All posts by Joseph

Usual Rubbish

All’s well that ends.

That’s no good. They will certainly have lifted the phonograph needle by that point. The phonograph needle… you know… the thing that scratches along the record and makes the music come out. Don’t you know anything about technology?

Oh, hello. Didn’t see you there, peering in from the void of cyberspace. Just working my way through some technical issues relating to our upcoming album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick. Getting into the minutiae with our mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee, who will actually be making the records this time out. Yes, we do have a corporate label – Hegemonic Records and Worm Farm, Inc., a.k.a. Hegephonic Records – but they are kind of a “hands off” outfit (unless you owe them money; then it’s another story … one involving off duty military personnel, typically …. I’ll stop there).

What all that means is simply this: under our “contract”, we make the product from start to finish. We write the songs, record them, cut the discs, package them, carry them to all of the stores, etc.  Hegephonic does the rest. (That is to say, they rest up until there’s some looting to do. It’s complicated.) So, we’re just trying to work out a few of the details with Mitch, who apparently has never heard of the gramophone record. Have you been to the talkies yet, Mitch? They’re like a freaking conjurer’s trick!

The fact is, Matt and I prefer to concentrate on more artistic matters… like what’s going to happen at the end of every song. Sure, most pop songs just fade away, but the story doesn’t end there, my friends. Indeed, a lot of meaning is lost in that fade-out groove. Big Green, for its part (which part I decline to say), is dedicating itself to recovering some of that lost value for the benefit of listeners everywhere. And we’re going to do that by putting them out on the interwebs – a collection of last gasps, as it were. Some funky, so sullen, some so bizarre even I can’t fathom the implications of their existence. It cannot be so! I find myself shouting when I hear them. And yet it is so.

So…. something to look forward to. That’s what we like to hear. Now … about those photographic plates…. Don’t drop them! They’re glass, you know.

Political Rants

Crock tears.

Attention, politicians of every stripe. I don’t want to hear your expressions of regret over the Aurora massacre. You have no intention of doing anything to stop this bloodletting, so spare me your pious speeches and your pretentious, made-for-television tears. There is no excuse for what happened in Aurora, Colorado last weekend. You can blame that madman for losing his head and killing people, but there is a collective responsibility for the magnitude of the crime. This atrocity goes way beyond what a single armed person should be able to perpetrate through the use of legally obtained weaponry.

Perhaps some do not see a difference between 70 people shot and five. There is a difference. Five is bad, unacceptable, and something to be outraged about. Seventy shot – twelve fatally – is beyond outrage, and was only possible through the use of military grade weaponry. If Holmes had been armed only with the type of gun my dad used to carry (loaded) to coin shows on Sundays, perhaps only two or three families would be mourning lost loved ones, only a handful fighting their way back to a tolerable state of health, only one or two paralyzed for life. Instead, he had an assault rifle with an ammunition clip that holds 100 rounds, as well as two Glock handguns and a shotgun. Overkill would be putting it mildly. That’s more like the arms dad lugged about in Germany during WWII, when he carried a Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR). Here’s the difference: HE WAS FIGHTING NAZI GERMANY.

Invoking the second amendment, are we? Two things. First, I seem to recall, back in the early days of Dubya Bush’s Glorious War on Everyone that in the face of an all-out assault on civil liberties (made manifest in the USA Patriot Act) that conservatives were fond of saying something to the effect of, “The Constitution is not a suicide pact.” Since they were so eager to toss out the first, fourth, and fifth amendments under that banner, why the hell should we, in the face of atrocities like Aurora, hesitate to consider limiting application of the second?

Secondly, if our representatives in government would take the ten seconds it requires to actually read the second amendment, they might notice that the word “gun” does not appear anywhere in that brief and cryptic complex clause. It’s referring to “arms”. What the hell does “arms” mean? Guns, sure. But bombs are arms, too. So are bazookas. Landmines, anti-aircraft missiles, nerve gas – they all fit within that rubric, as do nuclear missiles, tanks, and battleships, for that matter. My point is, we are already interpreting the second amendment and limiting its application. We are not merely relying on its text for guidance in this matter. I have to think even conservatives are against letting anyone buy and plant land mines in their yard. But if you think about it, a landmine is probably going to kill fewer people than that AK-47 knock-off Holmes got his hands on.

So … why do we allow one and not the other? Both are horrific weapons of war. Both should be banned from use in civilian life. We have to draw the line somewhere – we’ve already done so. Let’s just draw it on the safe side of AK-47s and 40 – 100 round ammo clips.

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

Poditis.

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.