Tag Archives: earthquake

Taking the rap for unlicensed cyber busking

May 7, 2021 Joe Leave a comment

Can you just hold the camera still, man? I look like I’m playing on the Titanic …. or maybe the Lusitania. One of those big boats that went down, but not before a lot of rocking. And speaking of rocking …. HOLD THE DAMN CAMERA STILL!

Oh, hi, out there in cyber land. It’s your old friends Big Green, here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. (No connection to the former Vice President or the current congress member from Wyoming.) Now, I’m sure you’ve heard all about how hard this pandemic has been on musicians and other performers, with the possible exception of mimes. (Wherever they gig, they’re safe from COVID if they stay behind that glass wall.) Well, it’s certainly been hard on us.

Hard times in the city

How hard, you ask? Thank you for asking! Well, our finances were in the sewer before the pandemic hit. And of course, most of our gigs are played on other planets in other solar systems, but once those space aliens heard about COVID, none of them would grant us space visas. That means no space gigs, no space tour, and no space gold. Bing, bang, bong. (No accident that that story ends with a bong.)

What about conventional work, you say. Don’t be ridiculous! The only work you can get around here is baking bread or carrying boxes for slave wages so low that people do better by staying home and collecting unemployment. So that’s what we’re doing, minus the collecting unemployment part. But as always, we need a revenue stream – one that will run straight through this mill. (I’d settle for a revenue creek.)

So, we’re doing what a lot of bands do nowadays – cyber busking. We’re breaking out the guitar and playing random songs into the void of the internet, in hopes that some ether-like value will come floating back to us like bread upon the waters. Well I know that SOUNDS like a good idea, but it turns out to be more complicated than anyone might have imagined.

Feeling the earth move

For one thing, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) can’t hold a web cam still to save his batteries. All of our performances look like a cheap summer stock production of The Last Days of Pompeii, the musical, special effects provided by a DUMB ASS AUTOMATON! Of course, we can’t afford a steadycam … so it’s the shaky cam for us.

Another thing we can’t afford: lawsuits! We made the questionable choice of playing some covers. First came the copyright strikes. Then came the cops and lawyers. I’ve asked our mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee, to come up with some … um … scientific remedy to this problem, but it turns out HE’S afraid of the law, too. So … looks like it’s back to original material for us. Or just very poorly rendered versions of pop songs.

Usual Rubbish

Magma cum laude.

May 11, 2018 Joe Leave a comment

Some people count to ten when they’re angry. Others resort to a punching bag or maybe a mattress stood up against the wall. I’ve known people to shut themselves in a closet and scream bloody murder. But THIS … THIS is outrageous.

Remind me, next time I start a band, don’t … repeat, don’t have a mad science advisor. Sure, they can help you out in a pinch, like that time we needed to get to that gig on Neptune and our van had broken down. Or that other time when I needed a personal robot assistant. Thing is, they are so freaking mercurial. (In Mitch Macaphee’s case, I think the reason for that may be that he just spent way too much time on the planet Mercury.) And when the act out, it can have profound consequences.

I’ve never even come close to being a scientist, but when I was a kid – like most American kids – I built a plaster volcano. Pretty sure Mitch did so when he was young, only his little ‘cano burned down his elementary school and his mates had to spend the rest of the semester attending class in a cornfield. Well … Mitch is at it again, apparently THIS time setting his sites on the Big Island in Hawaii. How do I know he’s the cause of the recent eruptions? Just have a feeling, that’s all. He’s been spending an awful lot of time in that lab of his. And I’ve been hearing a lot of rumbling just lately.

I always get a little nervous when Mitch starts messing around with plate tectonics. It recalls to my mind the protagonist in Matt’s song “Why Not Call It George?” – himself a kind of mad scientist, tinkering with the inner workings of our unruly little planet:

Is that thing loaded? Continental drift can be reversed
Great tumblers shift
And Pangaea can be reclaimed
After me it can be renamed
Why not call it George?
Call it George, after me

While we don’t have a lot of tectonic activity in our neighborhood, it does get a little shaky once in a long while. And with Mitch Macaphee still pissed off about those NASA shots of Jupiter, I wouldn’t be surprised if those tremors get a little closer together. We might even wake up to aggravated volcanism, and I don’t mean the plaster variety. (Note to self: order those fireproof goulashes.)

Political Rants

Radioactive.

March 18, 2011 Joe Leave a comment

It’s a little hard to boil down everything that has taken place this week into a single blog entry, so I won’t even try. As has become my habit, I will take brief swings at a couple of topics and let the chips fall where they may.

Japan Agonistes. Something like a triplet of biblical plagues have settled upon Japan, and all three share a grim history with that unfortunate nation. They are no strangers to severe earthquakes and tsunamis, the latter of which, by no accident, is known around the globe by its Japanese name. Nuclear disaster is, of course, something we first introduced them to at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It bears reminding that the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was built on a design mapped out by General Electric – one long thought to be vulnerable to this kind of disaster. What possessed otherwise smart people to build such a plant on the coast of Japan is beyond me, particularly given Japan’s unique experience with the depredations of nuclear radiation.

Clearly no reactor is designed to withstand 9.0 earthquakes and colossal, history-making tsunamis – this one least of all, which at last look appeared from above like an ashtray at the end of an all-night poker game. One can only guess at what the long-term effects of this disaster will be. As one commentator recently put it, we all (those here since 1986, at least) have a piece of Chernobyl in us. Likely we will soon have some Fukushima Daiichi alongside it. (The knowledge that structurally similar plants are operating all over the U.S. is particularly sobering, as well.)

Cavalry Coming? The U.N. Security Council has approved 10-0 (with 5 abstentions) a resolution on Libya authorizing a no-fly zone and other measures as deemed necessary. Gaddafi has called a cease-fire in the wake of this decision, though reports from the country demonstrate that this is a hollow charade. I can’t say that I am overjoyed with the thought of the United States stumbling into this conflict. We seldom make things better; more often, much worse. (We also fuck it up when we do nothing – see Bahrain.) It’s hard, though, to listen to the voices of those people in Benghazi and not want to help. I just wonder how much help dropping bombs will prove to be. We would be “taking out” air defense installations. What are these? In essence, they are people – Libyan people with families, clan relations, etc.

Killing is never a simple matter. The best thing we in the West might have done for these people is not to have sold their crackpot leader weapons in the first place.

luv u,

BIG GREEN