Damn… dropped a hammer around here someplace. Now what the fuck happened to it? Marvin (my personal robot assistant)? Have you….? Wait, there it is on the ceiling, right where I dropped it. Sheesh.
Ah, it’s you again. Welcome, welcome. Just another brief peek into the wiggly world of Big Green and friends, now en route home from a brief Martian engagement to promote our yet-to-be-released second full-length studio album (that is to say, the album itself is full length, not the studio…. the studio is quite short), a feast for the ears we trust (not quite finished) and for the eyes, as well (not designed). Did I say “en route”? Well, I was taking some liberties there. Actually, we’ve gone on a bit of a detour, thanks to the boundless curiosity of President Lincoln (the positively-charged one), one of our erstwhile hangers-on, who decided to wrest the controls away from no one in particular and send us careering off into an entirely different celestial 
direction than that which would have brought us back to our beloved Cheney Hammer Mill on dear old earth.
Damn your curiosity, Mr. Lincoln! I’m certain it was a factor in your untimely death (though historians may disagree). But I digress…
Okay, so posi-Lincoln (without the knowledge of his opposite number, antimatter Lincoln, also in our retinue) saw some shiny, shiny lights out the starboard porthole, and took it upon himself to steer us towards them. Actually, what he was aiming at was the star Cancri 55, recently trumpeted in the terrestrial as having yet another planet in its solar system. How did Lincoln manage this? Well…. as many of you may know (if there are many of you to begin with), our usual navigator and helmsperson did not accompany us this time out (potential reason: no ship-board catering service), so driving the ship has been left up to, well, a cast of extras… and somewhat substandard ones at that. Sure, John has some piloting in him, but he has to sleep sometime. As it happened, it was the man-sized tuber’s turn at night-watch and…. well… Lincoln must have found him asleep at the wheel. For shame, tubey! Ten demerits! And NO banana!
Okay, so I was a little harsh. Root vegetables have feelings too, I know. But if he doesn’t get a little constructive feedback, how is he ever going to grow into a baobab 
tree? (His fondest ambition, word of honor.) Anyway, by the time we woke up, we were in the general vicinity of Cancri 55 – a feat most earth-bound scientists would think unthinkable (if such a thing is… even… thinkable…) but which we managed to pull off because the laws of physics do not generally apply… so long as we’re in the presence of our sit-in guitarist sFshzenKlyrn, we seem to be covered by some sort of general exemption. (Don’t ask me to explain the laws of physics…. it could take all night.) In any case, there we were, in the midst of the only fully articulated solar system generally known by humankind outside of the one they themselves occupy. It was a sobering moment. We stood before the viewing port in awe, taking in this clutch of new worlds, waiting to be explored.
Okay, well… actually the larger planet has a Starbucks. And a Tower Records. And I’m not sure, but I think Murdoch owns all the newspapers. But aside from that, this is Virgin territory. (Richard Branson got here first, apparently.) More later….
requested for the Iraq and Afghan wars. The air was thick with dire warnings. We don’t have enough troops to defend the nation against attack. Half of the army’s equipment is tied up. Without some $200 billion more in supplemental funding, civilian workers at military bases all across the country will be laid off for the holidays. How’s that for rattling their little brass cup? I’ll tell you, $470 billion per annum just doesn’t buy what it used to. Seriously… you’d think with a budget of that magnitude, the Pentagon could find a way to keep both of Bush’s phony wars going and still send all those defense department civilian employees home with a holiday bonus. So cancel a couple of useless weapons programs – you could do it with your eyes closed. 
Of course, now that the catastrophe has already occurred in Iraq, the war’s defenders are trying to cast the smoking ruins of that nation as a panorama of victory. (Spoiler alert: the war’s serial hardships will be blamed on those who were against it from the very beginning – stay tuned.) Seems like every time I hear a report from an embedded reporter with a U.S. patrol somewhere in “Indian country”, some public affairs officer will at some point pipe up with the comment that while things in Iraq are “not perfect,” they’re better than they were. Not perfect? Who sent that piece of copy down the firing line? Is that some not-too-subtle way of suggesting that the American people expect too much of this mission? Trust me, Mr. President, no one is anticipating “perfection”, though it could very well be that, by Bush’s standards, we’re getting pretty close. After all – the goal here is to establish permanent bases in Iraq, and they are doing it. Their manifest indifference to the suffering of others – Iraqi and American alike – merely indicates that such hardship is immaterial to reaching that goal. Just one of many costs to be taken into account.
cloud formation? Oh, right… that’s sFshzenKlyrn. Step aside, will you? I’m trying to make a point here…
What’s that, Johnny? It’s been discovered? Bloody Yahoo headlines! You at least could have left me a few days to savor my imagined triumphant discovery. No matter.
Okay, so the gigs went okay, though I will admit… no cash changed hands at any time. I for one am chalking that down to our paymasters at Loathsome Prick Records, our corporate label. No doubt payment was made, just not to us. (After we finished playing, somewhere in an office building in New York a computer went “cha-ching!”) Someone got paid, that’s the important thing. Anyway, we left the red planet and started wandering in the general direction of Earth when one of the Lincolns (can’t remember which one, actually) took a particular interest in a small cluster of stars in the mid distance. So he took the controls. That was last night, while the sanest amongst us slept.