All posts by Joseph

Usual Rubbish

Planning a tour on the ground floor

Get Music Here

Okay, I really think you have the order of operations wrong. One thing has to come before the other thing, and you’ve got the wrong thing first. Dude, it’s not that hard – why are you blinking those lights so frantically? This isn’t differential calculus … whatever the hell THAT is.

Oh, hey, out there in normal people land. Just having a little conversation here, nothing to get excited about. Just a handful of friends getting together for a quick jawbone. That’s a big motherfucker, man. I’ve seen smaller jawbones on a donkey. Whoa, is that the time? Okay, well … gotta go, guys! Great chewing the fat with you.

Right … now that I’m out of earshot, JEEEsus, what a bunch of asshats. That’s what I get for raising the issue of touring again. Let me ‘splain.

Cart before the horse

You know the old saying: don’t put the cart before the horse. For one thing, the horse might decide to drive away in the cart. And if you’re applying a different meaning to the expression “put X before Y”, you should always prioritize animals over inanimate objects. That’s a no brainer. (Or perhaps a YES brainer. But I digress.)

I guess the point is, I seem to me among a stark minority of members of Big Green’s broader entourage who believe that we should RECORD and RELEASE an album before we go on tour promoting it, not after. Not sure why I feel that way, but I do, and Marvin (my personal robot assistant) can’t get his little brass head around that idea. I mean, I can understand why antimatter Lincoln would be in favor of the before plan – he’s from that backwards universe where everyone eats corn on the cob vertically rather than horizontally.

I don't know, Abe. That doesn't look right to me.

What’s that you say?

Now, some of you out there may be asking, what album? And yes, I know lately we’ve been doing little more than posting old archival video of us playing random songs. But just because there’s snow on the roof doesn’t mean there isn’t snow in the living room as well. (I’ve got to stop using so many cliches, particularly the ones that don’t make any sense.) The simple fact is, we’ve got some songs … a whole lot of them.

What are we doing with said songs? We’re incubating the fuckers. We’re tossing parts back and forth, writing chord charts, barking into microphones, squinting at pages of poorly recorded verse. We’re pulling things apart and patching them back together with bailing wire and scotch tape. We’re …. killing time, frankly. It’s just fun to play new stuff, even when you’re doing it over the internets.

Why the internets? Matt is sequestered in his naturalist redoubt, watching birds, feeding beavers, and somehow writing scores of new songs. So we use sophisticated web-based technology to do our dirty work. Because that’s how we roll.

Where to begin. So many choices.

Now, if we were to go on tour … AFTER finishing the new album, we could start on that pulsar I talked about last week. Nobody’s played there yet, so we could finally be the first to market with something. (Damn, we suck at capitalism!)

Political Rants

The right to be forced into childbirth

Let me put this right on the table. I am a cisgender white male, born into considerable privilege (though not rich) and raised in a rock-rib Republican town that is also home to Congresswoman Claudia Tenney. Unlike Claudia (who is currently warning on Twitter of yet another election-year migrant “caravan” coming north from the brown countries), I am pro-abortion rights, 100%. And if I were against abortion, no one should listen to me …. because I am a cisgender white male who will never need the procedure, and should shut the fuck up.

In light of the leaked Alito draft opinion on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, I feel as though I should map out my reasons for supporting women’s bodily sovereignty. None of my thoughts on this are unique or particularly original, but this is a time when people should voice their opposition to the Taliban-like edicts of our robed overlords on the Supreme Court, in hopes of mobilizing even broader opposition. Aside from organizing, volunteering and donating, it’s all we’ve got left at this point.

Thus far and no farther

First point: I have long felt that our bodies are our own personal nation, and that we are the sovereigns of that nation. Sure, we can’t control everything that happens within our borders, so to speak, but we should have the final word on any interventions from the skin inward. That seems pretty minimal to me in the way of human rights. Men insist on this, and rightly so – no forced vasectomies, thank you very much. And I intend on keeping my gall bladder, so there!

Okay, so when a woman is pregnant – and guys, I hope you’re reading this carefully – the pregnancy happens inside of her. That small province of internal space should be totally within her control. You’ve heard the old saying about politics stopping at the waters’ edge? Well, the law should stop at the skin. If a woman wants to bring the pregnancy to term, that’s her right. If she wants to end it, prevent it, whatever, that’s her fundamental right as well. It’s a question of sovereignty, you see.

Freedom from religion

Last time I looked at the First Amendment, it appeared to say something like this:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

This is our guarantee not only of freedom of religion, but freedom from religion. Now, when you hear right-wingnuts and religious zealots talking about when life begins, it’s important to remember that they are expressing a religious belief. The idea that “life” begins at conception has no basis in science. If they are passing laws that force us to comply with this warped take on human biology, by any reasonable standard that amounts to compelling us to live according to the strictures of their religion.

This is indefensible on first amendment grounds. Unless, of course, our hyper partisan Supreme Court decides otherwise.

Card-carrying justices

Let us face it, the Supreme Court is an overtly political institution. Regardless of what they say at their confirmation hearings, conservative justices are only going to vote on way, regardless of the facts or the law. As Elie Mystal has pointed out many times, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett were bred to overturn Roe v. Wade – no amount of argumentation will convince them otherwise.

If the Court decides to overturn Roe, people like me have to stand up. We all know multiple women who have relied on this constitutional right at one point or another. We need to ally with women, support them, and fight for justice. That’s the only way forward.

luv u,

jp

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

Hello, Captain Neutron – we are receiving you

Get Music Here

Sure, there’s probably a reasonable explanation behind it. Why wouldn’t there be? Lord knows, everything we know is firmly rooted in reality. Except, of course, for our upstairs neighbors. And Mitch Macaphee. Yes, yes … and Anti Lincoln, too, but only when he’s drunk. Which is most of the time.

Just spending a little time as a Big Green family, sitting around the hammer mill, reading the headlines to one another. Now, as you know, we can’t afford a subscription to the real newspaper. That’s way beyond our humble means! Luckily, there are the internets. All you need to do is borrow a little wi-fi, do a search or two, and voila! Instant news. Not terrestrial news, you understand – that would cost money. No, we read news from outer space. It’s fresh, it’s interesting, and there’s always a head-scratcher or two in there.

From a land beyond time

Here’s something, Bob! (Your name is Bob, right? I always assumed that was the case.) A strange radio-emitting neutron star has been discovered in a stellar graveyard. Now, I know what you’re going to say. We shouldn’t be so morbid, reading about stellar graveyards. Why not focus more on what’s happening in stellar nurseries? Hey, you know, we find news wherever we can. If it leads us into stellar graveyards, so be it. Don’t be so judgmental, Bob!

Still, you have to admit that it’s interesting. I mean, what are the chances that another race from a land beyond time would have stumbled on the same invention that Marconi did? Even more intriguing, they appear to be trying to communicate with us, via radio. It seems to me that we should be able to decipher their language relatively easily. Why? If they’re on the surface of a neutron star, whatever they’re saying must be the deep-space equivalent of GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE! We just work backwards from there.

I think it's trying to tell us something, Lincoln.

Strange magnetism

At the same time, scientists are detecting a new type of magnetic wave emitting from the earth’s chewy center. Is this a coincidence? I think not! The coincidence of these two stories on the same week is certainly no coincidence. (Wait, what?) I think it’s only right that we speculate on why this is happening at this particular juncture. To my tiny mind, there is only one possibility …. mother earth is responding to the neutron radio waves with magnetic fields. It’s like neutron man is calling collect, and she’s accepting the charges. Like any good mother would.

Skeptical? Well, there’s really only one way to test this theory. We need to break out Trevor James Constable’s patented Orgone Generating Device. The thing’s been in mothballs since we used it to bail Anti-Lincoln out with those crypto-kidnappers last year. But dramatic rescues are only one of the device’s practical uses. It can core a apple, make mounds of julienne fries, raise pole cats, and interpret interstellar communications, particularly those emanating from invisible flying predators.

Point it to the sky, Mack!

Damn, I wish we were more resourceful. If we had half the moxie of those forties guys that used to sing backup in our Ned Trek songs, we would have solved this mystery by now. As it is, it’s taking most of the week just to drag the Orgone Generating Device up from the cellar. And then Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has first dibs on it. (He’s making julienne fries.)