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Usual Rubbish

Freakenstein.

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I know. I shouldn’t have interrupted him with my petty complaints. He’s a mad scientist, not a T.V. and stereo repair man. My bad, totally. Dude.

Oh, yes… that’s right. We are not the only ones reading this. Sorry out there in the blogosphere. Big Green is in the midst of a band meeting of sorts. No, we don’t typically do these. Like most groups, we all live together in our funky (i.e. “groovy”) musician bachelor pad, with the retro sixties modular furniture and gooseneck lamps of the type you might find in Darrin Stevens’ house (assuming he actually had a house and not just a set that is, in essence, a house sawed in half). My point is…. um … (yes… it was a house sawed in half, perhaps by some kind of witchcraft, or … craft services….) Damn it!

Okay, I’ll stay on point. We’re meeting about that thing, that bloodthirsty killer. No, not “The Thing”, as in the sci-fi movie “The Thing”. I mean the thing that Mitch Macaphee created in his spare time. He was working on it last week when I tried to pull him off so he could fix our monitor power amp. Simple work for a genius, right? I mean, he freaking invented Marvin (my personal robot assistant) using spare parts, bailing wire, etc.  Well, he had some more spare parts and, as I said, some spare time, and …. well … he invented some kind of killin’ machine.

What is it called? You may well ask. After all, how else are you going to avoid it, right? Mitch isn’t really good at names. I mean, we call it Freakenstein, but that’s just because we’re not really good at names either. Only Mitch can control it; only he can call it back. But Mitch is like the stereotypical insurance salesman of mad scientists. Once he sells a policy, you never hear from him again. That’s the way Mitch works. He builds something, sets it loose on an unsuspecting public, and then forgets about it. On to the next thing. And if it goes on a mad rampage, well… that’s as it may be.   

How can you protect yourself? Well… I asked Mitch, and the only thing that will ward Freakenstein off is that helmet Mr. Spock wears – you know the one. You saw it in the Montgomery Ward Christmas catalog every year, right? Well…. should’ve asked Santa for it back in 1967, because that’s the thing that scares the fertilizer out of Freakenstein.  

 Okay…. band meeting over. I move to adjourn. Anyone second? Freakenstein seconds. Meeting is adj….   FREAKENSTEIN?!?

Usual Rubbish

Sing it loud.

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Blowout. Another switch gone. Our gear is in the toilet, my friend. Aging, threadbare … disgusting. Oh, well.

Yep, we’ve got technical difficulties. Nothing new. Last week it was Marvin (my personal robot assistant) that went on the blink. No, I mean literally – he wouldn’t stop blinking. I think it’s all that time he spent taking phone calls when our voicemail broke down. Poor tin bastard. Then there goes another diode, and here we are on a tight budget, just like the rest of America. (Even Mitch, his creator, is too busy to tend to him.) Mother of pearl. Still, I suppose we can do without a power amp. We can just pretend we have active speakers instead of passive, and the power of imagination will carry the day. As it always does. The end.

Right, well…. we’re not typically given to wishful thinking here at Big Green. No, we are practical mofo’s, not those flighty kinda imagineering mofo’s you read about in the Sunday paper.  Fact is, we’re recording an album and we need to freaking hear the bastard – we all admit that. To deny it would be just plain silly.

What’s the album about? Glad you asked. Give a listen to the last episode of our podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN, wherein I believe we give a rough explanation of the project. I believe we do – don’t quote me on that. It’s probably somewhere between our seventeen apologies for the previous month’s episode and our airing of cousin Rick Perry’s latest song, “Come Back Mean”, which features the immortal lyric:

Kick me a dog
Go scour the neighborhood
Bring me the best kickin’ dog you can find
Go get me Planned Parenthood

Old Rick is singing from the heart right there. (Though it does sound eerily reminiscent of another organ slightly to the south.)

Yes, so… we’re taking all of cousin Rick’s songs, polishing them up a little bit, and placing them on a long playing record (a.k.a. a bunch of MP3s) where they can be downloaded by the likes of you. What you’re hearing on the podcast are “first drafts” – rough mixes of basic tracks. What you will hear on the final album (working title: “Cowboy Scat”) will be finished pieces (of something), which in many cases may sound…. substantially like the podcast versions …. but (and this is important) not necessarily!

Okay, well… I’ve wandered a bit. Nothing new there. Ooops. And there goes the light switch. Technology!

Usual Rubbish

Rooms to let.

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Right up those stairs … watch your step, now … is the master bedroom. The one with the stagnant puddles in the middle of the floor. That’s where that drip in the living room is coming from. We’re conserving water, you see. “Big Green” has to stand for something.

Oh, hello blog post readers from around the world (and Italy, too). This may not be the best time to drop by. I’m taking a potential renter on the grand tour of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our palatial squat here in upstate New York. Times being what they are (and gigs being pretty thin on the ground just lately), we have been forced to consider the possibility of taking on tenants. Yes, I advertised in the local Pennysaver. (Someone said I should move up to the Nickelsaver, but I’m not made of money, frankly.) Gotten quite a few calls, at least by Marvin (my personal robot assistant)’s count. He’s answering the phone, which is helpful… but I’m a little tired of the voicemail routine every time I ask him something.

I know what you’re going to say … but that’s okay, go ahead and say it anyway. You know – the trope about how we’re squatters, we don’t own the property, we have no right to rent it out to others. Sure, sure – that’s easy for non-squatters to say. The way I see it, once you’ve been somewhere for a dozen years, you’ve earned the right to, I don’t know, monetize your investment of time and sweat. We’ve put a lot of time into this place, to be sure. Not so much sweat, actually – it’s falling down around our ears. But time, for sure.

That’s not all we’re monetizing around this place. We’re also renting out pages on our new Web site, http://www.big-green.net. We’re offering the services of Lincoln and Anti-Lincoln as legal advisors. (Not lawyers, mind you. They’re no longer members of the bar association, unless you count the local tavern circuit.) We’re renting out the mansized tuber as a pleasure vehicle – very popular with the kiddies. And we’ve opened our basement studio up to karaoke singers. Should generate some interesting content for our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN, at the very least.

Oops, got to go. Matt’s hitting a rack tom with a stick and playing a kazoo like a duck call. And there’s no live mic nearby.

Usual Rubbish

What the frank.

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Frank, dropped it again. Gosh darn the blankety-heck. What the bacon-and-eggs is the matter with this motor-trucking washing machine? Cheese and crackers!

Oh, yeah… it’s that time of the week again. Time for all of you out there in cyberspace to peek inside the mad vortex of Big Green’s life here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. Sorry about all of that salty language a moment ago. Our clothes washing device (enormously handy invention) is no longer operating properly, causing frustration, even something akin to anger and resentment. Strange, we humans. I do hope my outburst didn’t cause you any consternation. If needed, counseling is available on Big Green’s counseling page.

Okay, so… as you can see, I have been remanded to sensitivity training. I’m having to edit my language (What the frank! Who in hades do these rubber chuckers think they are?) and regularly evince concern over the effect my words and actions may be having on those who experience them. You see, ever since Matt and I started our podcast, THIS IS BIG GREEN (the April episode has just been posted, btw ), we’ve had to be a bit more mindful of the things that fall randomly out of our mouths when a microphone is placed in front of us. I, for one, have said some hurtful things … things I have had cause to regret. Oh, yes … words that hurt.

What precisely? Well…. listen to the March podcast and you’ll get an idea. For instance, typically we pay our respects to fallen celebrities. Last month it was Davy Jones of the Monkees and Andrew Breitbart of the Interwebs. As Matt pointed out on the air, I was a little less than sufficiently solemn about our remembrance. (I believe I went so far as to suggest Davy may have been taken by primate poachers, which was wrong … just wrong.) This month’s episode is no improvement, and I’m sure I’ll be apologizing when May rolls around. Thank god this isn’t a weekly show! I’ve already said things I regret since posting it. There isn’t enough sensitivity training in the universe for the likes of me.

Fortunately, we have Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to monitor our transgressions. It takes a robot, they say. Or a village. Same deal.

Usual Rubbish

Anudder home.

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Where did I put my html tags? I thought I packed them with my socks, but they don’t appear to be in there. WFT, man…. getting a new home is always such a pain.

No, friends. We have not abandoned the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. That would be something you might expect from the department of redundancy department (of redundancy). We have, however, abandoned our old web site and moved into a new one, designed by, I don’t know, professional web designers… as opposed to my sorry ass, who threw together our last site with Front Page and some tweezers … not to mention some cracked old photo manipulation software. Yeah, that’s right. Do I have to draw you a picture? (Actually… that would have been better than what came out of that software.)

Anywho… out with the old, in with the new. We’ve been using WordPress for Hammermill Days (and, earlier, Notes from Sri Lanka) for over five years, and so we thought, hey, why not build the whole freaking site using the same software? It actually works, you can edit it from anywhere using a Web browser…. How easy is that? Too easy! That’s what Mitch Macaphee says. Being a mad scientist, he thinks things should be hard … at least as hard as building Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was. Sure, he built Marvin out of spare parts and bric-a-brac he had lying about his lab, but that doesn’t mean it was easy. Building a sentient being never is, my friends.

Now, the cynical and suspicious-minded amongst you (and you all know who you are) will imagine that this web site face lift is all about our supreme ambition to become special assistants to inevitable president-elect and future king of the moon Newt Gingrich; that we somehow abandoned and discarded our illin’, aging old web site for a shiny, sexy younger one, like … well, like … something some politician did once. That is a dirty lie. Fact is, we have already been invited by Newt Gingrich – future president and current Lincoln in his own mind – to advise him on interplanetary relations including, most specifically, his plans for our nearest neighbor in space. In point of fact, we will be a bit like the late Richard Holbrook, who was given the Af-Pak portfolio. (We will be in charge of the Moon, Mars, and Saturn, so it might be called the LunaMaSa portfolio, in media culture shorthand-speak.)

So anyway… welcome to Big Green’s new home on the Web. Take a look around. Kick the tires. Leave comments. Move in to one of the pages and order expensive dinners. Glad to have yuh.  

 

Usual Rubbish

Fruit cup.

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These are indeed auspicious days to be Big Green. What the hell am I talking about? I was hoping you would know, good browser.

Yes, just hanging about at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, assembling the next podcast of THIS IS BIG GREEN. Uh-huh, that’s right – we personally assemble each episode by hand. (And no, that’s not the royal “we” – I in fact have a mouse in my pocket.) It’s painstaking work. Ironing out the dross, cutting the vulgarities, tuning up the music, tweaking the costumes (oh yes … we wear costumes on our audio podcast). It is details like these that make for great podcasts. Ours is not one, but … we use the same means that the greats use, with less than great results. I’m being honest, okay. YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT? (You do? My apologies.)

Okay, so that takes some time. What do we do with the other 23.5 hours in the day? Well…. we’ve actually got a project ahead of us. Yes, another project. It’s not one of those diorama things you used to build for show and tell – you know, a box depicting the battle of the Monitor and the Merrimac, with a starfish thrown in for good measure. Then if you do particularly well on your in-class presentation, you get a little reward – perhaps a star sticker, or an extra fruit cup at lunch time. That’s all good, until you run into that bruiser out on the playground, whose dad left town with some floozie from the Shriners circus last year, and who’s been going around with a chip on his shoulder ever since, and who apparently owns all the playground equipment because if you even go NEAR the see-saw he’ll break you in half, and …

Right… well, I strayed a bit. The project. Remember, way back in the year 2000, when we briefly hooked up with Dubya Bush while he was out on the campaign trail, sharing our interstellar tour bus with the soon-to-be president of these here United States? Well, it helps to know people – that’s all I can say. One introduction leads to another. Because of our experience with extraterrestrial constituencies, the Gingrich campaign has tapped us to be its liaison to the moon people. This could be huge, friends – one of us (Matt, perhaps) could be named ambassador to the moon if the Newt-like object is elected president this fall. How awesome would that be?

Tough commute? No worries. With gas at $2.50 a gallon, it won’t matter a bit.

Usual Rubbish

Albumination.

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We’re out of the big box retail business. Easy come, easy go. Now what do we do for scratch? Start scratching? What am I, a dee-jay? (Perhaps I am…. )

Leave us face it. As so many of our closest friends and advisors have told us, Big Green’s money-making gene is recessive. The cash bone definitely is not connected to the Green bone. Even when we have a hole to China’s most productive consumer good factory – literally a tunnel to the bank! – it blows up in our faces. The gods want us humble. They have given us a mission, and we must fulfill it. Live simply in an abandoned mill. Make music. Travel to other planets via questionable means. Go forth and do as I tell you. WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

What the…. got gods for three minutes and they’re already demanding as hell. Well, you should know that we’re not letting the grass grow under our feet. (Except the mansized tuber, of course – that’s his natural state.) As you may be aware, Matt and I have been busy with our podcast. A grueling monthly broadcast schedule, now in its eighth grueling month. Ever eat gruel for eight months straight? Just try it sometime, Ebeneezer. Even you will be calling for more bread, damn the ha-penny extra. Right…. where was I? Ah, yes. Work. Work, work, work. The podcast demands a great deal out of us – namely, that we turn on the recorder, stand in front of studio mics, and talk total, rambling nonsense like we always do. Then we press stop. (I told you – it’s a great deal.)

Then there are the songs. We’ve done a lot of Cousin Rick Perry songs – it’s becoming a bit of a theme, like Christmas or rare foot diseases. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has been good enough to help track some of the numbers. In fact, we’re thinking about pulling it together into an album – finishing the songs we threw together for the podcast and putting out an album of Rick Perry themed material. Would the resulting product be an abomination of sorts? Perhaps in the Eyes (or the Ears) of the Almighty Rick. He is among our more sensitive cousins, to be sure.

So, yes, our hands are full, our hearts (and wallets) light, our spirits…. I don’t know, I’ll go with spongy.

Usual Rubbish

Crash of 12.

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Call out the marines. Get the cops down here. Somebody plugged our money hole… and this could be a problem.

Yeah, I know … all good things come to an end, right? We were just starting to get traction as the next big-box store. Our theme is that of an abandoned mill… all of our stores look like abandoned mills. (Note: we only have one store, and it’s in an abandoned mill.) We have a mascot, Marvin (my personal robot assistant), and a jokey spokes vegetable, the mansized tuber, who we were thinking would wheel his way through quirky television commercials, speaking in a British… no, Aussie accent. Perhaps German accent. We haven’t worked out that part yet. He would show up in board rooms and on cruise ships … at least the ones that don’t tip over or catch on fire.

And hell, with the help of our marketing advisor, Noname, on loan from the A and R representative at our corporate label, Loathsome Prick Records, we even had an expansion plan on the board, with a big map and hexagonal icons representing new store locations in Boise, Idaho, Keokuk, Iowa, Redmond, Washington, and about a thousand other locations. Big Green was even planning to go global, with outlets in Spain, Qatar, Estonia, Sri Lanka (of course), and down under somewhere (or something). It was a bold, ambitious plan … one that made our militant cartoon neighbor, Gung-Ho, fairly salivate with envy. All of the lands HE wanted to conquer, spread out invitingly before him on a topographical map. Oh, the envy!

But… that was then, this is … OWW! (Forgive me. Marvin just rolled over my right foot.) One day this past week, the free consumer goods, once so plentiful, simply stopped flying out of that hole in the floor Mitch Macaphee burned with Trevor James Constable’s Orgone Generating Machine. (I know… that’s a little hard to parse. Just look back a few weeks, you’ll get it.) We just sold the last programmable toaster yesterday. All out of custom! Even worse, the hole emitted a parting gift of sorts – namely, a bill of lading for everything that had flown out over the past three weeks. And it’s considerable. I didn’t know a number could have that many zeroes behind it. (A google-plex, perhaps?)

So there you have it. The once mighty Green-mart empire, brought low by an interloper on the other side of this wretched globe. Curses! (Ahem…. hurt my throat, there.)

Usual Rubbish

Lock, stock, and barrel.

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Is that the time? Right – time to close up for the day. It’s 4:20 in the afternoon and I’ve been slaving away for nearly half an hour. Shut it down.

Woe is he who must labor in vain. I don’t know what that means, but whatever… your friends in Big Green are proprietors for the nonce. That means we have proprietary interests, perhaps for the first time in our lives. And you know what they say… as soon as you get a stake in the world, it’s all over. Kiss your altruism goodbye, my little scaly friend. Forget your deeply held values – this is cash, Jimmy-boy, cold hard cash! To hell with all that other stuff. All we care about is pushing product out the door at a tidy profit.

What products? Hey…. whatever comes flying out of that hole to China. Mitch Macaphee burned a tunnel through the earth so clean, it doesn’t even whistle when it spins (and it should). Now it’s like one of those air-tube delivery systems in an old department store. On the other end, probably just outside the gates of a Foxcon plant, somebody’s dropping consumer items into a hole … and they come flying out of the opening in our forge room floor moments later. It’s a tunnel to the bank, my friend.

Okay, so… on our marketing advisor Noname’s recommendation, we opened a storefront in the Mill that we’re calling, “GREENMART”. People come in with plastic shopping carts they borrow from the supermarket up the street and load up on cheap swag built by slave labor – an all-American pastime if ever there was one. (And there was one.) Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has been working the cash register, so to speak. Actually… there is no cash register. Marvin just does the calculations using his own processor unit, then spits out a receipt. He even takes major credit cards, which is news to me. (If I’d known that during our last tour, I would never have hocked my Bean Boots for that hoagie back on Neptune.)

Yes, I know… this is like selling stuff that fell off the back of a truck. Where’s the outrage? Ask Bob Dole.

Usual Rubbish

Hold it.

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There’s a valuable resource for you. And right here under our noses. We’re rich, I tell you, rich. It’s like finding a whole bag full of doubloons. Or perhaps triploons.

What am I talking about? What indeed. I’ll tell you, friend(s), we’ve been squatting in this abandoned hammer mill for more than ten years. You know what squatting that long does to your quadriceps? Seriously, we’ve been occupying the Cheney Hammer Mill before the Occupy movement ever put on its first pair of short pants. Not for any principle, you understand, other than that of having a roof over our heads. A penniless band, Big Green was in those days. Ah, but no more. Fortune has smiled upon us, once again.

So often these things happen by accident. Someone tinkering with something, blowing some time, and next thing you know, whoosh! Well, that’s what happens when you live with a mad scientist, anyway. For weeks, Mitch Macaphee has been tinkering with that orgone generating machine Trevor James Constable left behind some years back. He hooked it into one of his little ion generators and – as I said earlier – WHOOSH! Fortunate that no one was standing in front of the machine’s array at that moment. The thing was pointing down at the floor of the forge room and, well, suddenly there was a clean, round hole in the fire-brick floor.

Now, I tend toward curiosity, I must admit. But I, like you, have seen Crack In The Earth, so there was no way I was going down that hole. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) wasn’t having any of it either. (I’ve been volunteering him for way too many duties just lately.) I tried to get the mansized tuber to check it out, but no luck. Fortunately, there was no need to send anyone down there. They just started popping out of the hole. What did? Boxes. Boxes of goods from China. Valuable goods, just popping out of the hole. We’re rich, I tell you, RICH. Forget everything you know about value-chain management and global enterprise logistics. We’ve got a hole to where stuff is made. People drop the stuff in on the other end, and it comes out here. End of story.

Okay, so… we’re working on the sales component right now. Stay tuned. And while you’re tuned, check out the latest episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN, our podcast, the February edition. Two new songs by Rick Perry. Another extra by us. Corporate underwriting spots tried and botched. Something for everybody. Yeeha.