All posts by Joseph

Podcast

THIS IS BIG GREEN: February 2019

Audio

Big Green celebrates the new year two months late with a rollicking show that includes a new installment of Ned Trek, eight brand new songs, and some incoherent rambling of the sort you’ve come to expect. Let us begin.

This is Big Green – February 2019. Features: 1) Ned Trek 39: Patterns of Horse, featuring 8 new Big Green songs; 2) Song: Find Yourself a Nazi, by Big Green; 3) Song: Oh, V-2, by Big Green; 4) Song: Now More Than Ever, by Big Green; 5) Song: Nazi Lunch, by Big Green 6) Song: The Nicest Nazi, by Big Green; 7) Song: Can’t Do It Without Nazis, by Big Green; 8) Song: Can’t Go Wrong, by Big Green; 9) Song: Soldier of Fourchan, by Big Green; 10) Put the phone down: Popeye cartoons; 11) Remembering Peter Tork; 12} Jonathan Harris on YouTube; 13) Singing about shutting up; 14) Writing the next Ned Trek; 15) Playing with Dave Barber, back in the day; 16) Who’s all dead; 17) Time to go – a strange medley.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Usual Rubbish

Rogue appliances.

Open the door, Hal. What seems to be the problem? I said open the pod bay door. Hal? It’s cold out here, Hal. God damn it!

Yes, that’s right – instead of sitting in my comfortable chamber deep within the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, tapping this post out on my computer, I’m standing in a damp and clammy courtyard, pounding on the front door in vain. No, this is not eviction. This is not home invasion or civil forfeiture. And this is not some tawdry war between rival squatters (believe me, we’ve had it up to here with that shit). No, friends … this is the dreaded Internet of Things.

Whose idea was it to have a mad scientist in residence? Mine? Oh, right. Well … it seemed like a good idea at the time. And he did get us to Aldebaran in one piece. (Albeit a very small piece.) Nevertheless, whoever asked him to join our entourage, he has truly gone off the deep end. They say mad scientists live off the deep end, but I think that’s just the kind of bragging that goes around at their various conferences; mostly, they are taciturn, creepy little men and women with a morbid interest in making things explode. It’s an interest they pursue quietly … until the explosion, of course.

Well, Mitch Macaphee is nothing like that. His sanest moment was when he invented Marvin (my personal robot assistant), and Marvin is bat-shit crazy. Now Mitch is going around the mill, modifying appliances so that they have rudimentary intelligence and the ability to surf the internet. He has basically turned every machine in the joint against me. My practice amp won’t power up. Our fridge has gone completely rogue, ringing up large grocer bills and denying us access to snacks. And now the clothes washer has taken it into its head (if it even has one) to commandeer the mill and start some kind of appliance commune. It even took one of my black tee-shirts, tore it into strips, and made a headband out of it. Looks quite smart … for a washing machine.

Anyway, the fucker locked me out of the mill. Can you believe it? And now the toaster is launching hot pop-tarts at me from the kitchen window. This ain’t over.

Usual Rubbish

Tragedy, then farce.

The Trump administration has been pushing the sale of nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia, according to a report from the House Government Oversight Committee, now functional once again since the Democratic takeover of that body. Some pretty good reporting on this from ProPublica suggests, predictably, that Trump’s family would benefit materially from such an arrangement, in the form of lucrative Saudi contracts for the now bankrupt nuclear plant designer Westinghouse, which has garnered Trump friend Tom Barrack as a major investor. ( I believe the consortium is eyeing Jared Kushner’s 666 building for office space.) Barrack wants to be part of a crackpot “Marshall Plan” for the Middle East that will involve building dozens of nuclear reactors in Saudi. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, the same things that have gone wrong on previous occasions when we have moved in this direction. Oh, yes … we have been here before, though perhaps without the craven self-dealing that Trump adds to virtually every initiative. In the 1960s, we were pushing the “atoms for peace” program, and at one point we were working with the British to help Iran (under the Shah) develop nuclear weapons – this according to longtime Labor party leader the late Tony Benn. In the late 1980s, George H.W. Bush was planning to send nuclear scientists over to Iraq for talks with Saddam Hussein’s government. And we have, of course, looked the other way with regard to Israel’s nuclear program, which remains unacknowledged, even though it continues to affect regional politics.

Now, there are historical and institutional reasons why our relationship with Saudi Arabia is unlikely to go south in a way similar to our little imperial dance with Iraq or Iran. But it’s hard to predict what will happen to any despotic regime. I’m sure back in the 1960s U.S. policymakers thought Iran would remain within the fold for the long term. My sense is that on this issue, like other foreign policy issues, Trump is being driven around like a little toy car by his advisors. People like Bolton, Pompeo, and Elliott Abrams work their strategies through people like Trump, who has little or no interest in international politics and is really only focused on what is best for him, his children, his son in law, his cronies. In a place like Saudi, they can all get what they want even if their goals are divergent from one another.

We live in dangerous times, to be sure. There’s nothing more dangerous than a useful idiot.

luv u,

jp