January alone, adding to the more than 10,000 child casualties recorded since the war began, with our nod and crucial material support, in 2015. Yemen remains among the worst humanitarian crises in the world, and yet it has fallen from the front page, particularly in America.

Proximity, proximity is everything

It’s not surprising or outrageous that the mainstream corporate media, and much of the independent media, spends most of their time on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It’s a huge story, and it should be reported on. But some crises fail to command the attention that Ukraine has garnered over the past three weeks. Yemen is chief among them, but certainly not the only instance.

The reason? Impossible to be precise, but it’s not hard to discern a pattern. If an atrocity is being committed by an official enemy, it is all over the media. If, on the other hand, the atrocity is being committed by us or by a close ally, it gets much, much less coverage, by and large. Count the number of stories about the war in Yemen that have run in U.S. major media. You will have fingers left over. Now compare that with this wall-to-wall Ukraine coverage.

Conclusion: Ukraine is being attacked by someone we don’t like; Yemen is being attacked by an ally who’s dependent on our help to conduct the war. The less likely it is that we can stop a war, the more likely it is that our media will focus on it.

Sticking to what you know

Russia’s military, at Putin’s behest, is doing what they know how to do: blowing things up. That’s how they get people to bend to their will. It’s the sharpest imperial tool in their toolbox by far. They destroy whole cities and drive people into the wilderness. That’s all they know.

Bombs, missiles, shells, and bullets are what’s available to Putin. But he doesn’t have a corner on imperialism. The United States, on the other hand, has more than one way to skin a country. When we put a nation under sanction, it hurts very badly. We can shut off access to international financial institutions. We can starve whole populations and ruin their public health infrastructure. This is what we did to Iraq in the 1990s and early 2000s, between two spates of bombing. That’s how we bent them to our will.

Russia doesn’t have that. If they sanction someone, it doesn’t mean much. They don’t have anywhere near the leverage of the U.S. in international finance. All they have is the bombs.

Finding the exit

Maddeningly, this attack on Ukraine, all in the space of a few weeks, is doing what was done in Yemen, in Syria, in Iraq at the height of those conflicts – destroying societal infrastructure on a massive scale. Much as you have to admire the Ukrainians’ courage and stubbornness, I hope the sides aren’t getting so entrenched that some settlement can’t be reached.

This war will end. The question is, how much of Ukraine will survive that long? If Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and others are any indication, it’s better to find a way to settlement sooner rather than later. I think that’s one channel by which the international community can help.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Usual Rubbish

What the hell is next – a boat ride?

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2000 Years to Christmas

Yeah, we tried that. Nobody makes money doing that shit any more. Think of something else. What? Oh, god no. That’s not even a thing, dude. Where have you been for the last forty years? Right here? Oh, that’s right. Never mind.

Well, here we are, friends, facing the onset of another spring in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. This may be our twentieth, but I’m not entirely certain. Somebody page back through the blog posts. Don’t stop until you see Trevor James Constable and some dude who looks like a nebula. (If you run across Big Zamboola, you’re getting closer.)

Nickel’s worth of difference

Times being what they are, we’ve been scraping around for new ways to make a few bucks. So far, no luck. I’ve been polling everyone in our little entourage for new ideas. Even old ideas are welcome, so long as they come with a 90 day warranty. Trouble is, the members of our entourage pretty much don’t have lives, so they’ve got nothing new to say that we haven’t all heard fifteen times. It’s somewhat discouraging, I will allow.

Today antimatter Lincoln was piping up with a few tarnished gems. He suggested doing something called matching pennies, which apparently is a game for two people who have nothing better to do than to slap pennies on a wooden table in hopes of filling their pockets with loose change. Back in the day, he used to raise fifty, maybe a hundred pennies in a single day playing this game. When I slapped that idea down, he suggested something called matching nickels.

Hey, that penny matches your face.

New ideas in old bottles

I suppose when all else fails, we could just play music and ask people to pay us, like we used to do when we were younger. But where’s the challenge in that? It just sounds too easy. Aside from that, we live in the middle of nowhere. Actually, it’s more like the outskirts of nowhere. There aren’t a lot of good venues in this burg, my friend. Not that any good venues would hire us, but … well, you know what I mean.

Of course, back in the day, I would play practically any gig to keep the lights on. I played in clubs, in fields, in hotels, on boats, at casinos – you name it. One time I did a gig with a Dixieland band on a cheesy cruise ship. It’s the kind of thing you flog your way through, mostly fail at, then slink away with your pockets full of ill-gotten gains. Did I care, really? Nah. It was a job, man, just a job. But I was twenty-something then, and a bit short on brains.

Hey, check this out

All this week I’ve been posting songs from that April 1987 Factory Village gig on our YouTube Channel. Take a look and check out Big Green co-founder Ned Danison and me backing up our late friend, songwriter Dale Haskell, on stage at QE2 in Albany, NY – Eleven tracks in all, opening for Love Tractor.

Political Rants

Meeting the indefensible with the unthinkable

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The onslaught continues, in more ways than one. Putin’s wholly unjustified invasion of Ukraine is entering its third week with no end in sight. At the same time, the corporate media is propagandizing the living hell out of the conflict, platforming rhetoric that could lead to World War III. Nothing less than that.

The Biden Administration has thus far remained cautious with regard to involving the U.S. or NATO directly in Ukraine. They deserve some credit for that, though I’m not sure what the appropriate prize is for NOT burning down the house. Of course, the neocon wing of the Republican party and the various networks are pushing hard to get Biden to agree to some crazy shit. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at how irresponsible they’re being, but it is kind of shocking.

Preaching to the choir

I can’t remember a time when the media worked so hard to convince the American people to support something they already agree with. Their coverage of Ukraine is wall-to-wall, and there’s a meme-like repetitiveness to the content they’re pushing out. I have seen that little boy crying while he’s walking up the street so many times. Then there’s the armed men in the balaclavas who talk about revenge on the Russians and demand a no-fly zone.

I’m not denying the authenticity or even the heartrending nature of some of these clips. But their repetition seems to have a point – we should be doing more. And when the corporate media talks about doing more, it’s always in the context of a conversation with a general. They have been entranced with the U.S. military since the Gulf War, and the national security state is their go-to source on how to end a conflict.

There’s a reason why a majority of Americans support a no-fly zone in Ukraine: they hear it talked about incessantly on T.V. Even when the commentators say it’s a bad idea, the conversation continues as if there’s some controversy.

The planes, boss, the planes

Then there’s the debate over delivering fighter planes to the Ukrainians. Someone cooked up a plan to have Poland give them 26 old MIGs in return for new planes from the United States. The Poles reasonably considered this a bad idea, as it would make it seem as though they were directly involved in the conflict. Then they doubled back and suggested the United States do the transfer via a base in Germany. Not so good.

This story has been hashed over by the press almost incessantly. Very few, however, have questioned the utility of this effort on Ukraine’s behalf. Where would they base these planes, or keep the Russians from bombing them to bits on the first day? How would these 40-year-old MIGs fare against a far larger, modern Russian air force? This is totally beside the fact that such an obvious move would be tantamount to joining the fight in earnest. And yet, the conversation continues, in part because the Ukrainians want the planes, like they want the no-fly zone.

Backing away from the brink

It is incumbent upon those of us who are still sane to encourage the administration and the political class more generally not to make the mistake of becoming a combatant in this war. While many have seemingly forgotten that we are living on a nuclear powder keg, the rest of us need to encourage our fellow Americans not to play with matches.

This is not 1939, folks, Churchill allusions notwithstanding. There were no nukes in 1939. Russia is not prewar Germany, which was the world’s greatest industrial and military power at the time. This is more like 2003, when a rogue superpower decided to defy the world and invade another country for no good reason. There can be no Russo-American war – not now, not ever. Not if the world is to survive. It’s that simple.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Usual Rubbish

Putting the pieces back together

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2000 Years to Christmas

Yeah, I checked that drawer. And the one below it. Jesus, I checked all of them, okay? It’s simply not there. And no, the lizard people didn’t steal it during the night. We would have heard them, Abe, and incidentally …. THERE ARE NO LIZARD PEOPLE ON THIS PLANET.

Hoo, man. You have to talk until you’re green in the face before people get the idea around here. Especially with someone like anti-matter Lincoln, who believes every conspiracy theory he hears on YouTube or Instagram or whatever the fuck. I mean, the guy’s positronic doppelganger was assassinated, so he sees plots everywhere. I suppose it’s hard to trust in times like these … especially when you’re Lincoln.

As anniversaries go …

Well, it should surprise no one that Big Green has reached its coral anniversary. That’s right – the traditional gift on your thirty-fifth is not the Electric Light Orchestra box set, it’s some ossified sea exoskeletons. Hope you enjoy! No question but that 35 years is a long effing time to be together, whatever the hell you’re doing or even trying to do. No wonder people are throwing sea-floor rocks at each other.

So, what does the coral anniversary mean? That your marriage is hung up on the reef? Could explain a lot about Big Green, am I right? We haven’t put out an album since 2013’s Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. Not that anyone is counting (aside from me), but that’s the second longest time we’ve gone between albums. Of course, the irony is that we’ve actually already recorded several albums worth of material yet to be released.

The reason for the ceasin’

So, what is our excuse for this behavior? I’m going to go with laziness. We’re a bunch of useless layabouts, no good to anyone. Ask Marvin (my personal robot assistant) – he does most of the heavy lifting around here. The only break he gets from heavy lifting is when he’s doing all of the light lifting. Some might think this arrangement leaves us with more time to create content, but we seldom take the opportunity to do so.

Turns out you're right. We're just a bunch of lazy mothers.

I suppose it’s fair to point out that this isn’t the first fallow period we’ve gone through as a group. Even at our inception, when most bands are hopping around like jackrabbits, looking for the next venue, we were kind of … um …. meh. We did rehearsals. We recorded. We wrote. But gigs? Not so many that first year. In fact, I was playing in other bands just to keep the lights on.

Up from the archives

Speaking of other bands, I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I found an old tape of a gig Big Green co-founder Ned Danison and I played back in 1987, when we were just getting the band started. The video is grainy and the sound is pretty bad, but I digitized it anyway and started throwing it up on YouTube. The gig was in support of the release of our friend Dale Haskell’s album Factory Village, and it was captured on video by another friend, crack photographer Leif Zurmuhlen.

Check out the playlist if you want to see Ned and me framming away on stage at Albany’s famed QE2 club. And while you’re there on YouTube, try to avoid those rabbit holes anti-Lincoln is always falling into.

Political Rants

All the wrong parts of being right

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It’s been a busy week in politics and public policy, like drinking from a fire hose. In addition to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, the State of the Union was on Tuesday night, not to mention primaries in Texas. Of course, the attack on Ukraine is dominating the news, and understandably so. There’s nothing right about Russia’s campaign.

Personally, I am all in favor of extensive press coverage during wartime. What we’re seeing, though, in the United States is the propaganda machine kicking into high gear. Yes, it’s in support of the Ukrainian people, and yes, that’s the right position to take, but the level of overblown hyper patriotic romanticized treatment of war and resistance is really disturbing. That’s in part because I’ve seen this machine running on all cylinders before, and that never leads to good things.

Here are some of the things that bug me about mainstream coverage of the conflict:

They’re like us. And so are their lawns.

We’ve heard this from multiple correspondents on multiple news outlets. Sam Seder’s Majority Report talked about the phenomenon on Monday. They look like us, not like “refugees”. They’re prosperous, Christian, and, well, white. They’ve got homes and lives much like ours and could even live in the same neighborhood. Therefore, they are more worthy of our sympathy than those grimy old middle easterners.

Now, I should point out that these observations come in the midst of vital reporting about what’s happening in Ukraine. That coverage is essential, whether it’s delivered by major networks or by lowly citizen journalists. I just wish to hell they would cover every war with this level of energy, particularly ones like the Yemen conflict, which literally could not continue without our active help.

The mythical “no-fly zone”

The suggestion of a no-fly zone over Ukraine has been advanced by a number of people, including officials of the Ukrainian government. I don’t know what’s in those officials’ minds, but people over here don’t have a clear idea of how such a zone works. For one thing, it’s typically employed against developing nations who step out of line, like Iraq, which effectively had no air force.

Contrary to popular belief, no-fly zones are not a magic impenetrable shield. It involves deploying forces in mass, shooting down enemy (i.e. Russian) aircraft, when necessary, and keeping it up over the long term. If we were to undertake such a strategy, it would mean World War III. How that would help the Ukrainians is unclear to me. In fact, what’s abundantly clear is that this is the worst conceivable outcome and should be avoided at all costs. Crazy talk.

Kindness of strangers (or lack of same)

Over the past few days, I’ve been hearing television commentators wax poetic about the generosity of Ukraine’s neighboring countries with respect to their acceptance of refugees. On Morning Joe, panel members were gushing to Mika Brzezinski about how proud her father (architect of the first Afghan war) would have been of the Polish government.

What they haven’t been talking about so much is how the Poles are treating African and Indian residents of Ukraine who show up at their border. Democracy Now! covered this on Wednesday, and it isn’t pretty. But then Poland, like some other countries in the region, has a long record of turning away dark-skinned people. So much for the pride of Dr. Brzezinski.

Nuclear blackmail goes both ways

Putin made a big show of putting his nuclear forces on high alert. It’s not clear what this means exactly, but it’s been all over U.S. television, and it is unnerving, as it should be. What should be a much larger story, though, is the obvious fact that the United States maintains an effective first-strike policy with respect to nuclear weapons. That is to say, we have always refused to rule out first use. That is an implicit threat that the entire world, including Russia, has had to live with for more than seventy years. (See Dan Ellsberg’s book, The Doomsday Machine, for the full story.)

Bottom line, this is becoming a full orchestra of emotionally potent, manipulative coverage blasting out across multiple channels. Even though it’s obvious that a neo-fascist Russian government is unjustly attacking Ukraine, we need to keep our bearings. Don’t get swept away. We’ve seen this play before, and it doesn’t end well.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Usual Rubbish

Putting the strings on your banjo

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2000 Years to Christmas

See, here’s the thing – I don’t even use a pick. I just slam the damn thing with my thumb. Yes, it’s primitive. Yes, it’s painful. But it gets the job done, sort of. So turn up the heat on that cookpot, dude. We’ve got some strings to boil!

Hiya, folks. Yeah, you guessed it – we’re boiling old strings, home style, so that we can reuse them. I snapped the top string on my Martin, framming away on some random cover song, and well … someone stole my pin money. You know … the pin money I use to buy strings. Why, you may ask, wouldn’t I just use string money? Simple – because I need that money for cooking oil. Do I have to explain EVERYTHING, for crying out loud?

The mechanical guitar tech

I would be the first person to admit that we are not a stage-ready band. It’s been a long while since we played anywhere, and we’re rusty as an old hinge. And as any working musician knows, you need to have your systems in place if you expect to sustain yourselves through a long-ish tour. I mean, it’s not like the old days, when we just packed up the broken down van and drove off … until it broke down. Then when we fixed it in the middle of the road, we got arrested, and …. well … it’s not like that now.

We always flew pretty low to the ground, frankly. Lord knows we would do things differently today. For one thing, I would press gang Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to be not only our roadie foreman, but my own personal guitar tech. That fucker can spin his wrists like a power drill, so it’s easy for him to do a quick string change. Mitch Macaphee even built a strobe tuner into his audio circuit. He’s like a freaking Swiss army knife (except no plastic toothpick).

Ain't you got that thing all strung up yet? Geeez ...

Line, please!

Then there’s the lyrics. It’s enough to test anyone’s memory. We could tape them to our mic stands, but that looks so damn lame. Matt could carry them around on his phone, but if he’s scrolling that infernal contraption with two hands, how’s he going to play his bass? And on top of that, he’s got about two million songs, so the lyrics would stack up to the ceiling, several times.

I guess we could get Marvin to feed us lyrics as we play, like a automatronic music stand. Too many jobs for our little brass friend? Nonsense! Why, I’ve seen him do a dozen things at the same time, though admittedly it was really just the same thing done a dozen times real fast. But sure, he could change my strings and hold up lyrics at the same time. It would hardly even begin to get in the way of his other duties.

Bootleggers and scalpers abound

I took a cursory look around the Internets this week and I ran across something I don’t see every day. It was some dude selling our third album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, on Ebay. Now that was strange enough, as we only pressed about three or four dozen discs at the time. What was even more astonishing was that I saw it on offer by someone else on Ebay who was selling it as a UK import! And the price point, people, the price point: $30!

Naturally, I wrote the dude and told him, hey … if he sells it for $30, we’ve got more where that came from. Place your bets, people, place your bets!

Official site of the band Big Green