Tag Archives: robots

Usual Rubbish

All the king’s robots and all the King’s pens

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Get Music Here

We got another one of those notes, man. One of those neighbor notes about the uncut lawn. Let’s say they’re a little disappointed in us. I have to admit, I’m disappointed in us, too. We really SHOULD have mowed that lawn, but we were too damn LAZY and SHIFTLESS. (Please share this post with our neighbors so that they will feel validated.)

Anyway, here we are in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, no validation in sight … not even for our parking. You know, I think we might be the subject of yet another community effort to rid the neighborhood of ne’er do wells. Frankly, I object to being termed in such a way. I may not always do well, but I certainly sometimes do well. I can’t speak for any of the other members of our entourage, but I for one try to remain on the straight and narrow. (It’s been a bit too narrow lately, though.)

Call in the lawn robots

Now SOME people I know, and I won’t say who, hire robots to mow their lawn. I’m not super comfortable with that idea. The part I’m not comfortable with, I should add, is the “hire” part. Why buy the milk when you own the cow, right? We have our own damn robot, thank you very much. His name is Marvin (my personal robot assistant), and if you Google his full name, you’ll come up with about twenty years of posts on this very blog. Or some nonsensical artificial intelligence story. Same damn thing.

Thing is, the lawn robots descend onto your property in a swarm and cut the grass in about ten minutes – just a big flurry of activity, then they’re gone. Marvin could NEVER do that. If he tried to get a job with the lawn robots, he would never get past the first interview. They would laugh him out of Utica, for chrissake. Think of that: Laughed out of Utica. Good name for a band, I think. But I digress. I can’t ask Marvin to do our lawn. It’s a matter of principle. Marvin was created for greater purposes, like vacuuming the hall. I can’t allow him to lower himself in that way.

Sign ’em if you got ’em

What Marvin really needs is a contract. We used to have one of those, with that crazy corporate label Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc., of Indonesia. It was signed in red ink, actually, though it may have been blood, now that I think of it. Those guys were kind of rough. They weren’t getting us to do shit by using Jedi mind tricks. It was more the truncheon and tire iron method. But hey, you don’t want to hear about our contract signing ceremony under duress. This is supposed to be a HAPPY occasion.

Mow the damn lawn. Stuff it!

It’s actually a good thing we’re no longer under contract to Hegemonic. We can release our new songs into the wild like birds and let them fly on their own volition. Labels always make you do dumb shit you don’t want to do, then cut up your albums to make two or three. You call that value? Jesus Christmas. What an industry! Even our mad science advisor, exploiter of the intergalactic time warp, Mitch Macaphee thinks that’s unjust, and he’s crazy as a loon. Maybe crazier.

From green to red

Yeah, so there are drawbacks. And the first is no money to pay the damn bills. A smarter band would just let them do what they want with their music, but nobody ever accused us of being smart. At least not to our faces.

Usual Rubbish

I said keep the bastards away from me!

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Get Music Here

I told you, I didn’t want to be disturbed. And just because I have a gaping hole in my wall doesn’t mean you can just jump right through it. Get out, and take those nasty things with you. Jesus! This mill is a prison!

Okay, I admit that I was overreacting a tad just then. My deepest apologies, and the same for Marvin (my personal assistant), who was once again in the process of invading my personal space for no good reason. Still, that doesn’t justify bad feelings or harsh words. We try not to fly off the handle around here – that’s part of our credo as a band, and it’s something we’re particularly, uh … shit ….. WILL YOU TURN THAT DAMN THING DOWN!!

Quadropedal unmanned vehicles

What did Marvin want from me? Well, he made a new friend today and he wanted to show the bugger off. It’s one of those automated robot dogs – you know, the kind that chase people to death in your nightmares (or just in Black Mirror). He thinks he found the robot dog out in the street, but I happen to know that little iron fido is one of Mitch Macaphee’s latest experiment. It’s kind of his Eighth Man, if you know what I mean, though he’s clearly no Professor Genius.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust autonomous vehicles of any sort. They have a mind of their own, you know. And they’re just as liable to take your leg off as any real dog, maybe more. I mean, I could possibly get behind Mitch’s experiment if it were about supporting our next interstellar tour. But damn it, man, it’s got nothing to do with that. That’s right – Mitch is going rogue, once again!

A real Florida story

Now, I’m not a big fan of all these other states. But apparently there’s one state called Florida, and apparently there’s a place down there called Cape Canaveral. And at this Cape Canaveral is a special installation of the Space Force. And that force needs protection … the kind you get from autonomous robot dogs.

Yeah, I'm not crazy about that idea.

Okay, friends. Like I said earlier, I don’t much cotton to autonomous robot animals. And I’ve made my opinion quite well known within the domain of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. Which is why it puzzles me so that Mitch Macaphee – whose hearing is excellent, I understand – would put in a bid for building those robot dogs for Cape Canaveral. Seriously, do you know what this means? It means all of his beta testing will be happening right here, in the hammer mill. That’s no fair, man. Tell Florida to get their own beta-tested robot dogs. (Not even sure you need to tell them something like that.)

My little redoubt

Like with most of Mitch’s contracts, it’s really best to just ride them out and keep your head down. I might consider investing in some knee guards – something that will protect my vulnerable shins from those vicious robots. No, they haven’t done anything mean yet. But they might decide to at any moment. What part of autonomous do you not understand?

Usual Rubbish

If it frowns back, it must be a face

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2000 Years to Christmas

I was starting to wonder about you. Did they put you in with other robots? Huh. That’s funny. I thought they had a special section for automatons. What is law enforcement coming to, for crying out loud?

Hi, Big Green fans. It’s your old friends Big Green, still living together, like most bands do, in the same shabby domicile. Not accomplishing much these days, frankly – just trying to keep the heat out and dancing on the rubble. Sometimes we spin a record or play a tape. Occasionally we record something. It’s a slow life, but an honest one …. honestly asinine.

Name and a face

I was just getting a debriefing from Marvin (my personal robot assistant) on his latest expedition to the corner store. This time it took him fourteen hours, thirty-seven minutes, and twelve seconds. (No, I wasn’t timing him – he has a digital chronometer built into his face plate.) Last time he was a few minutes quicker, but that was the day his battery ran out.

Speaking of faceplates, apparently the cops picked Marvin up on his way back from the store. Apparently they got that facial recognition software for Christmas this year and they wanted to try it out on somebody. Now, as it’s a system designed by white people, it’s not surprising that it doesn’t work with non-white people. But robots? You’d think a piece of software could parse the sculpted brass plate that passes for Marvin’s mug, but you’d be wrong.

The almost-inmate

Okay, so, apparently Marvin’s …. uh …. face set off an alarm in the police computer downtown. The stupid software thought he was this OTHER robot that did nasty things downtown. (I think he picked yet another robot’s pocket.) In any case, they hauled Marvin in and started questioning him mercilessly.

Now, Marvin’s pretty good with interrogations. Sometimes he pulls the Captain Pike trick – you know, flash one for yes, two for no. (He can move forward. Backward a little.) I have to say, that flashing light routine really pisses the cops off big time. I’m not certain, but they may have knocked him around a bit. They’re just fishing for a consent decree.

Dudes, that just ain't him.

Suspect null set – try again

After fourteen hours, they finally got the idea that Marvin was not the android they were looking for. And no, it wasn’t the result of some cheap-ass Jedi mind trick. They printed up a photo of the suspect, and frankly, even a blind man could see that they had the wrong bot.

When they released him, though, they picked up the mansizedtuber on the rebound. They’re just grasping at straws – or husks, more properly – at this point. All I can say is that if they try to waterboard that mo-fo, he’ll just ask for more.

Usual Rubbish

Agro-botics.

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2000 Years to Christmas

It think there’s room. Absolutely. We’ve got plenty of space on the shop floor. Just sweep those old discarded hammer parts out of there and we’re in business.

Oh, hi. Welcome to Big Green’s Cheney Hammer Mill headquarters, the innovation center of northeastern central New York! Sure, I know you folks all think we’re a bunch of layabout deadbeat motherfuckers, and, well, you’re mostly right about that, but I’m here to tell you that we’re on the verge of turning over a new leaf. And that leaf will be turned by the claw of a hired robot.

What am I talking about? Trends, my dear listeners, trends. Take a look at your non-existent newspaper. You don’t have to look very far at all to find stories about robots increasingly being used in agriculture. That’s right – robots plowing, robots planting, robots fertilizing, robots picking, etc., etc. Now look at us. (No, really …. look at us.) We are an independent band, planted in the middle of an agricultural community – a musical ficus plant, dying of thirst in a creative desert. Year after year, we seek something our community cannot give us: money delivered to our door in easy to negotiate, small denomination bills. After all this time, we’ve decided, why fight it? Let’s join the agricultural sector. Now … how can we do this without breaking a sweat?

Well, now there’s an answer to that age-old question: Robots! Robots are doing all the work these days, cultivating cash crops all across the country. Now you may say, “But Joe, you don’t have any land? Where will you grow the crops?” Well, nameless interlocutor, first, thanks for calling me Joe. Second, we’ve got all the growing space we need, right here in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. We can set up a hydroponic garden on the shop floor. Hell, we won’t even need dirt! Just millions of gallons of water and … well, we’ll work that out.

And you may ask, “But Joe, where are you gonna get the robots?” My reply: Thanks for your question! In fact, we have robots. Well … at least one robot. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) will be patient zero in our agricultural revolution. He will be the prototype, the one-bot vanguard for a future army of agro-matons. Right, Marvin? …. Marvin??

Marvin? Anyone seen Marvin today? It’s planting time, damn it!

Usual Rubbish

Mailbag redux.

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Well, it’s been a while since we’ve done this, but I think it’s about time we open up the old mail bag and respond to some of the cards, letters, emails, messages in bottles, skywriting, notes tied to bricks thrown through windows, etc. we’ve received over the past, what, ten years?

Full disclosure: Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was tasked some years back with screening our fan mail. I’m not sure he fully understood the parameters of that assignment. Our intention was for him to use the kind of screen that would allow some of the messages to pass through. I guess we should have been more explicit. He appears to have tossed most of them out. Robots!

The thing is dusty as hell, but (cough!) here goes . First, here’s a little message from someone with the code name “Ask” in the United Kingdom:

Aw, this was a really nice post. Spending some time and actual effort to make a superb article… but what can I say… I hesitate a lot and don’t seem to get anything done.

– Ask.

Hey, thanks for your message, “Ask”. I’m not an expert on personal efficiency, but you should get that hesitation thing looked at. You might need a new set of spark plug wires. Luckily, you have the National Health Service over in England, so that shouldn’t be too difficult to accomplish.

Here’s another one, from this side of the pond:

Hey Big Green,

When the hell are you going to get up off your sorry asses and perform somewhere? It’s been years since you had a decent gig. Why are you wasting your time, posting shit on the internet and making up fan letters? It’s just disgraceful.

– Francis McDonald, Keokuk, IA

Well, Francis, I’m glad you asked this question. I’ve been trying to think of a way to raise this issue with my bandmates, and you have helpfully teed it up for me. I’ll tell you, if you hadn’t asked about this, I might have had to invent a fan letter like yours out of thin air. Thanks for saving me the trouble. I hate work!

Okay, Marvin. You can open it up now.

I think top two reasons we never play live is that we are (a) lazy and (b) old, in that order. That said, I personally do play with other groups on occasion. After the last time I performed, late last year, I spent about two months in physical therapy. As soon as I can save up the credit for more PT visits, I’ll take another gig.

For those of you who missed Big Green’s handful of live performances back in the day, you can hear some recordings of us playing live on either our Soundcloud channel or our YouTube channel. If you hear this and want more, let us know.

Usual Rubbish

Inside June.

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The Show So Far: First there were two guys talking, then we saw some cartoons, then a fully dressed naval officer jumped into the North Sea, then there were more cartoons, then some guy told us about what happened so far, then …. Oh, wait … that was another show. Sorry.

As some of you may have noticed, we dropped the June 2018 installment of our podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN, which breaks a kind of long hiatus. Still, it’s 2-½ hours of stuff, including eight new songs, so hey … that took some time. We may reside in a hammer mill, but we’re not running a factory here, man. Unless you count the robots Mitch Macaphee plugs together in the basement. (He’s considering establishing an assembly line. Not sure where that’s going, exactly.)

Anywho, if you haven’t listened to it yet, here’s what to expect:

Ned Trek 37 – Return to The Carl. This ludicrous musical episode of our Star Trek parody Ned Trek is based on the classic Trek episode entitled Return to Tomorrow, which had the Enterprise crew come across a dead civilization whose only survivors concealed themselves in glowing orbs and who talked Kirk, Spock, and some random scientist into letting them use their bodies to build android bodies the space aliens could use permanently. The head alien’s name was “Sargon”. In our version, it’s Sagan. The heavy from the planet’s “other side” is played by Edward Teller – he occupies Ned’s body, then calls everybody “puny”. Silliness ensues. Featured songs include:

Light Thing. A doc song, referring to the glowing orb receptacle that held Sagan’s consciousness (as opposed to the bubble gum machine that held Teller’s). Put your childish things away.

Sagan’s Song. Just what it sounds like – a Broadway-like number sung by Carl Sagan in which he lays out his ambitious plan for making the crew of the Free Enterprise smarter than total lunkheads. (Or, failing that, teaching them better table manners.)

Risk Is Your Business. Romney song based on Kirk’s heroic monologue from the Star Trek episode we based this on, only cross-pollinated with what unconsciously approaches a Marxist critique of capitalism. Oh, and sung in a French accent. Don’t ask me why.

Congratulations. Sung by the Nixon android, this touches on the usual Nixonian tropes of resentment, bitterness, self-aggrandizement, etc. Sixties-style “na-na-na” singalong thrown in for good measure.

Here's what we got for you, folks!Teller. A literally incendiary musical rant sung in the voice of Edward Teller while in Ned’s body. Think of it as a love sonnet to the H-bomb. Super.

The Other Side. Perle sings this perky little number about all the advantages of trading with the other side, whatever side that may be.

Fat Captain. A wrenching Sulu song about how Shatner soaked up the limelight at his expense back in the day. Based on a true story or two.

Blow The Man Down. Show-ender by Sagan, mopping up after the mess made during the preceding 90 minutes of ridiculousness. A song of grateful resignation. And yes, you get to hear Carl Sagan singing “dum dum-de-doo.” You’re welcome.

Put The Phone Down. Our typical impromptu back-and-forth gab session starts with a rough rendition of “All Saints Come”, a song off of our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas. It goes downhill from there. Just give it a listen, you’ll see.

Usual Rubbish

Poditis.

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How do you spell XML again? Does it rhyme with “smell”? No coincidence, I suspect. Jesus christ on a bike. Technology is for fools. And forever a fool I shall be.

Oh, hi. Just got done cobbling together this month’s episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN, our notorious podcast, and placing it online with the technological equivalent of stone knives and bearskins. My approach to programming is akin to placing several monkeys at computers loaded with self-peeling banana screensavers. Trial and error… but mostly trial. Anyway, it got done, and that’s just as well, because this month’s episode is chock full of something. Yes, friends, it’s full of ingredients. It contains contents. Should I draw you a picture?

Right. You’ll see from the program notes that there are not one but TWO new songs from Cousin Rick Perry, governor of Texas. These are two more in a series of “first draft” recordings that will comprise (in a more finished form) Big Green’s upcoming album, tentatively named Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. Our cousin has inspired an album’s worth of material, to be sure, including one jaunty little number called “Awesome Hair”:

It once adorned Reagan, now on your head it sits
and not on that wanna-be latter day Mitt’s.
When you’re nonsensically talking, it especially fits
If anyone tries to muss it up, you mess with their shit.

Pure audio dynamite, that’s what that is.

Thankfully, things were a little quieter around the hammer mill this week. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) finally gave up any idea of going to robot camp for the summer. “Just because all of the neighbors’ robots are doing something,” I heard myself telling him, “that doesn’t mean you have to do it, too. If they all rolled into the car-crusher, would you follow them?” At that point, Marvin emitted a metallic cluck and rolled his eyes. I just can’t say anything right, it seems. (He’s at that difficult age when robots start pushing the boundaries a little bit. )

One other thing about the podcast, before I forget. You might want to listen to it with something running in the background, like maybe an espresso machine. That would give a better sense of what’s going on in our heads when we record it. Just a suggestion.

 

Usual Rubbish

Lights out.

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Must be the generator, Mitch. Did you use that nefarious contraption again? Probably pulled too much current, and now look at us. Clueless and in the dark. What’s new, eh?

Yes, my friends. More power issues here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. That long extension cord I had Marvin (my personal robot assistant) run from the pizza place across the street? Well, someone discovered it, unplugged it, etc. Last time I order a pizza from those cheapskates! And when we found an alternative power source (i.e. the antique store on the other side of the alley… their back door latch is a little unreliable), what happens but Mitch Macaphee, our mad science advisor, decides to crank up the old Orgone Generating Device in the basement where Trevor James Constable left it years ago, and… and… well, I hate when that shit happens.

This always happens when we’re between tours. People get bored, start looking for distractions. For the two Lincolns (posi and anti), it’s Yahtzee – game after game of freaking Yahtzee. No wonder they lost the war! (Home schooling… what can I tell you?) For the mansized tuber, it’s that stupid ant farm he got for Christmas. (He just loves to watch the little guys dig tunnels.) For Matt, it’s running around after wild animals with bags of seed and video cameras. Johnny White? He’s all about flying aeroplanes. Mitch Macaphee’s tastes, however, are a bit more exotic. Time travel, the thirst for limitless power, formulating theorums to destroy galaxies …. idle hands, you know. So he fires up the old Orgone Generating Device, blows a fuse next door, and now I can’t even post a podcast, for chrissake.

Then there’s Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and his latest obsession. He picked up my Harper’s magazine the other day, thumbed through it, and read a statistic about how many robots there are in the world today. Not counting household appliances, it’s apparently in excess of one million – that’s right, more than a million automatons in the world today! Well, this hit Marvin like a truck. “I am not alone” I heard him repeat to himself in standard, monotonous robotian fashion. That’s what he’s been up to. Wheeling around the mill, Harper’s issue in hand, muttering to himself. What’s next? Will he find a nice, wind-up pen pal? Will he volunteer for the Romney campaign?

Well, that’s all I’ve got. My between-the-tours pastime, somewhat less enjoyable, is trying to keep the lights on in this freaking dump. Any suggestions on where I should run this extension cord next?

Hey, check it out – new January episode of THIS IS BIG GREEN. You’ve been warned.

Usual Rubbish

Air break.

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All right – give it back. It’s my turn to use the gas mask. More than ten minutes counts as a “bogart”, right? Fifteen minutes? All right…

Yes, more strife here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, place of our birth, land of our fathers, and all the rest of it. What is Big Green up to this week? Gasping. Lots of gasping. As some of you may know (and many, I’m sure, don’t), May is the time of year when mad scientists tend to roll out all of their new world-destroying experiments. It’s in anticipation of the upcoming CrazyCom Mad Science Convention they hold in Madagascar every August. Everybody wants to show boat the new death ray, the improved zip gun, the killer robot, now with more sparks. Kind of a pissing match for high-tech cranks. Attend at your own risk. (The last one ended badly, I hear.)

Seriously, I hate this time of year. Mitch Macaphee always goes way over the top, trying to one-up the other mad scientists on the block (by “block”, they mean solar system… they’ve got a different name for everything). Last year it was an anti-gravity machine. I spent the better part of April sleeping on the ceiling. (And that was the better part.) The year before, some kind of trans-dimensional salad shooter, I believe – not his most ambitious endeavor, I must say. Close to ten years ago, he actually got an honorable mention for Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who Mitch built from odds and spares in his one-room lab back in old Jakarta.

It’s a bit hard to get into the spirit of this competition, especially when Mitch’s obsession is sucking all the air out of the room. That’s not a metaphor: he has invented a machine that sucks all the air out of a room. Don’t bother trying to work out the practical applications for such a device – he is a mad scientist. What part of mad scientist do you not understand? He’s cobbled together some kind of contraption that’s belching black smoke as we speak. John thought to tap our old militant neighbor, Gung-Ho, for some surplus gas masks, but he could only spare one. Hence, the ensuing competition.

Hmmmm… what do you think? Can we hold our breath until August? We shall see.

Usual Rubbish

Planet pool.

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We’re off the charts? Finally! Took long enough. What the hell… this band has been going for 25 years and we… What? Oh. We’re off the star charts. Right.

Well, space travel has just gotten a lot more confusing, people. Much, much more complicated than even a few weeks ago when we left planet Earth to embark on this ENTER THE MIND: THE ULTIMATE BIG GREEN EXPERIENCE tour. It seems that normal (i.e. not mad) scientists back on Earth have discovered the existence of literally millions…. perhaps BILLIONS of Earth-sized planets circling stars throughout our galaxy. As we’re bobbing around out here, trying to find our next destination (Kaztropharius 137b), we’ve been scratching our heads, trying to figure out where all of these freaking planets came from. None of them are on the charts. Lots of them look alike. This is bloody ridiculous.

Okay, so… where do we start? With the mad scientist, of course. Mitch Macaphee knows everything about planets and planetoids, from concocting them to blowing them up (particularly the latter, truth be told). We caught him in the middle of one of his favorite experiments – turning lapis lazuli into marble fudge. (It’s not exactly a value-creation experiment, but hell… I did say he was mad, didn’t I?) The conversation went something like this:

Joe: Hey, Mitch?
Mitch: Can’t you see I’m busy
Matt: Wait…. Is that lapis lazuli?
Joe: Never mind that. Mitch, the planets, Mitch…!
Mitch: Yes, yes? What about them? Yes??
Matt: I didn’t know lapis lazuli is blue. Thought it was …
Joe: There are too many of them! How do we tell them apart?
Mitch: Don’t ask me such foolish questions. When you want to blow them apart, let me know.

As you can tell, we weren’t getting a lot of help from him. A little later on, he sent Marvin (my personal robot assistant) into my quarters (an empty storage bin, actually) with a recorded message. “Use the laser cannon,” Mitch said on the recording. “If a planet splits straight down the middle, it can’t be Kaztopharius 137b. That thing is made of solid quintilium. The best you can get is a clean hole, no split. Just keep shooting til you find it.”

I’m not sure, but I think Mitch is suggesting we incinerate multiple worlds, and personally, I’m a little uncomfortable with that. (Anti-Lincoln seems kind of keen, though.) Better take tonight’s watch, just to be sure.