Put it all in one stack. That’s right. Now step down hard. Harder. Harder still. Good, good. Nope, that’s too hard. Too hard, damnit! I said too fucking… oh, what the hell’s the use?
Whoa, I wasn’t expecting company. Working hard here at the Cheney Hammer Mill, as usual. Sometimes I think I need a sledgehammer to get through the kind of thick skulls we have in such rich abundance around this place. Does that surprise you? Yes, I know — as bands go, we have a relatively high quotient of scientists in our midst, such as the illustrious Mitch Macaphee, the renowned Trevor James Constable, and the inestimable Dr. Hump (a.k.a. our resident “brain in syrup”). But quite frankly, the rest of us are lunkheads, and it is the weight of our collective stupidity that tends to drag the whole enterprise down towards dumbshit land. Ergo, every endeavor involves an enormous amount of effort, plus a whole discover phase at the outset wherein we discuss topics like “Where did the sun go?” and “How fat does a brick weigh?” as a prelude to doing even the most inconsequential lick of work. Arrrghhhh!!
My apologies. Back to our story. What was I trying to accomplish, exactly? Well, as you know, we denizens of the Big Green franchise are pretty much left to our own devices when it comes to producing, publishing, and distributing our wares. Crikey, we have to make all our own noises, play our own horn parts, bang the drum (slowly), mix our own bloody songs, press our own CD’s, design our own labels… even build our own customers, like Marvin (my personal robot assistant) who owns all of our albums. (Okay, so there’s only one so far. There’ll be others!) That’s what makes us, well… different. Is that the word I’m looking for? Or is it… stupid? Has a more familiar ring. Anyway, we are the DTY band, for sure, and that requires a broad range of skills with which we have only a passing acquaintance, at best. And as one of the primary decision makers in the group (I’m the decider!), I’m tasked with training foot soldiers like the man-sized tuber (though, technically, he’s a root soldier).
Yup, last week it was moving the mill around to find the best reverb chamber effect. This week, we’ve been working on our process for pressing our own CD’s. Pretty simple process, from what I understand. Here’s how it works: you take the “music”, which is essentially a physically intangible entity, shape it into a ball, place it on a blank compact disc, and press down just as hard as you can until the two objects become one. Foolishly simple, right? So here’s the question — why the hell can’t the man-sized tuber do it? I keep handing him disc after disc, and he applies his mighty bulk, to no avail. The disc remains blank, lifeless, empty… like a vacant house on a deserted street in a forgotten country… (sounds like home to me). Perhaps I’m being too hard on the tuber. Perhaps I’m not shaping the intangible ball of music in exactly the right manner. (It’s actually harder than it sounds… not the music, but the technique… or as Matt would say, “techy neeky”.)
So, what the hell — if we can’t make our own CD’s, then I guess we can’t do everything, can we? So what I said a bit earlier, that hasn’t held true even for the amount of time it took me to type this lousy column. Fleeting are the truths by which we live. Speechless am I. (Great… now I owe George Lucas money, too. Jesus!)
making the same kinds of noises. It’s what they consider political expedience, as the conventional wisdom suggests that no one in America wants to take responsibility for this “catastrofuck”, as Jon Stewart calls it; that defeat is always an orphan; that no politician can succeed by being the bearer of bad news, even if it is the truth. Now that Iraqis are dying in the hundreds of thousands, our “leaders” are encouraging us to weasel our way out of our obligations as an occupying power and a nation that has committed an extremely grave breach of international law. This phenomenon includes people like Democratic presidential hopeful Tom Vilsack, who speaks of breaking the Iraqi’s “culture of dependency” on American power, applying the language of self-help to a major conflagration for which we are primarily responsible. (What… is this some kind of co-dependent abusive relationship?)
Evidently, there’s still plenty of neocon Kool-Aid to go around in our nation’s capital. Dubya himself is getting, if anything, more bizarre than ever in his various public appearances, this week lurching from the possibility of defeat to the certainty of victory. Dick Cheney described his former mentor Rumsfeld as the finest secretary of defense America has ever had — a comment even Bill Kristol thought was over the top (and he’s obviously out of his mind to the point where he apparently thinks this is the only time Cheney’s been wrong about anything). Meanwhile, over on PBS, Condi “supertanker” Rice was talking about how Syria could stop destabilizing Iraq anytime they want by simply not allowing weapons and fighters to enter via their border. I mean, that just has to be destined for some kind of world-class irony award. What a bunch of freaks! How could even our own flabbergastingly credulous media take anything they say at face value? Even so, I think the handwriting is finally on the wall for this war, as a substantial portion of the permanent establishment is slowly beginning to catch up with the super-majority of Americans that thinks this is a hopeless mess.
Oh, hello. Didn’t see you there. Big Zamboola (or “Zamby”, as I’ve been calling him lately) was just helping me with at little household chore, to wit, moving the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill a few paces to the left. Yes, I did say household chore — Zamboola holds the house and I tell him where to plunk it. (Insert derisive laughter here.) Why move the august mill from one place to another very similar place? Well, it’s complicated, as you might expect. It’s a topic that twists and snakes around back on itself, ties itself in knots, squealing all the way, like most everything in the life of Big Green. Not sure you want to get into it on such a lovely day as this. Weather sucks where you are? Well, then — let’s have at it… or as my illustrious brother used to say, pass the fucking potatoes.
called “computer technology”. Don’t think it will catch on, frankly, though Marvin (my personal robot assistant) is all over that shit like a cheap robot. I digress… one major drawback of this amazing aural effects technology is that it costs money, and as you know, money does not grow on trees around here. No, they don’t call us “Big Green” for the contents of our wallets, my friends. Anyway, we have long since resigned ourselves to using the old ways of recording — time-honored techniques for adding verve and dimension to our records. (For definitions of “verve” and “dimension”, check your local library or record shop.)
you suppose we use to get the same effect, eh? Got a great big brick building here. Got one next door. What the fuck — Johnny White said, “Why the hell don’t we just bounce the sound around between ’em?” and I had no good answer for him. So we set it up, but I’ll be god-damned, the echo was just too damn short. What to do? “Well, that’s easy,” said Mitch Macaphee, “make the space between the buildings bigger… only not too much bigger.” Then what we needed was a sky hook with a whole lot of heft — that’s Big Zamboola all over. Only trouble is, his sense of direction is not all that it should be.