Did you hear what I heard? Was that… sleigh bells? That can only mean one thing. That’s right, children… it’s the sound of jolly old fire alarm. The engines are burning up.
Yes, yes… Christmas freaking day. Don’t you just love this time of year? (Judging by your reaction, perhaps “love” was the wrong word.) Don’t you just fireplug this time of year? (That’s a bit better.) Over here in Big Green land, we have a reputation for keeping Christmas better than any virtual pop band you can name that traverses interstellar space and has a robot friend (and hangs out with Lincoln). Sure, that’s mostly down to our first album, 2000 Years To Christmas, now a venerable nine holidays old and still available for purchase and/or download at a retailer near you (or not so near you … check us out on the Russian mp3 download site Yanga.ru, which ranks us among “Best Artists” under Psychedelic Rock… and whose url sounds strangely like “kangaroo”, of which there are few in mother Russia). Yes, it’s hard to think of “Christmas” and “obscure indie alternative psychedelic (in Russia) rock” in the same breath without thinking Big Green. (So far, that’s the legacy. Don’t spend it all in one place.)
But our holiday isn’t just about the music. No, no… we follow tradition over here. Every Christmas, we break out the crackers and start passing out gifts, just like any normal band. And friends, this year is certainly no 
exception, even though we are bobbing here in space, directionless, our controls replaced by discarded vegetables, our navigation effectively disabled. No matter – the man-sized tuber donned his garish Christmas sweater and led a somewhat enfeebled rendition of “Oh, Holy Night” (which degenerated into “Oh, Holy Shit!” when the fire alarm went off). Due to limited shopping opportunities in deep space, we did a sort of round-robin gift exchange, a secret Santa type deal, drawing straws for gifts.
Who did I pick? Well, as it happened, I got Big Zamboola. He’s a little hard to shop for, but I got my hands on something I always felt he needed – head covering. Unlike full-sized planets, Zamboola doesn’t benefit from active weather patterns, mainly because he is no longer orbiting a star, so his 
delicate surface is virtually unprotected by cloud cover. (Sounds practical, eh? WTF – it was all I could think of, frankly.) My “secret Santa” was Marvin (my personal robot assistant), who handed me something that might have been a battleship or an enormous Chicklet, but was, in fact, a humble kitchen sponge. (Marvin went a little overboard on the wrapping this year. Could have knocked me over with a feather when I opened that sucker.) Our shipboard penury notwithstanding, it was a holiday celebration very much in the spirit of previous years. Lincoln made punch. (And that punch had a kick – thank you, great emancipator.)
So whoever you are, whatever you are, Big Green sends its best from its flying yurt. See you back on Earth…. assuming we arrive sometime this century. (Are the primaries over yet?)
spinning damage control for ex-general and president-for-as-long-as-he-likes Pervez Musharraf. Having invested so bullishly in this coup leader, Bush and company are reluctant to see his fortunes fall alongside the corpse of his chief political rival. In Pakistan as elsewhere, we build today’s disastrous policies on those of yesteryear, compounding tragedy with farce and playing with whole nations as if they were mere instruments of our global ambitions. For decades we’ve supported strongman military leaders in Pakistan because it served our purposes to do so (one-stop political shopping, in effect – less haggling with popular leaders). The rationale in the 1970s and 80s was the fight against the U.S.S.R. in Afghanistan, an effort that amounted to a kind of Ford Foundation for jihadist groups, funded in part by the Saudis and facilitated by the CIA and Pakistan’s I.S.I. intelligence service.
For our great leaders, the issue doesn’t even arise. We are directed to keep our gaze on the surface – just accept the most simplistic explanation… mindless violence by nihilistic fanatics who hate us for our freedom, our love of democracy, and our chewy goodness. That may work for domestic consumption, since the crime is so heinous, but it seems unlikely that the Pakistani people would accept this explanation. Political assassination is nothing new in Pakistan – Bhutto herself has been accused of employing this tactic in the past. Whatever her shortcomings, she was admired by a substantial number of people, many of whom see Musharraf as the party responsible for her killing. Our government has seen Bhutto only as a means of propping up Musharraf, who counts Cheney among his strongest advocates in the U.S. We are very closely associated with the President/General, and if he is seen as the despoiler of Pakistani’s hopes for a more open society, they may start hating us even more than they do already. 
What’s that, tubey? Losing pressure? Damn shame, that. And the gravity control is malfunctioning? Criminy. Oh, heck… there goes our navigation console. Reduced to molten lead. Sometimes things just don’t go right in deep space.
accountable, right? Well, that would be fine, except that he’s not on board. Remember, now… he’s a creature from the planet Zenon as well as our perennial sit-in guitarist, and his ancestors spawned in an environment quite different from that of our humble home planet (Earth, for those who don’t know). He zips from solar system to solar system, galaxy to galaxy, like a mall brat on those flashing roller-sneakers (except not as noisy… and no cell phone). Once we stoked him into an inebriated state with multiple servings of flapjacks, he effected his faulty repairs and promptly flitted off into the ethers, perhaps taking in an intergalactic concert promoted by his Svengali brother, blFmondZagnitz, the Don Kirshner of the Small Magellanic Cloud. (If such a thing can be imagined…)
talents of all those within earshot. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was dispatched to mend the hull, in as much as he doesn’t require oxygen (though he prefers an oxygen-rich environment… question of personal taste, really…). We asked Big Zamboola to arise from his slumber and lend us a little spare gravity. (In as much as he is a planet unto himself, he does have a little of that mysterious force to spare.) Lincoln – still insufferably pleased with himself over his appearance on a late-night sixties talk show – was disinclined to lend a hand, but his evil doppelganger (anti-Lincoln) – still pissed off over Lincoln’s appearance on a … well, you know – set himself to reconstructing our navigation panel using whatever was leftover from last night’s dinner (which was, itself, leftovers).