All posts by Joseph

Usual Rubbish

High Yuletide.

2000 Years to Christmas

Uh, Anti-Lincoln …. Abe … I was going to have a word with you. Actually, several of us were planning on, well, maybe starting a conversation about, well … it’s kind of awkward. How can I put this delicately? Ah, yes. – got it. You’re a stoned-out, drunken loser-ass mofo. Can we talk?

Yes, that’s right, friends. It’s time for another intervention, this one directed at the Great Un-Emancipator, Antimatter Lincoln, who’s been with us since the day he stumbled out of whatever alternate universe he comes from via Trevor James Constable’s patented orgone generating machine. Seems like so long ago now, doesn’t it? Well, some things never change … and one of those things is Anti-Lincoln’s propensity toward inebriating and intoxicating substances, including (but not limited to) hard liquor, malt beverages, chicken fricassee (with cognac sauce), morphine, hooch, devil’s weed, and marijuana. Oh, yes … it’s time for another little talk with the tall guy.

We thought this would be easier, frankly. I think it was Matt who had the idea of making Marvin (my personal robot assistant) a kind of trustee to Anti-Lincoln, as well as a minder. If he saw the unpresident start to imbibe in a serious way, he was to insert himself between the man and the drink, or joint, or bowl, or whatever he was into. Okay, well … that didn’t work so well. Anti-Lincoln is a bad tempered fellow, as you may recall. His reaction to being corralled by a robot was to attempt to convert said automaton into an elaborate bong for his hashish bender on alternate Saturdays. (Actually, Marvin makes a fairly decent bong, mainly because he has a lot of empty space inside that metallic exterior. True fact.)

Uh, Lincoln? We gotta talk, man.

Last week was the last straw. Anti-Lincoln took delivery of something like a bale of marijuana. He claimed it was CBD and that he had a prescription for insomnia. I called bullshit because the mother sleeps most of the freaking day as it is. If he has insomnia, I’m Pavarati. (And just for the record, I am, in fact, not Pavarati). Now, I know he’s just stocking up for the holidays. In Anti-Lincoln’s world, when the Yuletide rolls in, it does so with a vengeance. And so before he goes on his holiday bender and starts insulting the neighbors, and the local constables, and the bartender, and the … well, pretty much everyone that comes within his field of vision, we of Big Green need to convene a small group intervention. Old Anti-Lincoln will be scared straight …. or not. (If history is any guide, we will be the only straight ones in the hammer mill by the time we’re done.)

Political Rants

Soft coup.

The president of the United States is not going to give this up. The party that made him president is not going to stop supporting him in his delusions. All you T.V. pundits and mainstream media commentators waiting with baited breath for Republican lawmakers to “pivot” or “come to their senses” or “admit in public what they acknowledge in private”, save your breath. Donald Trump is the chosen leader of the Republican Party – chosen because he encapsulates all that they stand for: celebration of greed, white aggrievement, authoritarianism, and destroying the useful parts of government (i.e. the parts that help people in some way). They can no more abandon him than a snake’s body can slither free of its head. And while they haven’t tried this blatantly in the past to steal an election by ignoring or invalidating millions of ballots that have already been counted and certified, they have always demonstrated their potential for doing so.

Let me be clear. As I have said in my podcast, Strange Sound, this is Trump returning to his original Plan A from back in 2016. I know that sounds like Plan 9 From Outer Space, but it’s true – Trump ran his 2016 campaign as a branding exercise, thinking that he would lose, cry foul, claim fraud, and use the resulting white outrage to build his new media empire. Things didn’t work out as planned, of course – Trump won, and had to resort to Plan B: milk the Presidency for all its worth, and as it turns out, it’s worth quite a bit. Now that he has obviously lost his bid for re-election, he’s resorting to Plan A, only it’s different than it would have been in 2016, because he is now President of the United States, and the power of that office amplifies everything you do to a level unobtainable via any other means. I think people tend to underestimate this dynamic, but it’s true – the Presidency has enormous influence, far beyond that of any cheesy reality show star or phony billionaire.

And so, unlike what would have happened four years ago if he had pulled this in the wake of an electoral defeat, his insistence that there was massive fraud is backed up by the United States Justice Department, all of the resources of the Executive Branch, and the entire spectrum of right-wing media. That amount of power and influence is enough to shake even the firmest of governmental foundations. Even if Trump’s lawsuits and challenges are vacuous, ill-constructed, and unsuccessful, the very attempt to overturn the results of this election is creating an indelible impression in the minds of millions upon millions of Americans. This, at best, will undermine the legitimacy of Biden’s administration and, at worst, will prompt political violence and mass unrest. What the president and his enablers are doing is profoundly irresponsible and detrimental to the stability of our democratic institutions. It is a kind of soft coup in that it robs the new administration of its ability to govern. Just as badly, it creates a playbook for future authoritarians of the right who will surely emerge from the GOP in the coming years.

Don’t treat this as a joke. That is not what this is. This is an attack on the administrative state, and it remains to be seen whether or not this attack will succeed.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.

Usual Rubbish

Twelfth Month.

2000 Years to Christmas

Did you hear that just then? That faint sound of bells ringing in the distance? That can only mean one thing …. the elementary school up the road is having a fire drill again. Third one this week.

Oh … and of course, it’s December again, the month of joy and celebration. Which means, in this year of our lord 2020 (which happens to be the year of YOUR lord 2020 as well), we are fast approaching the first anniversary of the twentieth anniversary of the release of our first LP, 2000 Years To Christmas, a space odyssey … I mean, an album by Big Green. Now when I say “LP”, I mean “CD”, actually, because we never pressed vinyl on any of our records. That’s for the heavy wallet brigade, my friends, though we have considered converting Marvin (my personal robot assistant) into some kind of record-cutting machine. (For the record, he’s not keen on the idea.)

Yeah, so here we are, a year later, still flogging the thing. And why not, right? Our first album is 21 years old. It can buy a drink in New York, maybe two. (If it can find an open bar, of course.) But even more significant is the fact that the album is themed to the season. It is, after all, a Christmas album in a way – not a collection of traditional carols and popular songs, but an alt-rock album written on the theme of Christmas. That’s why December is such a special month around the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, our adopted squat-home. Of course, there’s also the arrival of heavy snow, which typically comes through sections of the roof that are no longer quite as roofy as they used to be. That makes December extra special, too.

Aw, come on, Marvin!

Now, I don’t want you to think that we’re just huddled here in our drafty mill, sifting over the artifacts of a career that’s long since gone sour. Nothing could be further from the truth. We’re not huddled at all – not in this era of social distancing. Nay, we’re standing a respectable distance apart from one another as we sift. In the hammer mill, that amounts to 17 and a half feet. (We’ve got extra floor space, so it only makes sense to err on the side of distance.) We’re working on some remixes this winter, trying to refurbish some songs that we recorded in a hurry over the past few years. And I think Anti-Lincoln is working on a new shepherd’s pie recipe, though I’m not sure where he got it from. Never heard of a pie made of digestive biscuits and peanut butter. (By pure coincidence, that’s what was lying around the kitchen this week.)

Anywho, have a great December. This year is almost over, people. Damn.